Safe+Sound Week: The key role of compliance, safety training
The modern workforce has seldom struggled under such pervasive worry as it does today.
Distracted by coronavirus concerns, upended supply chains, limited recreational opportunities and mounting tensions at home, workers across industries are at heightened risk for health concerns or injury resulting from their lapsed adherence to health and safety practices at work.
Safe + Sound Week, held August 10-16, 2020, could not come at a better time. Created to raise awareness of the importance of occupational safety and health programs, it offers a timely message that employers bear a responsibility to protect their workers’ well-being by approaching safety measures systematically. By standardizing procedures and ensuring compliance by employees, third-party contractors and vendors, organizations can help mitigate risks from dangerous omissions and errors.
The rise of safety and risk management
The global pandemic has added urgency to the need for comprehensive risk management. In a survey conducted prior to the pandemic, roughly half of supply chain organizations lacked a formal vendor safety pre-qualification program. Now that most businesses are taking a closer look at safety training and processes, it is apparent that third-party contractors and vendors must be part of the equation.
Failure to vet the occupational health and safety practices of vendors and contractors can compromise safety and security, diminish the quality of goods and services, damage reputation and negatively impact the bottom line, due in part to fines and penalties they accrue. In addition to pre-qualification vetting, safety performance monitoring of third parties used by an organization must be ongoing.
Turning to technology
Safety and compliance management tools can help organizations as they strengthen their safety plans and add new policies and procedures to mitigate heightened and evolving risks. Some platforms integrate safety compliance monitoring into overall vendor pre-qualification efforts, which can reduce time-consuming administrative tasks in the process.
Before exploring potential solutions, companies need a clear picture of their evolving risk-management requirements. This includes organizations assessing their needs and creating an efficient strategy for how to address them.
Needs assessment
This begins by identifying changes in the industry and then deciding how to best respond to these changes, including determining whether each of these measures will be permanent or temporary. To identify the unique needs of their organization, business leaders should ask themselves the following questions:
- How do we ensure that our operations and supply chain are safe for workers?
- How do we remain compliant with current regulations, including the latest guidance from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) on protocols, training procedures and processes?
- Have clients updated health and safety requirements in the wake of COVID-19?
- How do those changes fit into the organization’s program?
Leaders should also consider the additional anticipated hurdles to dealing with today’s expanding risks when choosing to use a traditional, manual approach to compliance management. Gathering and reviewing each operating procedure, certificates of insurance, worker qualifications, safety records and other documents can consume hours of administrative staff time. For many organizations, multiple departments handle vendor selection; for instance, one department reviewing safety issues while another selects vendors, which often results in inconsistent safety performance reviews.
Conventional approaches typically sacrifice visibility into worker-level behavior and may deprive the organization of the necessary resources to correct vendor-related safety issues. In fact, frustration with traditional risk management is driving many industry leaders to seek alternatives.
Many companies have found solutions in readily available compliance management systems. Often offered as expert services as well as software, these platforms can increase efficiency, function, and transparency into the health and safety compliance practices of contractors, suppliers and other non-employees throughout the organization.
Platform strategies
Tools developed to track employee training, professional credentials, licensing, government permits, insurance certificates, and the other compliance matters provide an excellent structure for health and safety programs. Serving as a central repository of requirements for each job and vendor function, a system can also help leaders communicate those expectations and other safety information to appropriate recipients throughout the supply chain via email, instant message or other preferred communication methods.
Mobile device capabilities can enable check-in and check-out functions, verification from the field of completed tasks such as sanitization of work areas, credentialing checks related to sensitive job activities and other features that also generate real-time data on key performance indicators.
Integrating health and safety criteria into vendor pre-qualification efforts set the tone from the beginning of a vendor relationship that safety is a priority. Captured vendor safety data for analysis aids consistency and encourages collaboration between safety advisers and those in charge of vendor selection. The platform provider may also provide training, expert advice, analytics or other services, such as auditing vendors’ safety programs and policies.
During these challenging times and beyond, company leaders should exercise every advantage to maintain occupational health and safety. Tools available today offer cost-effective routes to centralize vendor safety data and integrate compliance into overall vendor pre-qualification efforts, leading to smoother operations and fewer disruptions. By ensuring that third parties are thoroughly vetted, maintain appropriate insurance coverage and adhere to an organization’s standards, companies can reduce risks associated across its supply chain.
Colby Lane is the CEO of Veriforce, a leading provider of comprehensive supply chain safety and compliance solutions. Lane joined Veriforce in May 2019 when the company merged with PEC Safety, a leader in compliance risk management software. Lane had served as CEO of PEC Safety since 2014. He earned an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a JD degree from Harvard Law School. To reach this contributor, send an email to info@veriforce.com.
These opinions are the author’s own.
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