This year, OSHA once again increased the maximum civil penalties it levies on employers who violate safety regulations. But the U.S. safety regulator isn’t the only agency ramping up safety enforcement in the post-COVID era.
What can employers do to avoid paying the steep cost of non-compliance? Read on to learn how a safety management software system can help.
The rising cost of non-compliance
Indeed, the cost of non compliance has increased. OSHA, for one, started the year by upping the maximum allowable penalty for serious violations to $16,550 – and that’s per violation.
Although these individual totals factor into the cost of non compliance with regulations, they aren’t the only factors employers are taking into account. Organizations are also deeply aware of the overall regulatory climate.
What about it?
Since Covid, health and safety regulations have been on the dramatic upswing, even if now Covid-specific regulations are on the decline. Case in point: OSHA published a recent notice of rulemaking, explaining that it was withdrawing a proposed rule intended to focus on a Covid-specific standard for healthcare workers. Similarly, in jurisdictions within the U.S. and across the world, Covid-era regulations are coming off the books.
But in their place are statutes (at least tangentially) related to the climate crisis. OSHA’s Heat Safety Rule, for instance, requires employers to develop formalized heat illness prevention plans.
Cost of compliance vs. non compliance
Beyond these new rules, employers must also contend with existing standards, some of which organizations have traditionally run afoul of. The list of commonly cited standards includes:
- Fall protection
- Hazard communication
- Ladders
- Scaffolding
- Powered industrial trucks
- Lockout/tagout
- Respiratory protection
- Fall protection (training requirements)
- PPE
- Machine guarding
What’s worse, malefactors don’t just incur financial penalties for the infractions. They also suffer severe reputational hits, particularly if their violations are considered serious or systemic.
Often enough, health and safety violations come to define a company’s brand, leading to demoralized staff, poorer recruitment, higher insurance premiums, and even further regulatory scrutiny.
The ROI of software for safety management
How to avoid those costs? Health and safety management software can help; and here’s how:
Boosts safety reporting
Chronic safety underreporting is one of the contributing factors to serious safety violations, as left underreported and unvalidated, near misses – events where injury to people or damage to property didn’t happen but could have – often escalate to larger incidents. Indeed, safety managers have long cited the underreporting of safety incidents in the workplace – accidents, injuries, and illnesses – as a major hurdle to improving safety performance and cementing a positive safety culture.
What can safety management systems software accomplish? For one, such systems make reporting easier with dedicated workflows meant to liberate teams and workers from administrative tasks.
Mitigates risk
And when it comes to near-miss analysis, in particular, teams must often ask: how much risk is too much risk? Workplace safety risk management is all about identifying, evaluating, and determining the safety risks an organization is exposed to and coming up with policies, processes, and procedures to control those identified hazards.
To make the process manageable, teams must invest in integrated safety risk management software with functionality to make risk assessment, treatment, and reporting easier.
Which specific capabilities? Standard hazard workflows are vital; so too is technology that comes with thousands (yes, thousands) of standard risks and controls.
Boosts compliance
What about mitigating compliance (and reputational) risk? Here, dedicated compliance management functionality can’t be overstated. Safety management systems software can increase alignment and drive compliance using controlled documents, manage contractors using questionnaires and document reviews, and follow up with inspections and audits to ensure controls are implemented and risks are managed on an ongoing basis.
Enhances engagement
Safety, however, begins with people, especially engaged people. Best-practice risk and compliance measures won’t matter much if your staff isn’t fully engaged and on the same page.
In this regard, safety management software can help, too; these solutions enable Safety teams to engage with their employees and contractors through planned safety meetings, scheduled behavior-based observations, and strategic change management consultations, then easily share lessons learned by generating safety alerts that can be easily shared via email, SMS, and voice message.
Finally, compliance risk is growing, while penalties for non-compliance are only getting steeper. Looking to steer clear of the regulatory blowback? Then, I’d recommend investing in safety management software.
While offering real-time analytics for better decision-making, solutions like Noggin work to streamline compliance through a centralized workspace for health and safety, wellbeing, and contractor management.
But don’t just take our word for it, request a software demonstration to see Noggin in action for yourself!
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