1st Reporting
Maintaining adherence to regulations using compliance tracking tools is good for business. I know, I know, tell you something you don’t know, right? But suppose you’re not using an efficient system for safety or quality control. In that case, you’re throwing money out the window along with the chance to improve compliance. Not to mention that the costs of non-compliance can be quite severe, and there’s also the liability factor to consider.
Using the appropriate compliance tracking tools is essential to regulatory compliance, improved operations efficiency, and the enablement of improved safety without the costs to the bottom line typically associated with new tool implementation.
In this article, I’ll share how you can adopt a powerful tool that will make the real difference needed to improve multiple facets of operations, including safety, all at a cost well below the cost of inaction. Sounds too good to be true? Keep reading, and you’ll see it isn’t just true; it’s working for organizations right now.
Understanding Compliance Tracking Tools
Injury and Illness At Work: Why We Need Compliance Tracking
From 2020 to 2022, the rate of nonfatal work injuries in the USA that involved days away from work remained constant at 1.7%. That means for every 100 workers, 1.7 workers had a lost-time accident of some type. Furthermore, the injury and illness case count in 2022 rose 7.5% from 2021 to a staggering 2.8 million injury and illness cases. (1)
It is said that all workplace injuries and illnesses are preventable. That’s 2.8 million reasons proving we should improve.
What are Compliance Tracking Tools?
A compliance tracking tool is a system designed to ensure field operations adhere to regulatory standards. It allows teams to document essential tasks and incidents using mobile devices, providing real-time access to these records. Many systems are customizable to enable meeting specific organizational requirements and include features such as location tracking, notification alerts, and the ability to link related reports for enhanced efficiency and accountability.
The concept behind using these compliance tracking systems is to make it easier to keep track of regulatory compliance as it relates to your specific operations. Furthermore, the best systems have a means of notifying you to ensure that you or your team perform the appropriate duties to maintain compliance as it applies to your organization.
Compliance Tracking – What Forms Does It Take?
Your organization might need to track multiple facets of operations in order to maintain compliance. These might include (but are not limited to):
- Vehicle pre-use inspections
- Site safety and hazard analysis
- Accidents, incidents, or injuries documentation
- Team member training and certifications
The Importance and Impact of Compliance Tracking
The importance of these tools in maintaining safety and efficiency cannot be overstated. The appropriate documentation is required in a timely manner, and these tools should, in essence, assist the relevant operational workflow.
Implementing a robust and scalable means of compliance tracking in your operations can deliver significant savings. Your team saves time (labor expenses), headaches (poorly written, lost, or damaged paperwork), and, therefore, money by implementing the use of a robust compliance tracking system. Furthermore, by ensuring due diligence to maintain regulatory standards, you set your organization up for continued potential growth and success in operating according to regulations.
That said, let’s look at the key features of effective compliance tracking tools to better understand how we might manage such a complex concept pertaining to operations and regulatory compliance.
Key Features of Effective Compliance Tracking Tools
Essential Features of Compliance Tracking Tools
The best features to assist your team(s) with compliance tracking are those that make your job easier and more effective. Of course, we need to take the use case into account. For that, we’ll need to consider how customizable the solution is for our operations.
Here are a few features to look out for when you’re reviewing your options for a solution.
Real-Time Data Access
Real-time data access is one of the most important features of robust tools for documenting and managing regulatory compliance. With the right tools, you can review any report in real-time, providing unprecedented oversight, whether it’s an incident report, equipment safety audit, or inspection notes.
Now, let’s consider coverage. You know there are times and places when cellular/wifi/mobile connectivity for someone on your team is going to be an issue. That’s where an offline feature comes into play. For example, let’s say you have an operative working in the field at a client’s work site where there is a known issue with maintaining a signal for mobile devices. In this scenario, a compliance tracking tool, like 1st Reporting, uses an offline mode to capture your operative’s inputs and saves them locally on their device. When a signal is re-acquired, the application automatically uploads the data captured during offline mode. This system makes the current technology the closest thing to possible real-time data access and management, regardless of location or cellular connectivity.
Key features to look out for:
- Access data in real-time
- Capture data while offline
Customizable Forms
Customizable forms are critical elements of a compliance tracking system. However, the degree of customization plays a significant role in whether or not you hit those setup stumbling blocks. You know, the ones – you’ve put hours into customizing forms just to find out that some quirk of the system is going to railroad your efforts.
Key features to look out for:
- Customizable forms, templates, and reports
- No limitations on customization
- There are plenty of elements to create engaging and immersive templates, ensuring appropriate data capture.
- Workflow automation features
GPS Integration
Including GPS features in custom-built form templates is convenient for a few reasons:
- It is easy to see input locations on a map-view-based dashboard.
- Simpler location trend analysis through visual means
- More straightforward documentation by personnel in the field with automated time and location logging.
- Simpler management, seeing all locations in one place, makes for easier multi-location compliance management.
Key features to look out for:
- Automatic GPS time/location tracking
- Customizable display for more accessible trend analysis
- Location-based reporting features
Customizable Notifications
Many platforms offer customizable notifications, but few do so well. Most platforms limit your choices regarding who, when, and what is communicated with the notification. In terms of the best notification features to look for for your compliance tracking tool, let’s look at industry leader 1st Reporting.
The 1st Reporting app has a built-in customizable notification system that gives you control over how and when a notification triggers, as well as what the notification communicates and to whom. 1st provides multiple trigger options, from updating or submitting reports to field changes made on a report. You can customize the message and recipient and even add a delay to the notification to suit your specific needs.
Key features to look out for:
- Customizable notification triggers
- Customizable notification message
- Customizable notification recipients
- Easy-to-understand setup
Dynamic Features
What really sets great solutions like 1st Reporting above other compliance reporting and tracking tools is a handy feature in the customizer to link forms dynamically. During your template creation process, you can select a relationship field that enables you to automate report generation based on specific requirements you decide. This feature allows for you to create connected workflows, such as a follow-up report generated automatically from an incident form creation.
Other dynamic features of leading software, such as 1st Reporting, include programming automation in terms of actions. Actions can further trigger report creation based on activity input into the action’s instructions. Again, it is all customizable, so you can completely automate and link documents as needed to create semi-automated workflows.
Key features to look out for:
- Custom automated attachments
- Custom automated report generation
- Multiple-stage incident report linking
Benefits of Using Compliance Tracking Tools
I’ve mentioned a few benefits already, but to sum up, there are four primary benefits of using compliance tracking tools and software: enhanced accountability, improved process efficiency and response times, risk mitigation and prevention, and lastly, we have cost savings. It’s hard to deny using robust compliance tracking tools with these kinds of benefits.
Did you know? In 2022, OSHA implemented 31,820 compliance inspections, of which 6,789 inspections occurred due to complaints regarding compliance with safety regulations. (2)
Enhanced Accountability
Robust compliance tracking tools enable organizations to have enhanced accountability. Teams that include mobile personnel further demonstrate this fact. The built-in GPS features automatically log when and where a report is created, providing accountability for personnel’s time and location when they create or complete a report.
On another note, the media-inclusive features of a robust compliance tracking tool that enable team members to input images, sound, or video from their devices are powerful tools for documenting and tracking compliance. After all, if a picture speaks a thousand words, a video can tell the whole story, providing direct evidence of observations made by those creating the report.
Improved Efficiency and Responsiveness
By now, especially after reading about features like automated notifications and offline mode, you can surely understand the ability to improve efficiency and lower response times. With features like secure cloud storage, collaboration on reports is easy and fast, enhancing communications and collaboration.
Risk Mitigation
Mitigating risk and preventing injury or damage to property is the name of the game here. Using appropriate compliance tracking tools like 1st Reporting allows you to easily determine trends and gain greater insight into how you and your team can mitigate risks and lower hazard potential in the field.
Cost Savings
Some of our clients have told us how much time and, therefore, money they have saved by upgrading their compliance tracking to integrate tools like 1st Reporting (check out our case studies here). The truth is that the cost savings are far greater than perceived because of the ability to track compliance effectively and predict potential hazard issues and concerns before they arise in the form of an incident.
Many times, when we refer to non-compliance with local, regional, or national compliance obligations, we refer to a) dangerous situations where team members or members of the public could sustain injury and b) costs due to fines, increased insurance premiums, and medical care.
Cost Savings By The Numbers
- In 2022, the average cost per worker to offset the costs of lost-time incidents was $1,040. (3)
- The cost in the same year for injuries that required a professional medical consultation was $40,000 per incident. (3)
- The cost in the same year for employers who had a team member meet their end in a workplace accident was $1,390,000 per death. (3)
If we take the last number of the 5,486 fatal work injuries in the US (4), the total cost to employers is $7,625,540,000.00.
Implementing Compliance Tracking Tools in Your Organization
Integrating a compliance tracking tool and using it in standard operations are two very different things. However, as we’ve had much experience with helping clients integrate, you might say we’ve distilled the process into a science.
How to Implement Compliance Tracking Tools
Assess Your Compliance Needs
Step one: assess the needs of your organization. Determine how you want to see the end resultant process look like. How will your team members use the compliance tracking tool? How will it solve your current challenges in compliance reporting and tracking? It’s best to take a bit of time to consider these options before you move on to select the best customizable compliance tool for your operations.
Choose the Right Tool
Once you have a good idea of how you want the result to look, you can choose a customizable tool like 1st Reporting to bridge the gap between your organization’s inefficient compliance tracking processes and the efficient and effective process you envision.
Train Your Team
You’ve assessed how you want the implementation to occur in terms of use cases and results. Now, it’s time to build the path that connects the start with the result you envision. Start by selecting a single group within your organization. In my experience, it’s best to choose a smaller group (typically no more than about a dozen people) who you feel will likely get the most benefit from the compliance tracking tools you implement.
Using a test group will also help you correct possible flaws in rollout processes. To avoid mistakes organization-wide that could be costly to fix, using a test group for the initial rollout will provide valuable feedback to improve rollout procedures.
Monitor and Optimize
In my experience, the most critical aspect of the initial rollout of new compliance tracking tools relates to how you have implemented a feedback loop from your pilot group and subsequent groups as you roll out the tracking tool. People often disregard feedback, being too focused on their initial conception of rollout, but this is a less advantageous approach. By including a means for your compliance tracking tools participants to provide feedback efficiently, you ensure higher rollout success for each successive group of team members. By the end of your integration process, not only will you be a master of the system, but you’ll also have figured out how to optimize compliance tool rollout.
Final Thoughts and Next Steps
By now, it’s clear how vital these systems are for maintaining regulatory standards, enhancing safety, and boosting operational efficiency. Leveraging a robust solution like the 1st Reporting app not only ensures your organization remains within legal boundaries but also streamlines processes and mitigates risks.
It’s a strategic investment that pays off by preventing costly non-compliance issues and fostering a culture of accountability. Consider taking the next step by evaluating your current systems and exploring how you can tailor the 1st Reporting app to meet your specific needs. Embrace the tools available to secure your organization’s future and drive continued growth and success.
Article Sources
- “IIF Home.” 2024. Bureau of Labor Statistics. May 15, 2024. https://www.bls.gov/iif/home.htm.
- “2022 Enforcement Summary | Occupational Safety and Health Administration.” 2022. Osha.gov. 2022. https://www.osha.gov/enforcement/2022-enforcement-summary.
- “Work Injury Costs – Injury Facts.” 2024. Injury Facts. April 25, 2024. https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/work/costs/work-injury-costs/#:~:text=The%20cost%20per%20worker%20in,cost%20per%20death%20was%20%241%2C390%2C000..
- “Commonly Used Statistics | Occupational Safety and Health Administration.” 2023. Osha.gov. 2023. https://www.osha.gov/data/commonstats#:~:text=Worker%20fatalities,Learn%20about%20key%20findings..
