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  • Crisis management Crisis Management
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Apply best practices to plan for, respond to, and manage critical events and exercises. Built on ISO standards, you can respond faster with better collaboration using plans and playbooks, smart workflows, and real-time dashboards and insights, to ensure better incident response, decision-making, and continuous improvement.

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All the information and tools needed to manage any incident effectively through the entire lifecycle of mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery, following ISO, ICS and other national standards. Keep your whole team following the same plans, communicating on the same platform, and viewing the same operating picture - from any place or device.

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  • Safety Management Safety Management
  • Employee Health & Wellbeing Employee Health & Wellbeing
  • Governance Risk & Compliance Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC)
  • Asset Management Asset Management
  • Contractor Management Contractor Management
  • Visitor Management Visitor Management
  • Emergency Management Emergency Management

All the tools needed to automate your safety management system in one easy-to-use platform, following ISO standards. Increase efficiency with powerful automation capabilities and provide real time insights to all levels of your business. Configurable notifications, workflows, analytics, and mapping empower your safety personnel to make better decisions wherever they are.

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Maintain a comprehensive view of the wellbeing of your workers, their needs, and the wellbeing initiatives conducted in your organization. Through various assessments, checks, analytics, and resources you can easily manage both the physical and mental wellbeing of personnel across various locations and programs.

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A suite of tools to collect risk data from across your organziation from a range of stakeholders, in real time, and based on ISO standards. Fully customisable, with everything from a simple pre-task assessment though to an organisational risk register, we make it easy to capture risk data and provide the analytics to derive rich insights, to keep your organisation safe and compliant.

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Track all your assets from your vehicle fleet, fixed or mobile plant and equipment though to your critical infrastructure using our range of tools. Plan maintenance ahead of time and by collecting lead indicator data from checklists and assessments on any mobile device, then enable users to update the status of your assets to track utilisation, share documentation and report issues.

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Save time and money by enabling contractors to self-register and progress through a customizable workflow, to check documentation before becoming an approved contractor. Contractors can then be automatically followed up using workflows and notifications to keep their organziation compliant.

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Streamline visitor sign-in using a QR code on a form tailored for your organisation. Visitors can complete inductions, answer questions and acknowledge content then have notifications triggered to their host based on their responses. Once on site, manage visitor cards, broadcast notifications and understand visitor trends to optimise your processes.

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All the information and tools needed to manage any incident effectively through the entire lifecycle of mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery, following ISO, ICS and other national standards. Keep your whole team following the same plans, communicating on the same platform, and viewing the same operating picture - from any place or device.

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  • Physical Security Physical Security
  • Cyber Security Cyber Security
  • Visitor Management Visitor Management
  • Critical Infrastructure Protection Critical Infrastructure Protection
  • Emergency Management Emergency Management
  • Governance Risk & Compliance Governance, Risk & Compliance
  • Asset Management Asset Management
  • Contractor Management Contractor Management

Proactively manage all aspects of physical security operations from anywhere, on any device. Based on ISO standards, streamline your operations using workflow automations to guide information capture, enrichment, follow up tasks, and notifications. Validate threats and risks to drive better investment of your resources.

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Manage cyber threats, risks, and treatments based on industry best-practice guidelines and ISO standards. Plan objectives and set targets, manage all elements of standards-compliance, and schedule and record audits and inspections. Manage non-compliances and corrective actions, and drive continual improvement review cycles.

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Streamline visitor sign-in using a QR code on a form tailored for your organisation. Visitors can complete inductions, answer questions and acknowledge content then have notifications triggered to their host based on their responses. Once on site, manage visitor cards, broadcast notifications and understand visitor trends to optimise your processes.

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Consolidate the threat and risk picture across all your assets, easily demonstrate compliance with security obligations, and gain an ‘all threats’ perspective encompassing physical, cyber, personnel and supply chain. Address and manage cyber threats without having to implement costly new ICT systems and drive continuous improvement and review cycles.

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All the information and tools needed to manage any incident effectively through the entire lifecycle of mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery, following ISO, ICS and other national standards. Keep your whole team following the same plans, communicating on the same platform, and viewing the same operating picture - from any place or device.

Learn More
Request a Demo

Manage cyber, emergency and security threats, risks, and treatments based on industry best-practice guidelines and ISO standards. Plan objectives and set targets, manage all elements of standards-compliance, and schedule and record audits and inspections. Manage non-compliances and corrective actions and drive continual improvement review cycles.

Learn More
Request a Demo

Track all your assets from your vehicle fleet, fixed or mobile plant and equipment though to your critical infrastructure using our range of tools. Plan maintenance ahead of time and by collecting lead indicator data from checklists and assessments on any mobile device, then enable users to update the status of your assets to track utilization, share documentation and report issues.

Learn More
Request a Demo

Save time and money by enabling contractors to self-register and progress through a customizable workflow, to check documentation before becoming an approved contractor. Contractors can then be automatically followed up using workflows and notifications to keep their organziation compliant.

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  • Business Continuity Planning Business Continuity Planning
  • Crisis Management Crisis Management
  • Governance Risk & Compliance Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC)
  • Continuity of Operations Continuity of Operations (COOP)

Follow ISO standard approaches to determine disruption impacts and develop plans & recovery strategies to address risks. Track gaps, dependencies and tests, capture exercises, and manage insurance details. Scale up to any incident and back down to business as usual as quickly as possible and drive continuous improvement.

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Apply best practices to plan for, respond to, and manage critical events and exercises. Built on ISO standards, you can respond faster with better collaboration using plans and playbooks, smart workflows, and real-time dashboards and insights, to ensure better incident response, decision-making, and continuous improvement.

Learn More
Request a Demo

Manage cyber, emergency and security threats, risks, and treatments based on industry best-practice guidelines and ISO standards. Plan objectives and set targets, manage all elements of standards-compliance, and schedule and record audits and inspections. Manage non-compliances and corrective actions and drive continual improvement review cycles.

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Ensure preparedness across your organisation. Conduct business impact assessments and quickly identify essential functions. Assess hazard and threat risks. Identify technology, assets, facilities, and critical personnel. Gather and assemble essential information and documents. Develop, test and maintain your COOP plans. From readiness and preparedness to reconstitution, manage all four phases of the Continuity of Operations Plan to minimize business loss and disruption.

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Guide

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A Comprehensive Guide to Understanding ISO45001

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Whitepaper

Getting Started with Work Safety Management

Noggin

Work Safety Management Software

Published May 19, 2021

Why work safety management is important

Why invest in a strong safety culture? Well, if the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that work safety management is important.

Add to that, investing in work safety management pays. Not only does building an effective work safety management program help reduce on-the-job injuries, improve employee productivity, engagement, and morale, but it also keeps claims and resulting insurance costs under control.

The only problem is work safety management isn’t easy. Ensuring continuing compliance with safety regulations was a challenge even before the pandemic upped the ante on work safety practices.

Duty of care a major component work safety management

Why’s that? By law, persons conducting a business or undertaking (PCBUs) have the primary responsibility for the health and safety of their workers and any other workers they influence or direct – a class which can include contractors, subcontractors, and volunteers, not just direct employees. The duty of care responsibility obligates PCBUs to conduct their business in a manner that is responsible, vigilant, and safe for these parties.

In many jurisdictions, PCBUs are also responsible for the health and safety of people they put at risk from their business. Accordingly, senior officers of those PCBUs are required to demonstrate due diligence to ensure their businesses understand and are meeting health and safety responsibilities. That’s where work safety management comes in.

The role of the work safety management system

As the term implies, work safety management is focused on the safety, health, and welfare of people at work. The main goal of work safety management programs is to prevent workplace injuries, illnesses, and death.

One of the means of achieving that goal is the establishment of a work safety management system (SMS). Such a framework enables PCBUs to consistently identify and control their health and safety risks, reduce the potential for safety incidents, comply with evolving health and safety legislation, and continually improve safety performance.

The typical work safety management system will be broken down into multiple components: safety policy, safety risk management, safety assurance, and safety promotion. A summary of what each component means:

  • Safety policy. Formalises management’s commitment to safety and expresses the organisation’s safety philosophy. The safety policy itself should adumbrate the methods and processes the organisation will implement in order to reach desired safety outcomes. A typical policy will contain the following commitments by senior leadership: implement and appropriately resource the SMS, ensure continual safety improvement, and make safety the highest priority. Another aspect of safety policy involves the encouragement of employees to report safety issues without fear of reprisal.
  • Safety risk management. The primary operational component of the SMS. The very success of the SMS depends on properly identifying potential hazards and deciding the likelihood of accidents occurring. That’s the essence of safety risk management – so is using information generated through early phases of the safety risk management lifecycle to make informed decisions to mitigate unacceptable risk. The work safety risk management lifecycle itself spans five phases: describe the system, identify hazards, determine risk, assess and analyse risk, and treat (or control) risk.
  • Safety assurance. A means of systematically assessing how well the organisation is meeting its safety objectives. Safety assurance includes the rudiments of an effective audit program, consisting of self- and external auditing, as well as safety oversight.
    The program itself should have developed safety indicators and targets, as well as the ability to monitor adherence to safety policy through self-auditing – these components help validate the overall SMS, with safety performance monitoring, in particular, enabling management to pursue continuous improvements in work safety management.
  • Safety promotion. Includes safety training and education, communication, competency, and continuous improvement. Safety training, the responsibility of the Safety Manager, exemplifies management’s commitment to the safety function. Best-practice training programs will include a documented process to identify training requirements and a mechanism by which the effectiveness of the program can be measured. What’s more, the training should be job- and site-specific, combining human and organisational factors, and incorporating the SMS.

Work safety management best practices

Need a way to operationalise your work safety management system? Best-practice standards, like ISO 45001, give PCBUs a common framework for managing work safety risk. What are they all about?

Well, standards like ISO 45001 task senior management, not the rank-and-file, with taking a leading role in implementing the work safety management system. Getting business leaders to take the central role in encouraging a positive work safety culture is meant to embed work safety prerogatives in the fabric of wider business practices and to make work safety matters crucial to running the business.

What’s more, best-practice work safety management programs place a proactive and strategic emphasis on risk (not just a reactive approach to hazards). They broaden the scope of parties interested in work safety management and have a keen understanding of the needs and expectations of their workers as well as suppliers, subcontractors, clients, and regulators.

Challenges to deploying a best-practice work safety management program

Of course, achieving a best-practice work safety management program takes effort. Indeed, there are any number of challenges inherent in deploying a best-practice work safety management program, many of which have only been exacerbated by the COVID-19 public health crisis.

For instance, it would be safe to say that prior to the pandemic, organisations had largely failed to plan for the potential impact major health incidents, like epidemics, could have on worker health and safety. By in large, businesses hadn’t folded public health risk into their work safety plans.

This goes to a broader critique of work safety management programs – that they aren’t sufficiently concerned with threats to worker safety emanating from outside of the enterprise. Nor are epidemics the only such threat.

The threat of workplace violence falls into this category, as well. Traditionally, security teams have managed malicious threats to physical assets and people perpetrated by intentional human actors. Of course, those same violent acts can compromise employee safety and wellbeing, as well.

Organisations might be asleep at the switch. But regulators aren’t looking the other way, especially after high-profile safety incidents occur. To the contrary, regulators are increasingly cracking down on at-risk PCBUs in at-risk sectors.

Though they vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, the resultant regulatory regimes place a higher burden on safety teams at PCBUs to ensure that their workplaces are free of hazards causing or likely to cause death or serious physical harm, i.e., identifying, understanding, and controlling what have traditionally been security risks liable to cause security crises.

Another compliance challenge for safety managers is the burden to prepare for natural disasters and severe weather incidents that might impact worker health and safety. It is now typical that PCBUs of ten employees or more must, at least, have a written emergency action plan (EAP). Safety regulators also urge senior management at those PCBUs to review that plan with employees, as well as re-evaluate and amend the plan periodically.

What else can safety managers do? Safety teams should be urged to take a more active part in all the stages of the emergency management lifecycle, including consulting with a wider breadth of internal and external stakeholders during an emergency. What’s more, PCBUs should undertake the following actions in order to anticipate, prevent, or minimise risk:

  • Identify and plan for potential emergency situations; integrate emergency exercises into your system
  • Prepare a planned response to emergency situations, including natural disasters
  • Periodically test and exercise emergency response capabilities
  • Evaluate and revise emergency preparedness measures, especially after the occurrence of emergency situations
  • Provide relevant information to all members of the organisation regarding their duties and responsibilities during an emergency event
    • At the very least, organisations should proactively maintain up-to-date contact details of all internal and external stakeholders and procure mass communication tools to be deployed during major emergencies, e.g., earthquakes and storms
  • Provide emergency prevention, preparedness, and response training
  • Communicate information to contractors, visitors, relevant emergency response services, government authorities, and the local community

How digital work safety management technology can help

Sounds daunting. But work safety management software can make it easier for PCBUs to enhance their internal work health and safety cultures, remain responsive to the external environment, and comply with work safety statutes. Those software solutions give firms the easy-to-use functionality to keep track of hazards, incidents, injuries, audits, inspections, etc.

Moreover, work safety management software helps PCBUs meet due diligence obligations, monitor health and safety KPIs, control risks, execute duty of care obligations, and manage health records and workplace conditions. But not all work safety management software is created equal. When procuring new technology, PCBUs should keep the following in mind:

To meet the duty of care requirement. The solution should register assets, including plant, systems, and hazardous materials, calendar plant maintenance so as to control risk, and capture all worker records.

In the case of overlapping duties. The technology should help meet due diligence obligations, maintain a safe, collaborative work environment.

To help workers and other parties. The service should help share and coordinate duties and responsibilities, manage content, and risk assessments, as well as task, calendar, and communicate.

To deal with obligations. The solution should facilitate and audit communications, schedule and record committee participation, and track tasks and requests to monitor all follow-up actions.

For volunteer relations. The technology should provide flexible contact management for all stakeholders to capture training, skills, accreditation, permits, licenses, etc., track the allocation of workers and participation of events and reporting.

For risk management. The solution should centrally coordinate risk methodologies following the latest, most rigorous standards, integrate incidents, assets, contacts, and control documents into your risk module, as well as provide for continuous business improvement cycles.

For hazardous materials. The solution should help facilitate the handling of hazardous materials using an asset register and materials safety sheets, as well as integrate risks, documents, contacts, meetings, and communications.

That’s only the start. The era of COVID-19 means PCBUs have an extra burden to achieving their work safety management goals. Digital work safety management software can play a key role. But the right capabilities matter. To get a comprehensive list of those capabilities, download our purchaser’s guide to work safety management software.

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