Managing workplace safety and health is often a major headache for businesses. Ensuring compliance as well as monitoring and reporting back to the authorities is a time consuming and laborious process. A company intranet, however, can make it a simplified, more manageable and transparent procedure. Rather than having to wade through mountains of paperwork, the intranet’s online health and safety forms mean that you can respond to information requests or audits much more quickly and efficiently. Let’s find out more about the capabilities of the intranet’s safety and health forms.
How Intranet Online Forms Work
Use the intranet’s in-built forms builder or an embedded Google Form to create your online form. These simple and easy to follow tools enable you to develop safety and health forms for a variety of purposes. It’s also possible to set up rules and actions so that, for example, on completion, the form is automatically routed to the relevant manager or team for action.
In addition, email notifications and submission reports are easily implemented, so you are notified when a form is submitted or amended. Managers are given the necessary oversight with the intranet’s status and rule-driven workflows so that they have the ability to successfully manage the end-to-end process. In addition, access to forms or reporting tools can be restricted based on user permissions so that only managers or those that need to can view or complete forms. In this way, confidentiality is assured.
Quite simply, the intranet’s online forms can replace all your paper and email-based health and safety forms making it a far more efficient process. So, let’s turn our attention to looking in detail at the advantages of automated processes over traditional paper and email versions.
Advantages Of Using Online Health Forms
More Efficient Use Of Resources
The old way of doing things with emails and paper forms is slow and laborious. It usually involves several steps and often forms go backward and forwards across the business as information is missing or there are errors in completion. This all adds up to time and money being unnecessarily wasted. And when so many health and safety forms are being completed each day to ensure compliance, this adds up to a significant cost across the business.
In contrast, locating the correct form and completing it with just a few clicks of the mouse means it’s no longer a huge chore for staff members. The intranet will even forward the information to the right department for action. And for managers, the intranet offers the ability to quickly and easily oversee the whole process in a way that’s just not possible with a manual system.
Eliminate Errors
With manual systems there’s always the potential for errors to creep in – paperwork incorrectly completed, missing data or forms simply being lost or misfiled. The intranet’s online forms will do away with these time-wasting and sometimes downright expensive mistakes. Data validation takes place as the user completes the form so any errors are picked up immediately and the user has to rectify the problem before the form can be submitted. And automatic routing means that forms going missing or being misfiled become a thing of the past.
Remote Access
Another great advantage of an online health and safety form is that with the intranet’s cloud technology, employees can complete a form anytime or anywhere via a smartphone or tablet. So, say a staff member has a near miss while working in the field. With an intranet, they can complete the incident report form online and can upload photos directly as well. There’s no need to wait until they’re next in the office to get this important information into the system.
Practical Applications Of Online Health And Safety Forms
To illustrate just how easy a process online safety and health forms can be, let’s run through some common practical applications.
Site Incident And Accident Or Injury Register
Any incidents, accidents or injuries that take place on site or in the workplace need to be recorded. The online form can be set up to capture all the relevant information for reporting through to senior management as well as local and national legislators or industry regulators. It’s possible to show or hide sections of the form on the basis of the information the user has inputted. In this way, an otherwise complex form can be streamlined for the user to include only relevant content.
Near Miss Reports
We’ve already touched on this but the important point to reinforce here is that the intranet makes it possible to complete this form in the field straight after the incident and while it’s still fresh in the mind. As a result, management can take immediate action to rectify the situation without the need to wait for the relevant paperwork to come through. And in a near miss situation, being able to act swiftly is critical.
Site Inspection Checklists
The ability to run through this sort of checklist whilst in situ is essential. Doing so online using a smartphone or tablet without the need for cumbersome paper files makes it a much more practical tool for using in the field.
Online Training And Competency Forms
The ongoing training of staff is an important element of ensuring compliance. Traditional, classroom-based forms of learning are becoming outdated in the modern workplace especially when you consider the associated venue hire costs, tutors’ fees and the expense involved in covering employees’ absence from the workplace. A far more efficient and flexible way of completing training and competency updates is through online platforms.Develop a training and competency checklist so that staff can quickly and easily identify what they need to know and opportunities for learning. A simple online registration form means they can sign up straight away for a webinar or e-learning program – whatever form the training takes to ensure that they are up to date in their competencies. And at a glance, managers can see where each employee is at and can take any appropriate enforcement action.
Health And Safety Audit Reports
When it comes to safety and health compliance, preparing audit reports is a key task. Developing online audit checklists makes this process a whole lot easier for everyone involved. What’s more, embedding the form directly in the relevant intranet page allows you to display important contextual information or explanatory notes alongside, which will assist users in filling out the forms. Relevant links can also be included that take the user to external websites such as the OSHA for more specific guidance on audit reporting requirements.
Health and Safety Forms: Ensure You Meet Your Corporate Responsibilities
Making sure that your business is meeting its health and safety obligations is a critical organizational duty. Failing to do so can be a very expensive error as the penalties associated with non-compliance or breaches can be huge.
What’s more, the burden of compliance is only going to increase and so it’s incumbent on all companies to have the right systems in place to meet the challenges.
Fast and efficient online, digital solutions are the future. Deliver these solutions via the intranet and you’ll also be taking advantage of a comprehensive set of additional business benefits. From improved internal communications thru to increased employee engagement and enhanced information and data sharing, the intranet has so much more to offer than just safety and health compliance.
If you would like to explore the possibilities in your business, then get in touch with the friendly team at MyHub for a no-obligation demo or 14-day free trial. It could be the best business decision you ever make.
0 Comments