The Safety Management System To Make Your Compliance Easy

Whether you are a Business Owner, a Manager, or simply someone who has been given the responsibility for managing safety compliance where do you start? How long is it going to take? How do you know if you are doing the right things? Maybe you have just had a visit from the Fire Service, Environmental Health Officer, or the Health and Safety Executive and need help.

Are you unsure of the legal requirements (for Fire safety, health and safety or food safety) or how to manage your business to ensure that you stay within the constraints of the law?

Do you worry that managing compliance is going to be time consuming, expensive, or overly bureaucratic, wouldn’t it be great if there was one simple solution that could cover it all?

Safety Compliance is Vast

The arena of safety compliance is vast covering fire safety (The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005), health and safety (The Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974) and food safety (Food Safety Act 1990), and then there are all of the individual regulations, codes of practice and guidance documents that follow.

Its no surprise how daunting, difficult or challenging these things can be.

It doesn’t matter whether you are an experienced practitioner in the field of safety management, or new to the role, the same issues face us all on the day to day basis when it comes to safety management.

That is, just how do you manage your organisations safety compliance in a way that it simple, cost effective and most of all ensures that you comply with the law?

There’s the worry about how do you know if you have got everything covered? Just when you’ve got everything in place, it’s time to start reviewing everything again, or there are changes to your organisation that mean that you have to start again from the beginning?

If there is an accident, incident, or enforcement visit that identifies a potential gap or exposure area that you had thought was covered, or worse still hadn’t even thought about, what do you do?

Ok, unless you are a fortune teller and have the benefit of a Crystal ball, no one can ever predict what can happen in the future, but an effective compliance system (whether it be fire, health and safety or food) should have all of the key requirements covered from the start,

Health and Safety Management Challenges

If you operate on a multi-site, national or international basis then things can get a whole lot more complicated as you face the additional challenge of trying to manage multi-site locations and personnel from a single base.

So, still reading on? If I haven’t managed to send you into a deep coma of boredom, you must either be interested at best, or feel the need to satisfy your curiosity as to what just may be needed in your workplace.

So what is this all about? Is there really one “tool” that can help manage safety compliance across individual disciplines such as fire safety, health and safety, or food safety, or in any combination, for any type of organisation or business?

The simple answer is yes? Really? Oh yes? And believe it or not we have implemented systems from the smallest new business through to large global operations that operate complex multi-site business models across many different countries.

So, the next worry is surely such a pandoras box of tricks is going to be expensive? Simple answer is no, it doesn’t have to be, as a good safety compliance management system needs to be tailored specifically for the business model in which it operates.

We already have bespoke industry specific system packages that are primed ready (thus reducing set up costs) for many sectors including:

• Retail (Including shops and shopping centres)
• Office and Administration
• Restaurants and Catering
• Leisure and Hospitality
• Sports Stadiums
• Arenas and Entertainment Venues
• Hotels
• Wholesale and Distribution
• Manufacturing
• Property Management
• Public Sector (Housing, Museums, Librarys, Administration, Depots)
• Health Services (Health Care, Clinics, Hospitals)

What Makes An Effective Safety Management System?

Highly effective compliance management systems must be designed in such a way that they are processes that enable “continual improvement” within the organisation. They need to evolve and adapt easily to change and the challenges businesses face, and most importantly need to be simple, cost effective, and robust.

So what sorts of things do they need to include?

• Policies and procedures that set out the arrangements and working practices
• Forms and Documents that standardise the way things need to work
• Training objectives, and materials to ensure consistency of delivery
• Effective reporting systems for capturing the right information at the right time such as online accident reporting, online food compliant reporting, or major incident reporting
• Robust management reporting processes that can deliver analysis, and reports in real time or on a due date when required
• Failsafe business escalation protocols for emergency planning and crisis management procedures

Most importantly a good compliance management system should be able to be used from the grass roots levels up in your organisation, and by senior management down. That way with only one system, there are no opportunities for delays in processing information, or getting the message across first time.

So how does it work? Have you got to have reams of paper and an endless bureaucracy trail that contributes to the decimation of an Amazonian rain forest annually? Or do you have software that relies on individual computers or in house servers to keep all of the information safe and secure?

Simple answer to both of these dilemmas is to host your compliance management system via our powerful web based servers, so you can access your information real time, from anywhere that you have internet access, and use mobile platforms (either on or offline) to carry out work such as inspections, risk assessments and audits, that can talk to the servers when you want them to.

In simple terms considering each of the main Safety compliance arenas mentioned earlier, a good compliance management system can bring all of these items together under “one roof”, and utlising todays internet and table technologies create a highly effective platform that takes all of the day to day stresses and worries away (well to a point anyway!)

If you are new to the role and not sure where to start, or someone who has been operating within this role for many years there is help at hand.

How We Can Help

Compliance management principles are very similar across all safety management disciplines, so whether it be fire safety, health and safety or food safety, we have simple, industry leading systems that can help you to manage safety compliance simply, that’s cost effective, and most importantly tried, tested and with a proven track record.

Whilst you may be itching to get your hands on our award-winning PYRAMID™ online risk management systems, you need to carefully consider that fact that whilst we welcome new customers with open arms, what we are and the way we do it is a little different.

You see, that at DDS we want to develop longer term relationships with our clients, one where we can help them to focus on their business, with the knowledge that they have the full support and back up of a quality, robust compliance management system behind them.

So, if you want to simply purchase something “off the shelf” then we probably aren’t for you.

However, if you want to create a very proactive, robust, quality compliance management solution that will help support your organisation or business to manage fire safety, health and safety or food safety in a cost effective, simple and robust manner, then we are ready to talk!

It doesn’t matter how small or large your organisation is, we always start by listening carefully to what you need and how we can help you. We want to tailor a solution that is right for you.

Great compliance is good for business, if its embedded the right way and becomes part of your safety culture you can have some amazing success.

In the past few years we have helped one retailer grow from 4 stores in the UK to over 150 across Europe, a restaurant group to grow from 3 sites to 15, and a local logistic company expand into a major national player.

But if you just want to be happy and have the peace of mind that you have covered all the bases, then we can help with that too.

So what are you waiting for, give us a call or drop us an email, we are a friendly bunch and would love to hear from you.