Sustainability & Risk/ Health & Safety / Concepts
Methods for Assigning Safety Program Requirements to Employees (Concept)
A workplace safety program defines the training, PPE, and medical monitoring required for the employees of a company. These components can be both routine or incident-related.
In managing a safety program with the Archibus Health & Safety system, a safety manager can assign safety program requirements in the following ways:
Depending on the practices at your site, you may use any combination of these methods. For example, if you are just getting started with the Health & Safety application, you may be using it only to monitor workplace incidents and their resulting actions, and not to manage your entire safety program. In this case, you would assign safety program components to employees only when they are required as a result of an incident.
On the other hand, if your site is using the Health & Safety application to inventory the complete safety program, you might get started by assigning required PPE, training, and medical monitoring to employees in bulk using work categories. Then, as specific incidents occur and additional monitoring is required, you can assign PPE, training, and medical monitoring to individual employees that require these additional follow-up actions.
The three methods are detailed below:
By type of position (work category)
If you want to inventory your complete safety program, you can define a set of work categories and the required training, medical monitoring, and PPE that workers of this category must have. Once the work categories and their requirements are defined, you can associate individual employees with one or more work categories and then assign in bulk the category's associated elements to the employees of this category.
This type of bulk assignment leads to a consistent safety program and ensures that all employees of a particular category are assigned the same elements of the safety program.
For example, if all custodians need yearly training on maintaining the furnace, a yearly physical, and new safety shoes, safety goggles, and a back brace each year, you might:
- Define a work category for custodians and associate the above training, medical monitoring, and PPE requirements with it. See Define the Medical Monitoring, PPE, and Training Requirements for a Work Category.
- Assign the custodian employees at your site to this work category. See Assign an Employee to a Work Category,
- For each custodian, assign the work category's training, medical monitoring, and PPE. As part of making the assignment, you can schedule the dates on which the training and medical monitoring will occur and an estimated date that the PPE will be delivered. See:
- Schedule Medical Monitoring for an Employee via Work Category
- Schedule Training for an Employee via Work Category
- Schedule the Estimated PPE Delivery to an Employee via Work Category
By individual employee
Individual employees may have specific requirements in addition to those of their work category. For example, an employee who has recently had surgery (unrelated to any workplace mishap) may need to pass a physical before they can return to their full responsibilities. Thus, the safety manager must monitor that this medical exam occurs and that the results are forwarded. Or, a custodian might be the only person responsible for using the fork lift. Therefore, only this custodian needs the PPE and training required for the running the fork lift.
For information on entering the safety program requirements for specific individuals, see these tasks:
- Track/Assign Employees to Training
- Track/Track Employee PPE Types
- Track/Track Employee Medical Monitoring
In response to a workplace incident
When a workplace mishap or incident occurs, follow-up actions may be required. For example, if a custodian sustained an injury while handling a piece of equipment, the safety officer may decide that this custodian needs further training on using this equipment item. Additionally, medical follow-up to monitor how the injury heals is also required.
In this case, the safety manager can schedule the training and medical monitoring schedule directly from the Track Incidents task. The system will automatically associate the incident with the new medical monitoring and training records, For information, see Entering Employee-Specific Response to an Incident.
When the custodian reviews his personal safety program, he will see these incident-related training and medical monitoring items, as well as those required for all custodians (that is, those entered for the custodian work category).