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A company will be able to manage its workplace health and safety compliance more efficiently if it has a system in place that can be relied upon. One of these is the WHS management system.
Workplace Health and Safety (WHS) Management System is a workplace management software designed to manage all the processes related with the health and safety of an organisation.
The primary purpose for developing this software is to let its users achieve high productivity within their organisation, improve work quality and compliance while reducing risks of harm. It also helps to lower the operating costs by effectively monitoring and managing the responsibilities, and actions of their employees related to WHS matters.
Organizing occupational health and safety in organisations can become a challenge very quickly. WHS Management System provides organisations with a number of useful tools with which they can easily manage WHS requirements.
The system is designed in such a way that customisation and additional features can be implemented based on an organisation’s specific needs. In addition, it supports integration and offers access to other external systems allowing for data to be managed from a wide range of relevant sources.
The language and functions of the software are designed to be intuitive and user friendly - meaning that employers can create and update the necessary operating and work instructions without hassle.
In its basic form, it consists of a number of features and functions.
Common features include:
● Risk assessment tools
● The Hazardous materials management - records and manages the necessary hazardous material information
● Incident management component - you can record, display and manage incident documentation
● A Media Directory - provides access to media and documents that have been added to the system
● An extensive library of templates, training materials, laws, industry best practices
● Import features for documents such as measurement protocols, safety data sheets, operating instructions etc.
● Communication system including emails, alert notification, and in-app messaging
● Can be used off-site and from remote locations through the internet
Components of a great WHS Management system
There are several components that make up a very reliable and well-rounded WHS management system. These components run from control panels to file servers, from system security to data backup.
Here are the major components, each with what makes it what it is:
In Australia, many companies are required to prepare a risk assessment. It helps to prevent work-related health and safety hazards, and is intended to ensure that work is carried out in a humane manner.
WHS Management System helps you to quickly, easily and practically create and document risk assessment for your organisation, with the help of time-tested and proven templates, which can be easily adapted to your operational needs.
The starting point of a risk assessment is always the identification of workplace hazards. Once the individual hazards have been identified, it is important to consider whether occupational safety measures are required to minimise the existing hazard potential.
To make this decision easy, here a tip: the best WHS management software provides clear and distinct risk categories grouped using an in-built risk matrix system, which illustrates the risk in a structured overview based on probability of occurrence and severity of incidents.
This way, the evaluation of the risk assessment is easy to comprehend - since it is presented in a highly visualised graphic form. And to make the most use of it, the software has various in-built digitised, intuitively operated tools that support you in assessing the risks in detail.
Dealing with hazardous substances, such as acidic chemicals, is always associated with high risks. Thus, hazardous materials management is crucial in health and safety at work.
A holistic hazardous materials management is required by law and can be a complicated matter, but the WHS management system makes your work much easier.
The WHS management system adapts to your organisation’s individual requirements and provides an integrated directory containing the most important information about all hazardous substances: their designation, physical form, chemical information, classification, quantities used and work areas affected.
In little to no time, you can create a list of hazardous substances, including safety data sheets and have a master data list of hazardous substances.
Furthermore, the risk matrix integrated into the software, allows you to calculate risks of specific hazardous substances. So, you can quickly direct effective measures to mitigate the risk they pose to your workplace.
Regardless of size, the proper administration of an organisation and its employees is necessary for the safety and overall success of the business.
Often, it is difficult to keep track of the mountains of paperwork. Personnel management is usually associated with a lot of work as well. The list of tasks that arise in an organisation’s administration is laborious. And it gets particularly tricky when an organisation has several sites or works closely with other organisations.
Small businesses in particular can find this very difficult, because the business owner is also oftentimes still responsible for employee management. This is where the intelligent WHS management system comes into play.
WHS management software makes your life easier:
It offers tailor-made solutions. First, enter the organisational structure of your company in the system so that you can always keep an overview and access it anywhere, anytime. And with the help of the import feature, you can transfer data from one organisation to another in no time at all.
In the employee administration section, you can manage all information about personnel, from general information to very specific data of individual employees. An electronic personnel file is created in a very short time and can be designed to your organisation’s needs.
In addition to personal data, you can store basic information such as target working hours, workers designation and job related hazard data. If necessary, you add special competencies and skills. If an employee has been trained as an in-house first aid specialist or has acquired fire fighting skills, this can be recorded in their profile.
Your employees will also have the opportunity to view their data and manage it themselves. Learning progress can be tracked in the e-learning module or successfully completed instructions can be noted in the history of a personnel profile.
This not only relieves the people responsible for personnel administration, but also gives your employees more independence . Since everyone can access the software anywhere and at any time, the WHS management system demonstrably increases employee satisfaction and also has a positive effect on the entire organisation.
With the help of this software, you accelerate your business operations and related processes in your organisation considerably. Operation is intuitive and very easy. This means that you do not have to outsource occupational safety and personnel administration thereby saving additional costs.
WHS management systems often provide an e-learning component that offers everything you need to share educational resources quickly and to also document the training provided to your employees.
The advantage: through a holistic integration within the software, you can link e-learning directly with the existing employee data.
Also, since it is a digital platform that can be accessed from anywhere - regardless of which device you are accessing from, employees can access the learning content and use it at their own pace.
This not only reduces the burden on the organisation, but it also ensures that all employees have learnt and understood important information, even in the event of an employee absence. This way, a consistent level of knowledge across employees is attained.
Thanks to the user friendly intuitive interface and dashboard, you won’t have to struggle - course management is automated which not only saves you valuable time, but also significant costs.
In addition, you and your employees can track the learning processes of peers, which promotes the motivation for active learning.
Compliance with the statutory provisions in Workplace, Health and Safety is increasingly becoming the focus of attention in Australia. WHS standards explicitly require compliance with the relevant legal provisions, when implementing health and safety management systems .
WHS management system software takes this into account.
Small and medium-sized organisations in particular, often lack the necessary specialists who deal intensively with the applicable legal provisions and do not have the appropriate expertise in dealing with legal texts.
With the WHS management compliance function you would get an overview of the legal regulations applicable to your organisation and optimise business processes and finances in that light.
With legal compliance, you can systematically reduce accidents at work and work-related illnesses and gain a clear competitive advantage in your business. At the same time, this component of the software also helps you to identify individual strengths, weaknesses and potentials of your health and safety program and helps you to improve them sustainably.
Corrective measures can be taken and documented separately for each risk and hazard. It also allows you to commission employees to track measures and monitor their effectiveness.
The tool records planned dates and actual implementation dates, as well as the effectiveness of a corrective measure.
You manage this data in the task and action plan, which is also available in the risk assessment module.
For the management of incidents data, such as accidents and near mishaps, the WHS management system allows for a decentralised recording of accidents and the collection of relevant incidence information required by law.
The timely recording and reporting of accidents or incidents is a challenge especially in organisations spread across several locations. Information reaches the right person, often late. Here, this simple software can help - it can be used by anyone and also provides an avenue for an employee to share information about incidents as they happen.
With the systematic recording of incident data, you can not only generate the legally required incident reporting forms, but also extract data to determine the causes of incidents. It supports you with the documentation of the incident by recording the time, the place, the cause, type and extent of the injury, as well as provide evidence of the preventive measures undertaken.
The user administration is an integral part of the WHS management system. It allows employers to create as many users as required, and authorise them individually.
The clear structure of all options makes it easy to orientate yourself quickly and to set the desired configurations even if you don’t have prior IT knowledge. This way, the access of individual users is controlled on a task or target oriented basis.
Similar to the authorisation system on our computers, the authorisation system in the software is based on roles and profiles. Create as many users as you like and determine which user is allowed to use which modules and in what form.
Integration with external software platforms and service providers, is easy and uncomplicated as well.
The timely inspection of tools, devices, machines and systems in the organisation is a major logistical challenge.
For this, the WHS management system offers a function for inventorying work and the maintenance or inspection of operating equipment. When the inventory is recorded, the necessary checks and deadlines are recorded as well centrally.
In the central task and action plan, you can combine several tests in one process and thus plan preventive measures. Furthermore, the software supports you in planning new test dates by automatically creating a new schedule in the task and action plan after completing the previous one.
WHS management system offers a well-grounded decision-making aid by helping decision makers buy the most appropriate equipment, tool, and machines. Depending on the machine type, the most important occupational safety-relevant points are queried. After answering the questions, you will receive an overview of the results, which you can use to identify whether there is a need for clarification and / or action. In this way, expensive retrofitting can be avoided.
The WHS management system provides function to flexibly, reliably and efficiently support users in the implementation of audits and inspections.
It can create specific audit plans and automatically notify all employees involved. It also allows you to define a wide variety of audits such as internal, external audits, supplier audits or safety inspections.
There is more: You can carry out audits using standardised or individually designed checklists on mobile devices or on the desktop. Rate the questions according to a freely selectable rating system, take photos or videos of situations and easily capture your notes digitally.
