Technology is critical for Better Safety
In 2019, an Ernst and Young article pointed out that EHS professionals have been slow in embracing and adopting digital technology, primarily because organizations were unable to grasp fully the nature of problems they are trying to solve in the health and safety domain.
According to the article, even when technology was implemented, it was usually “disconnected” from other business systems and was designed to tackle isolated safety issues.
However, over the last three years, there has been an acceleration in the adoption of digital tools and technologies. The pandemic and the need for remote work certainly accelerated this trend. For health & safety (H&S) leaders, this provided the necessary impetus to get buy-in from senior management leaders to invest in digital transformation and automation of EHS processes and workflows. For instance, if a safety audit had to be completed while working remotely, it would be impossible without digital transformation.
At ComplianceQuest, our product management and solution teams have worked closely with numerous safety leaders around the world. Through the experience of implementing CQ EHS across sectors – healthcare, medical devices, life sciences, manufacturing, oil & gas, construction, etc. – we’ve learnt that the following factors play a key role in successful digital transformation efforts:
- The right technology solution is critical: The need of the hour is to implement a cloud-based EHS solution that is flexible, scalable, and customizable. The solution must seamlessly integrate with the EQMS, ERP, and CRM, so there is a free flow of real-time data and information across the organization.
- But, that’s only the beginning: Choosing the right EHS is only the first step. Every organization is different and the safety leaders must adopt a collaborative approach with relevant stakeholders to design a robust H&S process. Right from tracking near misses and safety observations to handling incidents, risk mitigation initiatives, conducting audits and inspections – an end-to-end process flow must be designed.
- Culture, Culture, and Culture: End of the day, we witness unsafe behavior at the workplace because people haven’t had the right training or because they don’t have a safety-first mindset. The key is to use a top-down approach to communicate the organization’s commitment to employee well-being and workplace safety.
- Rally your troops together: The only way to reduce safety risk is by proactively eliminating risky processes or unsafe behavior displayed at work. Total Employee Involvement (TEI) is the key to increasing safety performance.
- Spot problems, set goals, and have a well-documented safety strategy: The H&S team must work closely with functional heads and the executive leadership and put together a safety management strategy that spans reactive, preventive, and proactive approaches to safety risk management.
- Execute this strategy to the tee with continuous improvement: By bringing together people, processes and systems, it is possible to bring down incident rates and pursue safety excellence.
In this post, we offer a step-by-step guide to safety transformation, with an approach that is participative, holistic, collaborative and data-driven.
9-Step Guide to Safety Transformation in Your Enterprise
Safety Transformation should be planned out properly due to the cost, time, and operational implications. A badly implemented safety management system can have only a limited impact and may soon be abandoned due to its ineffectiveness. While digital transformation is essential in today’s world of greater awareness about workplace safety and stringent regulations — a systematic approach is just as important.
The 9 steps a business must follow for a successful transformation include:
Step #1 – Assess Current State: The safety team must audit the current state of safety processes across all locations and/or manufacturing facilities. The level of safety awareness and implementation of safety processes may be different in different locations. These need to be identified and documented to create a standardized policy that can help locations that are lagging behind come up to speed. Often, safety may look good on paper though it may be far from the truth. Therefore, visiting these units and interacting with the employees is a must to get an accurate picture.
A robust audit and safety inspection process is key to this assessment. Have open conversations and brainstorming sessions, in addition to gathering information. This will help while setting safety goals and planning initiatives. It’ll also help the safety team uncover unexpected risks.
Key Point to Remember: Ideally, your organization must have a standardized approach to safety management across all locations and facilities. Of course, learn from each other and drive continuous improvement efforts. Also, ensure there is alignment with a standard like ISO 45001.
Step #2 – Analyze Documents, Data and Reports: Another aspect of safety audits is to evaluate the current status of safety documentation. Often, in the hurry to meet their deadlines, reporting and documentation may have been ignored. It adds to the administrative burden and is hard to track and follow up.
As the safety transformation process starts, plan to implement a robust document management system, so it will be easy to access all safety-related documentation. Ideally, this must be integrated with your EHS system.
Key Point to Remember: Sometimes, when you talk to people and conduct planned inspections and audits, the complete picture may be hidden. It is, therefore, crucial to make a judgement call based on facts and data.
Step #3 – Define Safety Policy and SOPs: Often, the lack of standardization is one of the reasons for the disparities in safety levels in different departments and sites. Creating a comprehensive policy and sharing it with the entire organization along with sufficient awareness creation through posters and other visual tools will reinforce the need for safety processes to be followed by all employees.
Key Point to Remember: Building an enterprise-wide culture of safety. Is this easy to do? Not really. But with the right communication and training strategy, it’s not too difficult either. The key is to have a system in place – so people truly believe that safety initiatives have a direct impact on business performance, employee engagement as well as overall financials.
Step #4 – Lead from the Top, But Involve the Entire Organization: When the management is serious about safety and takes interest in ensuring correction and prevention of incidents, it reassures employees and encourages them to imbibe safe behavior. The truth is: safety-first has to become the norm, with every employee contributing towards making the workplace safer.
When senior leaders work closely with the H&S team to understand the real value of investing in safety management, meaningful change will happen. As the EY article mentioned, it is not about implementing an EHS system and expecting magical results. Safety goals will be met, only when people truly come together and proactive spot risks and put in place control measures.
Key Point to Remember: The root cause of a major accident may be the result of a small mistake by a junior worker. While the tendency is to act quickly after an incident, it is critical to show that urgency even after near-misses and safety observations are reported.
Step #5 – Training Management: Another way of showing commitment to workplace safety is to train employees in the necessary skills to discharge their responsibilities safely and effectively.
Most people see safety training as a chore. But it is critical to get the message across. Efforts must also be taken to reinforce and emphasize on the need for practicing safety, risk-aware behavior.
Key Point to Remember: While organizations have put in place safety training programs and certification requirements, some training programs fall short in terms of inculcating the right mindset.
Step #6 – Measure Both Lagging and Leading Indicators: Progress needs to be measured. Therefore, it is important to identify key performance indicators and the metrics that indicate the effectiveness of the safety processes.
In one of our blogs titled “Are You Measuring Only Lagging Indicators to Track Health & Safety? If Yes, It’s Time to Change” we wrote about the importance of tracking metrics like management commitment, number of inspections done, number of safety observations addressed, etc.
Key Point to Remember: What gets measured, gets improved. Make sure your metrics are SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely.
Step #7 – The Risk Management Lifecycle: “If you don’t invest in risk management, it doesn’t matter what business you’re in, it’s a risky business,” says Gary Cohn, the Vice Chairman of IBM. Businesses must be able to proactively identify potential risks by running a robust risk assessment process. Rating the risks based on frequency and severity will help to prioritize the risks that need to be addressed first.
Enterprises need a robust risk management framework to identify risks, conduct analysis, evaluate it and plan mitigation and control measures accordingly.
Key Point to Remember: The journey from risk assessment to risk management must be complete, along with a robust Management of Change (MoC) process.
Step #8 – Empowering Employees: In addition to training the employees in safety processes, it is also important to empower them with the tools needed to report observations, near misses, and incidents without fear of retribution. Since the safety team cannot be everywhere, employees act as the eyes and ears in their functional areas, thus participating proactively in making the workplace safe.
Key Point to Remember: Often, people observe unsafe behavior but have no idea where or whom to report it! Therefore, it is crucial to have an “employee portal” where anyone can report a near-miss or safety observation.
Step #9 – Audits and Inspections: Periodic audits and inspections are crucial to identify potential and current risks. They can be conducted by internal or external auditors.
Running a data-driven audit process with relevant documentation can make a huge difference to make safety improvement an ongoing priority.
Key Point to Remember: Safety transformation is not a one-time activity but a constantly evolving process. Reports, analytics, and inputs from audits should be reviewed and the safety policy and processes fine-tuned to constantly effect improvements.
The 3Ds of Workplace Safety
The ensure the above steps are implemented properly, two aspects are critical
- Digital transformation: The EHS solution you implement must truly “connect” people, processes and systems.
- Data: There should be easy access data and analytics, so decision-making is quick and efficient.
- Documents: Health and safety leaders must use the EHS solution to streamline the document management process. All safety-related documents including the safety policy, safety training documents, SOPs for safety, CAPA documentation, etc. must be just a few clicks away for all stakeholders.
Looking for a next-generation, AI-enabled Safety Solution to completely transform your approach to Safety Management? If yes, you’ve come to the right place.
Request for a demo of CQ EHS here: https://www.compliancequest.com/online-demo/
