Just a quick update to let our client safety management system administrators know that we've added the link to WorkSafe Alberta's eLearning module on Ice Roads called Working Safety on Ice.

I realize it's May already and that all of 2010's ice roads have probably already melted!  The link and quiz are now in the system in case you plan on working on ice roads in the future.  The lesson can be found in the 'Safe Driving Practices' course.

It is not enabled by default, so if your employees work on ice roads in the winter, don't forget to turn it on by checking the box next to "Ice Roads".

Administrators can now enter details for a recommended training provider (institution, phone #, website link, blanket purchase order) in the Company Administration Portal.  When an employee's existing certificate is about to expire (or doesn't have one in the first place), they will be given this information in their employee portal so that they can call the institution, schedule the training, or even take it online (if it is available).  Having a 'Recommended Training Provider' can:

• Help employees locate and schedule appropriate training
• Ensure certificate training meets your organization's requirements
• Keep training consistent
• Direct employees to institutions that have lower costs
• Simplify accounting by ensuring course fees are booked to the correct Purchase Order

COMPANY ADMINISTRATION PORTAL
Simply enter the appropriate information for the training institution in the Certificate Details screen (this must be done for each Certificate, since you may have different institutions for various certificates).  Any textbox that is not filled in (such as Blanket PO) will not appear for employees.  Don't forget to check off "Share with Employees" before saving!


EMPLOYEE SAFETY PORTAL
Once the Administrator has input the details about the Recommended Training Provider, the information will be presented to in the Employee Safety Portal above the certificate name.  The website link will take the employee to to website where they can look at schedules, directions to the institution and other useful information.
  

The backbone of a Health and Safety Management System is the ability to identify deficiencies and correct them.  Any hazard slipping through without correction can lead to an accident, injury, OH&S investigation, legal action, and loss of reputation.  Therefore it is critical to not let any deficiency go uncorrected.

In the SAFETYSYNC software, the corrective action process starts with a "record" (such as a hazard assessment, safety meeting, inspection, or incident investigation).  An electronic copy of each record is stored in the system for subsequent analysis or review.

There can be any number of deficiencies identified on a record.  Each deficiency must be addressed by developing a corrective action plan, which is assigned to an individual, assessed for priority, and given a due date.


Each action item has a log which records any events related to the action item (creation, reassignment, comment, deferral, etc.)

Once a deficiency has been corrected, the individual marks the Action Item 'complete', which automatically advances the item for management sign-off (required for most Safety Management System standards, including OHSAS 18001 and CSA Z1000).

When an Action Item is assigned to an employee, it shows up in the worker's Employee Portal (sorted by priority and due date).

The employee is also sent reminders when action items are coming due, to ensure all deficiencies are corrected on a timely basis!

We've been asked a few times by customers how they can use SAFETYSYNC to ensure compliance with Ontario's new law on Workplace Violence and Harassment, Bill 168.  There are two elements of the law that require attention: policy and training.

WORKPLACE VIOLENCE POLICY
All companies must have a Workplace Violence Policy "posted prominently" by June 15, 2010.  If you don't already have a Workplace Violence Policy, you might consider developing one or hiring an OH&S consultant to help you with this process.  Once the policy has been approved for distribution, load it into the SAFETYSYNC company administration portal as a new policy (under Documentation / Policies in the menu), by clicking "Add Policy".  

 

We have a template workplace violence policy, however most clients start with a blank policy. Policies can be typed, copied and pasted, or uploaded as pdf documents.  After you've saved your first version, assign the policy to EVERY position in your orgainization by clicking "Select All" in the "Required" column of the Positions tab.

Employees will be sent an email at the reminder interval you've specified, with a link to the outstanding policy.  They will be required to acknowledge the new Workplace Violence Policy to maintain their 100% compliance with your safety program.

WORKPLACE VIOLENCE TRAINING
All companies must now train their employees ANNUALLY on how to recognize signs of violence and harassment, as well as how to respond and deal with those situations.  We have two lessons on Workplace Violence in SAFETYSYNC (under the Violence and Security course):

 Workplace Violence Awareness (10 mins)
 Workplace Violence Prevention and Response (5 mins)

We recommend turning on both lessons, but as with all our courses, the lessons you choose are completely customizable.  The course can be assigned to employees by making it "Required" for all positions.

Alternatively, if a company has another training video which they've licensed or discovered elsewhere online, it can be uploaded or linked accordingly.

By default, a number of quiz questions will be assigned for the two lessons, along with a pass rate of 80%.  Feel free to add or remove questions, and adjust the pass rate.

Last but not least, go into the course settings, and set the expiry for the course to "1 year".  Employees will have to re-take the course annually to remain compliant with Bill 168.

As those of you using our Recordkeeping module appreciate, SafetySync is a great way to store completed safety forms (we call them "Records" once they have data on them to distinguish from "Forms" - which are the blank versions).  Until recently, the only way to submit these records was to upload them into the system.

We've now added a new feature which makes it easier for the less-tech-savvy employees in the field to send in their records: the old tried-and-true fax machine.  There are two ways to use the fax to route the records to the appropriate approver in your organization.

The first, is for the administrator to copy a unique bar code (available in the appropriate Form Details screen in Company Administration) and paste it somewhere on the Word, Excel or PDF document you use for your forms.  That way, each time an employee prints a form from the system, it will already have this bar code attached.

In some cases, it may not be practical (or even possible) to put a bar code on a form.  No worries; employees can simply print a fax cover sheet for the form, and submit it ahead of the record when sending the fax.  This cover sheet can be set aside and re-used for the same type of form again and again.

Simply have your employees fax their safety records (and cover sheets if needed) to 1-888-308-8804.  It's a toll-free number, so you will not incur any long distance charges.

The faxes get automatically routed to the records approval screen within minutes, for review and approval by an administrator.  If there are any deficiencies identified on the record, corrective actions can be assigned to individuals and due dates set.

Safety recordkeeping has never been easier!

As I mentioned in a recent blog on Material Safety Data Sheets, you can now assign chemicals to certain locations in your organization.  I forgot to mention that we've also added space to record key information of the product.  This is a great place to keep information like supplier names and contact information, order quantities, container sizes, storage shelves it can be found on, etc. 



If there are any other fields you feel we should add to the MSDS Details, please drop us a note (support@safetysync.com).  We'll add it to the development queue!

Communication is one of the key components in having an effective Safety Management System.  According to COR, ISO, and CSA safety standards, management must regularly communicate safety-related information to its employees.  For some time now, our customers have been using the Safety Bulletins and Alerts to pass on information such as hazards, news, announcements and alerts to all employees (or just to specific locations and positions).   As with our other compliance monitoring components, you can also keep track of which employees have read the post.

At the request of some of our clients, we've made it so that you can now attach images and other documents to your posts.

If you are attaching an image (such as a jpeg, tif, or png file), a thumbnail of the image will be displayed on the bulletin enhancing the presentation of any hazards or announcements.  By clicking on the attachment, employees can view the image in its original size.

If the attachment is a document (such as a spreadsheet), it will open with the associated application (Excel).

For the most part, our customers have only had a handful of Material Safety Data Sheets.  For this reason, we've always automatically displayed every company MSDS in the Employee Portal.  We have a number of larger customers that have exhaustive lists, often with two products that are very similar.


With this in mind, we've added search functionality which allows the user to limit the list to only certain MSDS sheets.  By default, you'll notice the employee's assigned location is listed by default (why search MSDS's that are not at your location?).  The search box provides the user the ability to filter by product name (or portion of it), location and by status (current or expired).

Remember, administrators should be diligent in reviewing MSDS's and removing any products (from the list and your storage) that no longer have current sheets.  This will prevent accidents, non-compliance in the event of an inspection, and overall employee confusion.

The simpler you make it to find MSDS sheets, the more likely your employees are to read them!

New laws passed in the new year in British Columbia and Saskatchewan are placing some consequences behind a couple of activities that police departments, insurance companies and some devastated families have known for some time.  Using your cell phone and texting can distract drivers and cause horrible accidents.

In order to help convey the importance of these issues, we have made two safety awareness videos available on the topic and developed a quiz to test workers' knowledge of the materials.

The first video, and the version we recommend you make available to your employees is "The Reggie Shaw Story".  It was developed by the Utah State Government, and it reenacts the events of a real accident in which the texting by a college student while driving cost the lives of two scientists who were on their way to work.  The video interviews all the surviving parties involved (including Reggie in prison), police and paramedics who attended the scene, the prosecutor and judge who were involved in the case, as well as the family members of the victims.  The video is highly informative, including a scientific comparison with driving while under the influence of alcohol.

The other video, developed by the Gwent Police in the UK, is of a fictional accident (and aftermath) caused by a young woman who texted while driving.  This video is extremely graphic, showing the accident in slow motion from various people's perspectives, including a young infant.  It even shows a victim's neck snapping.  Although less informative than the Utah State video, it will certainly stay in your memory for a long time!

Please take a few minutes to review each video and decide which version best conveys the anti-texting and cell phone message to your employees that drive on a regular basis.  Both versions are found under Texting, Cell Phones and Other Distractions under the Safe Driving Practices Course.  If you have already assigned the Safe Driving Practices course to the various positions in your company, you only need to check off the new lesson to make it available to your workers.

Managing employee certification is difficult.  Administrators must keep track of expired certificates, coordinate with the employees to find times that fit their schedules, call training providers to book sessions, and later remind employees to go.  For most Safety Administrators, this is a less-than-critical task that often finds its way to the back burner.  By not being on top of monitoring certificates and scheduling sessions, employees could end up going out to a site with an expired certificate, or worse, not being trained at all.  With this in mind, we've developed a scheduling function in SAFETYSYNC for Certificates that can help make this task much simpler.

If you haven't already done so, go to the Company Administration portal and assign the certificate category (such as "First Aid / CPR - Advanced") to the position (such as "Mechanic") for the employee as either Required or Optional.  This will allow certificate records (scheduled or completed) to be added for each employee in that position.

Open the Employee's record (under Company / Employees) and click on the "Certificates" tab.  Click on the appropriate certificate.  If the employee has any current or expired tickets for this category, they will be shown on this Certificate Details screen.

To schedule a course for the employee, click on the "Schedule Training Session" button.  This will open a popup with the default Course Name / Certification Level and Course Provider (you can set these defaults under the Certificate Details).  Edit the details and set the time and date for the new training session.


We highly recommend checking the 'Email Reminder' checkbox.   It will immediately send a message to the employee's email address on record with an Outlook event attachment.  It will also send a second email reminder 24 hours before the training session.

Once the employee has attended the session and received her certificate, the employee can login to the Employee Safety Portal.  The scheduled training session will be displayed under the Certificate Details.  The employee simply clicks on the scheduled training session to enter the details for the completed certificate (expiry, instructor, upload image, etc.)

The certificate will be automatically routed to the "Approve Certificates" screen for an Administrator to review and approve (after which the employee will be compliant).