CQ Guide: Automation of Health & Safety Management Processes in Public Sector and Government Organizations

Why the Public Sector is Migrating to Cloud-Based Software?

In 2021, Mckinsey published an article titled ‘Ahead in the cloud: Transforming public-sector performance’.The article highlighted the role of embracing digital transformation and automation to improve various processes in government-run organizations and public sector companies.

According to a study conducted by McKinsey, some of the high-opportunity areas to streamline operations with the help of next-generation tools revolve around the following:

• Proactive risk management processes, especially around health & safety of employees
• Improve operational workflows for better safety of workers
• Environmental protection and sustainability practices
• Easier access to data & analytics for better decision-making

Over the last few years, several public sector companies and services providers have been making the shift to the cloud – for more effective digital transformation. They are using modern software solutions to enhance overall operational efficiency and make lives easier for their employees.

Improving Employee Health & Safety Programs with a Modern EHS

Specifically, in the area of employee health and safety public sector organizations are realizing the importance of embracing digital transformation and automation, but question is, are they doing it right?

In several cases, even when an EHS solution was implemented, it was often disconnected from other business systems like the ERP, HRMS and TPA solutions. While digitalization is a good step forward, going with a “disconnected” approach will result in a siloed approach towards health and safety.

Today, public sector companies and government-run organizations are implementing modern, next generation EHS solutions that enable better integration with other software systems being used. With a “truly connected” system, the end-to-end cycle of health, safety and risk management will be more efficient with better access to data and real-time information.

Let us say, a public utilities company hears about an incident, where one of its workers gets injured by falling from a height. Once data and documents related to this incident are captured, it must feed into the EHS system to conduct a safety investigation, trigger a CAPA process, and take immediate actions on – (1) take all necessary steps related to the accident including helping the injured worker, do damage control, filing compliance forms, identifying and scheduling another worker, etc. and (2) prevent a recurrence of a similar incident and take preventive measures and plan risk mitigation actions.

Of course, one must also get to the root cause of the issue, and fix the problem for the long-term. This may require a change to a process and establishing new risk control measures. With an EHS that seamlessly integrates with other business systems, the entire lifecycle of handling a safety emergency becomes easier.

When Digital Transformation Efforts are Successful?

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 - we’ve learnt that the following factors play a key role in successful digital transformation efforts:

1. The right technology solution is critical: The need of the hour is to implement a cloud-based EHS solution that is flexible, scalable, customizable and FedRAMP compliant. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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 CQ Guide, we offer a step-by-step guide to safety transformation at public sector companies, with an approach that is participative, holistic, collaborative and data-driven.

Enhancing Public Sector Performance with Better EHS Management

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.

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.

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.

Step #4 - Lead from the Top, But Involve the Entire Organization: When the senior leadership 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 one 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.

The next steps are:

• Step #5: Training Management
• Step #6: Tracking Leading & Lagging Indicators
• Step #7: End to End Risk Management Processes Automated
• Step #8: Empowering your team and total employee involvement
• Step #9: Automation of Safety Audits and Inspections

Digital Transformation of Safety in Government & Public Sector Companies

It is critical for any Health & Safety Management system to have a robust combination of reactive, preventive and proactive features.

Reactive Features include:

• Incident Management
• Safety Investigations
• Document Management
• Collaboration & team work with easy access to data

Preventative Features include

• Integrated Risk Management
• Training Management
• Analytics from Safety Data

Proactive Features include

• Features to reinforce Positive Behaviors
• Promote Awareness
• Safety Inspections

ComplianceQuest’s FedRAMP Certified EHS Software

ComplianceQuest EHS is FedRAMP Certified, making it a trusted safety management solution for public-sector companies.

The key features of the cloud-based ComplianceQuest EHS solution include:

• Incident Management for anytime, anywhere, incident reporting and management
• Environmental and Sustainability to manage, track and analyze environmental and sustainability metrics
• Management Review to conduct smart management review meetings with a tower of data to improve safety systems
• Risk Management to identify, prioritize, mitigate, and monitor risks
• Safety Observations to prevent full-fledged events through timely action
• Suppliers improve safety through the supply chain
• Training to fill up the gaps by upskilling employees
• Document management for managing the document lifecycle from the time of creation to removal, as needed