Digitising the Way Your Business Meets Your Workplace Health and Safety Compliance

2020’s global pandemic impacted every organisation in some way. In Australia, 47% of businesses saw their revenue drop. New Zealand was a little more fortunate, but the world is definitely different from what it was 18 months ago.

One area that has forced organisations to adapt is governance, risk and compliance (GRC). In Australia alone, it’s estimated there are 95,000 pieces of legislation for businesses to comply with.

That’s an extraordinary figure, and when you add the challenges that Covid has added, such as working from home, it becomes an incredibly complex area for businesses.

A big part of this compliance is the realm of health and safety. Along with risk and compliance specialist Anita Patturajan, Managing Director of Anitech, we take a look at how you can digitise the way your business meets your workplace health and safety compliance.

Health and Safety Challenges Post-Covid

Even before Covid, there were health and safety and employment law changes.

While Post-Covid, there’s been further changes to workplace health and safety and employment law.​Working from home and the mental health impact of Covid has also affected thisarea. For example, psychological risk is a risk that businesses have to beaware of and manage.

Additionally, there is also the ongoing risk management of exposure to Covid-19.

There is no way your organisation can keep up with all this compliance.

Therefore, it’s time to “get out of paper trails and into technology,” says Anita.

​It’s Time to Digitise

It’s too risky to keep managing your compliance through spreadsheets and pieces of paper. Fortunately, GRC technology has evolved to the point that it can completely transform how you manage health and safety (and other) compliance in your business.

Forrester defines GRC technology as:​

A cumulation of workflow, content, analysis, assurance, reporting, and integration capabilities, for the purpose of automating and facilitating the process associated with governance, risk, and compliance efforts across a broad range of business functions. ​

​In short, Anita says, “GRC technologies automate the data, processes, and insights required to manage risk and compliance across the enterprise.”

Importantly, “digitisation is not about changing the way you do business, it’s more about efficiency, and it’s about creating faster and better processes.”

You can easily follow best practice by avoiding duplication of tasks, managing your database, and collecting quality data. ​

What it will also do is protect your customers, employees, business, and brand from systemic risks.​

Staying on Top of the Legislation

While digitalisation is great, it won’t work without a solid risk regulatory change management processes.

Anita recommends five critical steps:

1.      Leadership Commitment​

2.    Readiness Assessments​

3.    Communication Planning​

4.    Training​

5.    Ongoing Employee Feedback​

And, then you need to back it up with the right technology.

Technology Makes It Easy

GRC software, like Fortress, contains the features and functionality to take care of the different aspects of compliance and regulatory management in place.

You start by building up your risk and regulatory repository, and set roles, responsibilities​ and access with your team. Regulatory content feeds, workflow and task management can all be set up and managed. Then, dashboarding and reporting provides visibility and metrics for you to track the impact on your business, including workplace health and safety lead and lag indicators.

Where Should You Start?

Rolling out any new system or process is a big deal in an organisation, let alone when you’re trying to comply with new legislation.

Business continuity is critical. The framework isn't so important. What is important is that it is one that can be integrated into your system. In fact, it could be multiple frameworks. Fortress, for example, doesn’t care – it’s framework and standard agnostic.

Therefore, Anita recommends you “approach it from a standard and adopt to best practice for your business.”

Digitise Your GRC

SAS IT can help you simplify and automate your compliance – transforming your business and allowing you to focus on growing your business and not ticking boxes.

Get in touch to start the conversation.

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