Key Advantages of an Easily Configurable EHS Solution

Key Takeaways:

• Businesses need a configurable EHS solution that can be tweaked to align with their enterprise’s unique health, safety and environmental management processes.
• The solution should enable easy adoption and empower employees to engage in safety processes from anywhere, anytime.
• It should provide enterprise-wide data visibility and easy flow of information across people, processes and systems; This is key to proactively mitigating health and safety risks with an integrated risk-based approach.

World over the importance of health and safety in the workplace is gaining importance, reinforced by regulatory requirements and further bolstered by the Covid-19 pandemic. While social distancing and handling injuries and illnesses have come under sharp focus at the workplace, even in the case of remote workers, their mental health and physical well-being are of concern and needs monitoring.

How can safety leaders and employers cope with all these new demands while also managing incidents along with their core business activities?

Without a doubt, the need for an automated and configurable health and safety solution is rising, as indicated by market research reports. According to one report, the global Environment, Health and Safety (EHS) market size is expected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 10.2% from USD 5.3 billion in 2019 to USD 8.6 billion by 2024. Businesses need an EHS solution that provides them with the data needed to improve their efficiency, accuracy, and security.

Traditional vs. Digitized Solutions

Given the complexity of business operations in today’s global economy, businesses have to consider risks from a business perspective as well as from an employee’s perspective. This requires access to data in real-time.

In traditional manual methods or with on-prem systems, data collection, collaboration, the flow of information, data visibility and traceability are all challenges. Even when data is available in the digital format in on-prem systems, organizations do not have access to real-time data and the lag can reduce their effectiveness. This is especially true with more and more remote work. Furthermore, silos get created, and getting a holistic view of all the processes to understand the implications of the various decisions is limited.

What businesses need today is a cloud-based, configurable EHS solution that:

• Provides leaders with access to data across operations, from anywhere, anytime
• Empowers employees and field staff with information relevant to their areas of operations to be proactive and respond to situations appropriately
• A portal to report incidents, near misses, or safety observations anytime, by anyone

Further, this can also inform the gaps in skills and capabilities and help develop and deliver customized training programs to all the employees based on their competencies. It can also help improve the engagement levels of the employees, making them take ownership and proactively create a culture of safety, which is the need of the hour.

Benefits of a Configurable EHS Solution

Each business has its unique requirements and, therefore, needs a system that can be configured to align with them. For instance, ClearStream, Canada’s leading oil and gas solutions provider, decided to sunset its legacy systems and implement a simplified, mobile-friendly solution that would enable its site inspectors to submit safety data from any location.

After careful analysis, the company opted for ComplianceQuest’s cloud-based, configurable EHS Solution. The implementation team from ComplianceQuest used custom-built processes and workflows using the low code capabilities of the Salesforce Platform. For instance, the team needed digital worksite inspection forms, so data from site audits and inspections could be updated from remote locations anytime, anywhere. The data would automatically sync with the rest of the EHS platform and even connect with the company’s Salesforce CRM.

ComplianceQuest also provided a sandbox environment to safely explore, learn and test a new system without the risk of affecting data.

“Our business is complicated with many moving parts. This new system has been incredibly beneficial, especially during the pandemic, which introduced unique challenges for everyone, both personally and professionally.” – Competency Advisor, Clearstream

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Out-of-the-Box vs. Configurable EHS

Most out-of-the-box products come with predefined templates and workflows. A configurable product, on the other hand, can be tweaked as per the needs of the enterprise, based on the specifications and requirements provided by them.

Out-of-the-box solutions are not without their advantages. They draw from industry best practices and provide patches for easy upgrades. However, configurable software is a framework that allows for changes based on the findings of a gap analysis. These changes can be for forms, workflows, analytics reports and dashboards.

This is especially useful for organizations in mid to high-risk industries to meet different compliance requirements, complex operations and manage high rates of potential incidents. Also, in some cases, enterprises cannot entirely migrate from legacy to modern solutions. They may need the new EHS solution to connect and integrate with certain legacy data sources. With a configurable EHS, this is also possible with ease.

Configurable EHS Solutions:

• Can be tweaked based on the unique needs of the business
• Help establish a close partnership between the vendor and the business
• Facilitate higher user adoption with lesser training
• Ensure continuous improvement

In fact, one of the requirements of ISO 45001 for Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems Requirements is continuous improvement, which requires flexibility and the ability to fine-tune processes based on incidents and feedback.

As a result of configuring the ComplianceQuest EHS Solution to suit its needs, ClearStream was able to improve its overall health and safety practices. While the employees were empowered to follow processes and procedures to ensure safety and compliance, they also had more time on hand to focus on higher leverage tasks.

The availability of real-time data from different locations enabled the management to respond to situations proactively and, most importantly, prevent incidents from happening wherever possible by identifying leading indicators of potential issues.

ComplianceQuest – A Next-Generation EHS Solution

The ComplianceQuest cloud-based EHS solution built on the scalable and robust Salesforce platform enables businesses to align with regulatory requirements while empowering their employees to proactively manage health and safety processes. The modular approach allows businesses to prioritize solution implementation based on their risks while seamlessly integrating with their other enterprise systems.

Some of the key features of CQ’s EHS solution include:

• Environment and Sustainability: Drive sustainable development by managing, tracking and analyzing environmental and sustainability metrics
• Incident Management: Enable reporting incidents, near misses and observations, manage and mitigate risks as well as continuously improve processes using CAPA and root cause analysis
• Risk Management: Identify and catalog risks at the workplace, assign appropriate controls, prioritize them and collaborate with stakeholders for timely response
• Training: Design, deliver and monitor training programs based on the need to ensure all employees are aligned to the safety and compliance goals of the organization

If you need a configurable EHS solution for your health and safety requirements, contact us now or request a demo here: https://www.compliancequest.com/online-demo