Chris Thomas is the CEO of Inform People, offering enterprise solutions for compliance and communication. Asked about his background and the purpose of Inform People and what they’re trying to achieve, here’s what he had to say.

What is your background and how does it influence your work at Inform People?

I am a qualified architect, and I worked in that field for nine years, principally on complex projects like public buildings where there was a lot of problem solving and compliance to consider. When I was looking for a change of direction, the opportunity at Inform People came along.

At the time, it was a fledgling organisation that hadn’t quite found its footing. It needed someone to define its purpose and grow it in the enterprise solutions arena, which is all about problem solving, streamlining processes, safety and compliance. Both aspects of the role played to my strengths and since then the company has grown and is thriving.

How have you developed Inform People since you started?

Inform People was founded by Les and Stephen. It was initially created as an answer to a particular client need. Over the years they found that through talking to clients, they realised there was a need to help companies develop systems and processes for health, safety, logistics and compliance, as they grew. In particular, it was needed in public facing organisations with lots of locations. How do you keep on top of risk and risk management at 1000 sites?

When they decided to develop Inform People into its own entity, it initially struggled to distil its purpose. When I joined, that’s what we focused on. Now, we are a fully-fledged health and safety for enterprise business, typically working with multi-site organisations with £100m+ turnover. We have clients in the UK and Europe, including JD Sports, Nando’s, Poundland, Hobbycraft and more.

What does Inform People do for these businesses?

Typically, everything gets harder with scale, so as businesses grow it becomes more difficult to monitor and action systems and processes for uniformity, consistency, safety and compliance.

However, consistency across a business is essential both for the service you’re offering and for risk management. For example, if fire safety is not implemented properly, even if you have a policy in place, then someone can easily get hurt and the person in charge could be criminally liable for the outcome.

We developed our own system to solve those common problems in businesses – implementing and monitoring processes, and making sure changes and training can be actioned quickly and simultaneously across multiple sites.

What is the benefit for businesses?

It’s really about three things – safety, peace of mind for business leaders/owners, and helping to be strategic, targeted and cost-effective with spending and resources.

1) By having systems in place that offer reporting and implementation support, health and safety is ensured for staff as well as customers and you have greater transparency over what’s happening across the board.

2) Business leaders can have peace of mind knowing that they have a clear view of any gaps where training or changes are being made.

3) As a result you can focus on areas of underperformance, using funds more wisely because you are fully informed regarding where to allocate them.