When the staffing list is also a safety record
Send the wrong person up a mountain, and you have put a group in the hands of someone who was not qualified to lead them.
For an outdoor operator, the list of who is working doubles as a record of who is certified, insured and cleared for licensed activities, and that record has to hold up.
For years, RAW Adventures kept all of it in spreadsheets of qualifications, in the operations team’s own heads, and in long email threads. It worked while the team was small. As the guide database grew, the cracks opened:
- Qualifications that were hard to keep current,
- Guides who needed replacing at short notice,
- A payment process that dragged, and
- No central record to lean on if a licensed activity was ever questioned.
RAW Adventures, based in Eryri (Snowdonia) and run by Kate and Ross Worthington with a close-knit operations team, leads groups of every age and ability into the hills, from Climb Snowdon days to the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and Mountain Training courses.
Every one of those days depends on the right qualified people being in the right place.
“We had previously managed all staffing via a process of spreadsheets of qualifications, personal knowledge of the staff team and multiple emails to recruit staff for specific events. This just became inefficient and challenging to manage for various reasons.”
RAW Adventures
Personal knowledge does not scale
Knowing your team by heart is a strength, right up to the point where there are too many of them to hold in one head. RAW had reached it.
The operation needed the things a memory and a mailbox cannot give:
- A live view of who was qualified for what,
- A faster way to fill a gap, and
- Records solid enough to stand behind a licensed activity.
After weighing up the options and a first conversation with the Liveforce team that went well, RAW ran a trial and stayed.
One place that holds the qualifications too
Liveforce gave RAW a single home for its guides and for the things that make a guide the right choice on a given day. The database holds each person’s qualifications alongside their contact details and their history.
Sign-up captures what compliance needs from the start. The office stopped cross-referencing a spreadsheet against its own memory and started working from one record it could trust.
The database remembers, so no one has to
The shift was in where the knowledge lived. Instead of the team carrying it, the system did. Filling an event meant broadcasting the work to the pool or inviting named guides, rather than drafting another round of emails.
Replacing a late drop-out meant one message to people already known to be qualified. And the record of it all built itself, ready for whenever it was needed.
Before and after Liveforce
Before Liveforce
Qualifications tracked on spreadsheets and by memory
Guides found through email threads and personal contacts
Replacing a guide at short notice was a scramble
No central records for licensed activities
A slow, drawn-out payment process
After Liveforce
Every guide's qualifications held in the platform
Work broadcast to the pool, or offered to named guides
A qualified pool reachable in one message
Compliant records kept in one place
Records ready to feed a quicker payment run
The difference
You can see who is cleared for what at a glance
Events filled faster, with far less back-and-forth
Late drop-outs covered before they become a problem
Less legal exposure, nothing to reconstruct later
Guides paid sooner, with less office admin
The features behind every safe day out
Qualifications on file
RAW’s guides hold Mountain Leader and instructor qualifications, and knowing exactly who holds what used to mean a spreadsheet and a good memory. Now every qualification sits on the guide’s record, so the office can see who is cleared for a given day without asking around.
Sign-up that keeps you compliant
Licensed mountain activities come with records you have to keep. The sign-up process captures what SOP compliance needs as guides come on board, so the paperwork behind a legal, insured day is there by default rather than chased after the fact.
Broadcast to all, or invite by name
Some days RAW wants the whole pool to see a job. Others it wants three specific, qualified people. Broadcasting a work option to the database or inviting named guides turned staffing an event from a morning of emails into a couple of clicks.
A record of who did what
The platform keeps the history: who worked which events, and the numbers behind them, down to the make-up of a team. RAW can look back and see the patterns instead of piecing them together from memory.
Less time in the office, more time in the hills
The time came back when RAW felt it most. Filling an event stopped swallowing a morning of emails. Records that were once scattered, or simply held in someone’s head, now sit in one place, which matters more than convenience when the activity is licensed and the paperwork has to stand up.
When a guide has to pull out, cover is a message away rather than a crisis. The payment side moved quicker too, with the records behind it already in order.
The support earned its own mention.
“It's so quick, helpful and the fact that you email after each support query is great.”
RAW Adventures
The mountains are unpredictable enough. The staffing behind them no longer has to be.
Since 2019, Liveforce has been the system behind RAW’s days out, so Kate, Ross and the team can spend theirs where they want to be: on the hill.
RAW is in the business of getting people up mountains safely, and the staffing behind it now runs as surely as the guiding out front.
