Why Integrated Document and Audit Management is a ‘Must Have’ in any Safety Management Solution

Most safety leaders agree that an effective safety management system must be truly connected and integrated.

What do we mean by this? In simple words, a connected system must ensure the following aspects are taken into account:

1. Safety processes must not operate in a silo. It required an EHS solution that brings together incident management, risk management, training, permit-to-work, etc.

2. Is it enough for the end-to-end health and safety workflow to be integrated, so there is complete data visibility? While this is crucial to have, it is not enough. Ideally, the EHS solution must also seamlessly integrate with the ERP, CRM, PLM, EQMS, and other business systems. This way, real-time data is coming in from other non-safety operations that are being performed.

3. Last but not least, a modern safety management system must ensure total employee involvement. There must be a way to report safety observations and near-misses, by anyone in the organization. There must be an easy way to evaluate and analyze these observations. The key is to have a centralized portal where anything safety-related can be discussed and posted.

4. Improving safety performance is about building an organization-wide culture around employee well-being, workplace safety, and environmental sustainability.

ComplianceQuest’s cloud-based environment, health and safety management solution integrates end-to-end safety processes, including:

• Safety Observations
• Incident Management
• Environment and sustainability
• Permit-to-Work
• Risk Management
• Supplier Management
• Training

In addition to these, the CQ EHS solution also comes with in-built Document and Audit Management solutions that are crucial for compliance and continuous improvement. Thanks to being built on the Salesforce platform, it also easily integrates with your company’s ERP, CRM, and EQMS solutions.

In this blog, we focus on why a truly connected safety solution holds the key to improved safety performance and better risk management, and why robust documentation and audit processes are crucial as well.

Improving Safety Performance Requires Data Visibility, Continuous Improvement, and Easy Collaboration

A modern, next-generation solution like CQ EHS enables the following capabilities:

Effective Communication: A holistic approach to safety management is essential for improved compliance. Most regulatory bodies recommend employee participation in safety management. This requires communicating safety policies and documents with all stakeholders to align everybody’s function towards the organization’s business and safety objectives.

ComplianceQuest EHS provides a cloud-based communication solution that lets people even in remote locations access the necessary documents and be informed on time about the various safety requirements and process changes so that they can be standardized across the organization simultaneously.

In-built Document Management Solution ensures easy access to all safety documents anytime, anywhere. Most importantly, it ensures information security and governance, while also enabling the easy flow of data and information.

Regulatory Compliance: With constant changes to safety regulations and with variations between geographies, safety leaders need to be up to date at all times. They need to be able to share their understanding and implement necessary changes uniformly across locations. Where local regulations need customization, safety leaders should be able to implement them effectively and monitor and track progress. Being aligned with all major safety regulations/standards such as ISO, and OSHA is an important capability.

With CQ EHS, thanks to its in-built Audit Management Solution, it is easy for safety leaders to conduct audits, and inspections and evaluate the current state of safety management systems across the company. The entire process of scheduling an audit, roping in key stakeholders and documenting audit findings, and actioning on post-audit recommendations can be automated and streamlined.

Risk Management: ComplianceQuest EHS helps with identifying key performance indicators and monitoring lead and lag indicators for suitable action to be taken in a timely manner. It helps to identify risks, maintain a risk registry to capture trends, prioritize based on a Risk Assessment Matrix, and mitigate risks effectively across functions.

We wrote a blog on proactive risk management using a Risk Assessment Matrix. Read it here.
https://www.compliancequest.com/blog/risk-assessment-matrix/

Reporting Events, Observations, and Near Misses: To make employees participate in safety management and make safety proactive in the organization, it is essential to empower them with tools to report near misses and observations, in addition to reporting incidents. ComplianceQuest is a mobile-ready solution allowing workers to report from any part of the organization, anytime. In case of a network issue, the system automatically synchronizes when connectivity is available.

Tower of Data: All the reports, documents, and risk registry are available to the management and key stakeholders for periodic review, identifying improvement opportunities, assigning responsibility, and tracking progress. This further encourages employees to take safety seriously and implement safe behavior at work.

In this blog, we have documented all key features of CQ’s Safety Control Tower:
https://www.compliancequest.com/blog/features-usage-safety-control-tower/

Permit-to-Work: CQ EHS enables businesses to automate Permit-to-Work workflows to ensure that only authorized workers access high-risk areas with proper training and protection. This further enhances the safety of the workplace by minimizing accidents and events.

Training: Identifying skill gaps and providing appropriate training to the workers can also be automated using the CQ EHS solution. This helps to increase safety awareness and behavior while upskilling employees to undertake higher tasks responsibly and with appropriate safety measures.

Supplier: Safety issues can arise from suppliers, contractors, and other partners. ComplianceQuest EHS helps address these issues through the supplier management feature. Businesses can share the safety challenges, ensure they are corrected, and improve the safety of products and processes.

Integrated Document and Audit Management to Improve Safety Management Efforts

ComplianceQuest’s EHS solution integrates seamlessly with our EQMS solution, along with document and audit management solutions as well.

While the traditional document filing system may work to create and store documents, it is not very effective in terms of access. Documents may need to be accessed for multiple reasons, there will be many versions available, and some also need to be destroyed after a specified period. All this becomes easier with ComplianceQuest Document Management Software. Also, safety policies, incident reports, risk registries, and other similar safety-related documents should be easily accessible for auditing and reporting purposes. The CQ solution facilitates this through seamless integration of the document management solution with EHS software.

Auditing is another vital aspect of safety management as it helps assess compliance levels and facilitates continuous improvement. By automating audit workflows, organizations can strive for audit readiness and enable perfection in audit performance. The audit findings can be accessed from within the CQ EHS solution for management reviews and actions to be taken to rectify any challenges identified.

ComplianceQuest’s EHS is a highly reliable, robust, and scalable solution integrating the safety, documentation, and audit processes. It helps safety leaders with reporting and analytics capabilities to identify risks and proactively mitigate them. The solution is also integrated with CAPA, allowing safety leaders to identify the root cause, and take corrective action and preventive action to further improve the safety management of the company.

Businesses implementing the CQ solution can see greater participation of the employees in the safety process and contribute to making their workplace safer. A safe workplace not only reduces the cost of safety but also improves productivity and the involvement of the employees. This leads to improved brand image and faster growth in revenues.

To know more about how the CQ solution can help improve environmental and employee health and safety in your organization, contact us now: https://www.compliancequest.com/contact-us/