Under considerable pressure from clients, we have finally relented and added free ISNetworld RAVS^TM policies to the templates inside our online safety management system.  We had been reluctant to do so, because the ISN^TM review process is a bit unpredictable, and we were wary of clients being upset in the event a policy did not get approved.  However having seen the quality of the policies that are being circulated by some online policy resellers, we felt we could do no worse.

So, with that in mind, there are now dozens of ISNetworld RAVS^TM policies to choose from among the templates listed when you click on "Add Policy".

All policy templates are sorted by category, so scroll down past the COR (Certificate of Recognition) templates to the sections that begin with "ISN.".

There are policies for the most common provincial, federal, and "best practice" requirements.  [If you feel any templates should be added, please send an email with the ISNetworld requirements to our customer service department, and we will do our best to accommodate you.]

Please note: Although the policy templates are adopted from ISNetworld^TM "requirements", they are not guaranteed to ensure compliance.  You may wish to combine the policies with templates from other jurisdictions or standards organizations (such as COR).  Safety administrators should add to, remove from, and otherwise modify the policies to suit each company's unique operations.

When imported, the system will automatically populate your company name where appropriate throughout the policy.


If you do use the templates, and run into trouble getting the policies approved through ISN, we recommend contacting one of the consultant organizations listed on our website.  Most are familiar with the process and can assist in getting your organization "green lighted".

After adding an ISN template policy, you'll still need to generate the PDF version to be submitted to ISNetworld^TM.  PDF copies can be printed from either the administrator or employee portal.

Once ISNetworld^TM has approved your policy, log back onto SafetySync and be sure to make acknowledging it "optional" or "required" for the various positions in your company, and designate a "reasonably practicable" amount of time for employees to review it.

All ISN and other template policies are available in the Basic (Free) and Premium versions of the SafetySync online safety management system.

The Oil & Gas Inquirer recently had an excellent arcticle (Service Firms Plead for a Coordinated Safety Registry System) that highlights the controversy surrounding contractor registries, with a particular focus on ISNetworld.

Some of the more unflattering comments were:

    "...we're not really sure if there is a positive impact on the industry's safety performance."
    "It's an ongoing irritant to the contracting community."
          -  Wally Baer, President and CEO of Enform

    "You just don't need it here."
    "There is no value-added.  I don't think it assists the operator a whit in determining what is a safe rig."
          -  Don Herring, President of CAODC

    "ISNetworld is driving a proprietary standard that does not seem to support openness or data sharing..."
          -  Cal Fairbanks, President and CEO of Canadian HSE Registry

Personally, I feel that ISNetworld^TM is being judged on its ability to deliver improved safety performance, which isn't entirely justified.  Contractor registries really only do one thing well: manage risk for prime contractors.  I mean really... how can a registry improve safety when the workers play absolutely no part in getting a company green-lighted in ISNetworld?  All the work is being done by each company's safety department (or increasingly by consultants) to write new policies that satisfy RAVS^TM protocols.

By forcing contracting companies to write and submit more comprehensive safety policies, the prime contractors have satisfied their due diligence requirement.  What service companies may not realize is that the process exposes their companies to increased risk.  The sub-contracting firms must now adhere to the standard levels they've set for themselves in the policies.  This means service companies must properly communicate policies to employees, provide comprehensive awareness training, and so on.  If (and only if) the service companies do their part, and implement better safety management systems, will safety performance actually improve.

This is where Enform and their Certificate of Recognition can come in.  They actually send auditors to the service companies to review records and interview employees.  The COR process could either point out that the policy binders are simply collecting dust, or they could collect reports from a Safety Management System that demonstrates compliance.  This transformation is likely coming soon, so its probably best to invest in a Safety Management System like SAFETYSYNC and be prepared.

I had lunch today with my friend Murray Sunstrum. He recently started a new job with a major producer that is an owner-client of ISNetworld^TM. He responded to a couple of our blogs in the past about how ISNetworld^TM and the Certificate of Recognition programs can be complimentary… I was sceptical.

I spent years running an energy services company that had satisfied it’s COR requirements, I had not been a fan of the ISNetworld^TM system for the following reasons:

1. ISNetworld is making most of their money off of the service companies, who are being forced to use the software by their clients.  These subcontractors have little input into the process and usability of the ISN system.
2. The process for energy services clients to become compliant is a lot of work, and it may not even improve their safety program. There are questions in ISNetworld that often have nothing to do with a company’s business.
3. ISNetworld’s standards are not determined by the industry and are partly driven by their internal process. (Read the comments in our blog for more ISNetworld complaints)

A few things have happened in the last week that softened my stance about ISN.

Earlier in the week, I read an article about a young person who was killed the second day on the job, which reminded me why I am constantly driven to improve safety. Ten years ago my cousin died from injuries in a drilling rig accident after spending 10 days in a coma. Those 10 days changed my life.  I watched his family arrive at the hospital for the first time, and I will never forget the fear in his mother’s eyes.  It has always being my belief that his death could have been prevented if a better safety management system had been in place on his worksite.

Yesterday I was talking with the new CEO of the energy services business our family used to own.  Just a few months ago she had been frustrated at having to update their safety policies and answer the endless questionnaire.  Having now completed that exercise, she feels that ISNetworld will give her company a business advantage moving forward; their safety program is now getting recognized by producers. (In the past, we had always been frustrated that the work we had put into our safety program was not being acknowledged by our clients.)

Finally, after I got back from lunch with Murray, I got a phone call from my brother-in-law.  He owns a small energy services company (5 employees) that also happens to contract to Murray’s company. He has no safety background and little safety education, except Enform’s Safety Program Development course that is required to initiate the COR process.  At different times over the last few months I had encouraged him to move forward with his safety program development. Although he is concerned about the safety of his employees, other pressing issues of a new company indirectly caused safety to get pushed to the back burner. Today, he was in a panic because he needs to get his company ISNetworld compliant before June 30!  We quickly mapped out a plan to get his company SECOR compliant, which I am confident from the fear in his voice he will complete. (He decided to go with SAFETYSYNC… good choice!)

[Note: If I didn’t know better, I would have thought Murray set my brother-in-law up to phone me to reinforce his point at lunch.]

Safety should be a business’ highest priority, at least equal to all other activities.  But we all know that important tasks, like safety, are often put off at the expense of urgent tasks, like making sales or processing payroll.  ISNetworld provides a system for prime contractors to track their service companies’ safety system, which results in an incentive (remaining on the vendor list in this case) for the service company to get serious about safety. If it is going to force companies to implement or improve their safety programs, which will make worksites safer and prevent accidents like the one that caused my cousin’s death… maybe ISNetworld^TM is a good thing after all.

*SafetySync is in no way endorsed, sponsored, approved by, or otherwise affiliated with ISNetworld^TM.

Unfortunately, revising safety policies to meet new standards can be an onerous task. For many companies it means a complete overhaul of their safety manual. There are logistical and corporate issues that need to be addressed when creating new policies. Here are a few points to consider when updating your safety manual:

First, ensure new policies work for your company’s structure, work conditions and corporate culture. Having a 10 page policy may meet every standard and regulation in the world, but if the policy does not apply to your company, the policy is not going to work. 

Second, as Brian mentioned in July’s blog, you need to ensure that these new policies are being communicated to your employees. In the past, sub contractors believed that their job was done once the policies were written. Unfortunately, this is only half the battle; the second phase is to ensure that these polices are communicated to and acknowledged by your employees.

Prime contactors are getting wise to the fact that some of their service companies are simply sending in polices that meet their standards. A least one major producer has started to implement an audit process where they visit their sub contractors to ensure employees are aware of the new policies. The audit results have not been entirely positive.

Communicating new policies to employees was a problem that Action Health and Safety Services faced after renewing their safety manual. Sandra Minifie, CEO at Action, was spending thousands of dollars printing safety manuals and then trying to distribute the binders to employees in the field who are often in remote locations. She described it as a “logistical nightmare”.

Sandra now uses SAFETYSYNC’s policy acknowledgement system to communicate policies to Action employees. The system tracks who has acknowledged the policies, when each policy was acknowledged and what policy version was acknowledged.

Finally, you need to have a policy management system that can adapt to changes in the industry. No longer can you print, bind and distribute a safety manual and expect it to be relevant a year later. Regulations, industry best practices and client directives will inevitably evolve and your manual will no longer be up to date.

The old-school policy change system was to send out a piece of paper, an insert, or a safety alert with the modifications. This process was impossible to manage; inserts got lost or misfiled and safety alerts were not always read. Your safety team must have a system to ensure a replacement policy makes it to the worker in the field.

Fortunately, online policy management systems allow your company to respond quickly and cost effectively to changes in the industry, which will certainly happen as regulations continue to increase and prime contractors have more choice in who they hire in the current economy.

...probably not.

Organizations spend countless hours preparing, editing, distributing and reviewing policies, yet they rarely get read.  Most employees will admit after some prompting that they really didn't read through the policy manual they were handed on their first day with a new company.  This is because:
    1.  There can be an awful lot of policies to read through.
    2.  The policies are long and often very dry.
    3.  Many of the policies do not seem to apply to the employee.
    4.  Employees have more pressing things to do.
    5.  Nobody seems to care whether they read the policy anyway.

Let's face it, many companies create policies simply to satisfy regulatory requirements or to obtain a safety Certificate of Recognition.  So what ends up happening is countless policy binders get printed, only to collect dust on bookshelves.  This creates a culture of indifference toward policies that will ultimately hurt the company when a policy violation leads to a compromising situation for the company.

For example, imagine that a company implements a speeding policy.  The stated objective is to reduce the risk of an accident, but more likely than not, it is at the request of a customer or industry group.  According to the new policy, management is required to monitor speeding in company vehicles and discipline employees accordingly.  Yet employees, indifferent to the policy, speed regularly while driving company vehicles.  Managers, vaguely aware of the policy, are more interested in getting workers to the job site on time than in preventing speeding.  Then the unthinkable happens; an employee is involved in a serious accident, and speed is determined to be a contributing factor.  Will the fact the company had a speeding policy help their defense in court?  Or will it expose them to additional risk, for not exercising the care and attention the policy required?  My guess is the latter.

Policy binders are about to get much larger too.  Many large energy and construction companies in the US (and now Canada) require their contractors to join ISNetworld and comply with the safety policy Review and Verification Service, or RAVS for short.  The policy requirements are based on Occupational Health and Safety regulations in each jurisdiction.  Here in Alberta, there can be as many as 39 different protocols, depending on the type of work a company performs.  And it's not enough to have a policy, it must match the criteria set out in the regulations.  The policies are so complex in fact, that consulting companies (like Workforce Compliance Safety here in Calgary) do a fine business simply helping their clients through the process of becoming RAVS compliant.

Policies are an integral part of a company Health and Safety Program, but we're "improving" them to the point that they're becoming almost ineffective.  I am writing this post to open a dialog on how to increase the size and complexity of policies, while still keeping them relevant and interesting for employees to read.

My personal opinion is that the largest challenge lies in effectively disseminating the policies to employees.  We've created a policy management tool that allows safety administrators to load their policies into our portal, then assign the policies to various positions within the company.  As employees log onto the SafetySync safety management system, they are prompted to individually review and accept (or decline) the various outstanding policies.  The tool has been designed to track and manage minor and major modifications.  Major changes are saved as a new version, which employees are required to accept a second time in order to remain "compliant".  The policy component is in Beta testing at the moment, so clients are encouraged to try it out and provide feedback.

If you don't have an account, feel free to sign up for our software and try it out (as well as the other safety management components we offer).