The world of compliance is changing, it has had to change. The days of printing a forest worth of trees for your management systems and then keeping them, all safely tucked into a in a folder on the top shelf, is not something you can do today. COVID-19 has surely put paid to that myth once and for all?
The idea of looking them it the week before an audit or when something happens is not sustainable. Neither is the notion that they are the domain of the one or two people with compliance responsibilities and that no one else needs to see them, we will let you know when you get it wrong via an internal audit.
Life in the compliance world has moved on because it had to, the standards have evolved, the workplaces have evolved and become increasingly separated and diverse. The drive to continuously improve business processes and especially how we deal with compliance has moved on. It is little wonder then that the adoption of Cloud based integrated compliance systems like Mango QHSE has started to accelerate? What was previously the domain of large multinationals has now become available and essential for companies of every size and every style from manufacturing organisations to services like accounting or legal forms, construction, medical and so many more, the need to better manage your compliance responsibilities and importantly involve as many people as you can has never been greater.
Along with the team at Mango QHSE we have looked at the main reasons that people get in touch with us to talk about how moving to a cloud-based system can make things easier for them and it largely falls into one of the six categories below.
One of the most obviously drivers we see is to get away from that old dusty printed folder sitting on the shelf, if in fact it is there since they never seem to be where you think come audit time. One of the major challenges with paper-based systems is keeping track of all the copies that you have around and conversely making sure everyone who need sot know about and have the latest version does. With an electronic paperless version that is clearly not an issue any more, you have 1 live version that is available to only those who should have it. Old versions are achieved and anything in draft is not available as it is not approved or published.
That brings up the next benefit, you can easily develop the next iteration of the document in the background and work on it with other colleagues at the same time, making it available for everyone when you decide it is ready. You also automatically build your change history as you create you new documents so when an employee or an auditor wants to know what the differences are it is right there in the system.
The ability to introduce automation is also clearly a draw here as well. Having a system that tells you when it is time to review a document, carry out an audit, do some maintenance, refresh some training, or have your management meeting takes a massive burden off the team trying to remember.
If you look around your business today there are probably multiple systems at play to keep your compliance in check. You may have a document set up in a network drive, maybe you have a subscription to an auditing system or have developed an in house system. More than likely you have multiple spreadsheets tracking your quality, environmental or Health & Safety activities and they just do not talk. How do you recognise the improvements you have done that have made the impact in the H&S system or link the non-conformance or improvement requirement to the item in your environmental or risk register? Add to that the invariable challenges of access rights and ensuring the right people can see or manage the right things. By integrating it all into one system you instantly create one central location you can control. Everyone knows where to go and you have one single source of information and truth.
Spreadsheets have proliferated in compliance; you can always add another spreadsheet it seems. Some companied do manage to link them, which is great until the provider of the spreadsheet updates their version and breaks your links or the macros you have added in or the person who set it up leaves the company!
Now those to add to the proliferation of spreadsheets we also have the increasing demand on reporting and charting at a will, enter Business Intelligence (BI) platforms. Do not get me wrong we love BI it is tremendously powerful but building on top of spreadsheets never ends well.
Again, an integrated system pulls everything into registers in one system so you can link simply, report out, chart at random in real time, no waiting for the BI tool to be refreshed and no more worrying if the macros and links that Bob set up before he left are still going to work in 2 months' time. (Did we mention identifying them as business risks?)
People tend to tell us that the combination of paper and spreadsheets does not work, unfortunately that normally hits after an audit when they auditor has pointed out revision control issues or missing / mismatched data or things not actioned. One of the great things when you move to any new system is you get a chance to really challenge what you do and why you do it that way. You bring in a structured way of working for everyone because that's the way the system drives you. Creating a standard system also dramatically reduces your training and induction times for your QHSE systems, there is only one way to do that and you can train that. If, like Mango QHSE, your system has inbuilt e-Learning then you can record everything automatically and make it available for people to learn at their pace, or at least the pace the business needs.
The other great thing that seems to happen far quicker with integrated QHSE compliance systems is that people raise changes more often. They use the system more, which drives engagement and continuous improvement, both things any ISO Std likes.
With a fully integrated Quality, Health & Safety and Environmental compliance system that is cloud-based the certification process is certainly simpler. You can give your auditor remote access to your system for a limited time and in a limited way, enough for them to ensure you meet the requirements of the standard and that you have the evidence to back it up but not enough that they can accidentally mess something up. Think about it, no more rushing around trying to find copies of documents or training records, it is all in one place. The result of that are faster and ultimately cheaper audits that are every bit as thorough and in person. In today's COVID-19 environment that is a good thing.
If your systems are simple people will understand them and use them. By integrating to a single digital QHSE system it ticks those boxes, stripping out complexity and multiple locations also strips out stress and non-conformances!
Moving to a single Integrated QHSE System that is available to everyone when they need it solves so many current and future challenges for business. Printing costs come down, revision control is sorted, audits are on line, you never need to worry about a spreadsheet again and you know that the integrated system has the tools that you need to be using to meet your compliance requirements.
Ultimately however the biggest benefit is what happens to your bottom line results. With the saving of costs for other systems, improvements in being able to root cause issues by involving more people plus savings on auditing, there has never been a better time to go digital.
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