Why switching to a multi-purpose regulatory compliance platform is a good investment

Admin work is never pleasant but not doing it (or not doing it right) can cause a multitude of problems in all areas of your business and technical compliance isn’t an exception. Below we’ll look into the use of digital tools to ensure compliance and how switching to a multi-purpose regulatory compliance platform that supports external technical service providers is a worthy investment to consider in 2021.

The Problem

According to the UK health and safety management regulations, you, as an employer, are required to ensure the health and safety of your employees and visitors at the workplace. However, doing that is not a one-man job. It requires the involvement of multiple responsible people appointed by you, both internally and externally, as well as a whole lot of documentation as supporting evidence for achieving your workplace risk management goals and objectives.

The natural solution to getting every part of the risk management and regulatory compliance process organised is to implement digital software tools to help your team (because let’s face it – doing a risk assessment on a clipboard and filling in endless paper checklists isn’t an acceptable option in the modern workplace). So far, so good but there is a pitfall that many business owners walk into and that’s implementing too many tools at the same time.

Now, picture using software where you log all your assets and keep track of what machinery you have in each building. Then, there’s that fancy digital calendar where you can schedule risk assessments and tag relevant people. Of course, there come the checklists: the risk assessment template you just downloaded, the pre-use checks examples saved on the shared server, the risk management manual your co-worker sent a link to a few weeks back… Oh, and let’s not forget the online file storage system where you keep all the documents, reports and evidence for each individual risk and the measures associated with it. It’s all quite handy, really, if you can figure out where the files were saved and whether they have been attached in the first place.

As you can see, the issue here is apparent: tools can be useful but creating an app overload can only make the compliance process slower, clunkier and overall – less reliable. When work needs to be done, updating multiple platforms that relate to the same tasks is not only tedious but can lead to things being missed. Forgetting to update the calendar after a risk assessment has been made, for example, is easy – it can happen to anyone but the results can be quite devastating, ranging from incurring fines due to non-compliance to causing serious workplace accidents.

In addition to that, dealing with too many tools and applications can have a negative impact on your team’s productivity. Having to update various systems with administrative information about all risk management and compliance activities takes time. If you have the right regulatory compliance tool, that’s time your team could be spending on working towards your business goals, instead. Also, switching between screens to find the right information and responding to constant pop-ups from various programs is distracting, to say the least, which leads to a decrease in efficiency.

Then, there is the issue of security. Technical compliance documents hold sensitive information about your business which, if acquired by the wrong people, could lead to serious consequences, such as data breaches and company espionage. When too many digital tools are involved, controlling who should get access to which platform becomes increasingly difficult. Not to mention that not all tools share the same high standards of security. Plus, users tend to forget to log out of systems or to close documents when they move away from their desk. Granted, that can happen with any single application but the more you have, the higher the chances of a security breach.

Last but not least, technical compliance is often outsourced. General risk assessments, PUWER inspections and LOLER inspections, are often performed by third-party compliance service providers to avoid mistakes. There is a good chance that those technical service agents also use their own compliance software, which won’t necessarily align with your internal processes. This can cause a breakdown in communication, loss of information and a lack of visibility between external and internal stakeholders.

Furthermore, when the relevant compliance activities are done, the technical compliance providers have to transfer their records to your systems which is a manual process that is far from error-proof. Making sure you have all documentation safely stored is not a small issue, as the law requires you to keep your records for at least ten years and they may be required as proof of compliance in the event of an incident, audit or other enforcement activity.

The Solution

To streamline the technical compliance process and increase your team’s efficiency both internally and externally, the best thing you could do is implement a single, multi-purpose regulatory compliance software, which can cover all of your technical compliance tasks and bring the risk of such problems to a minimum.

As you’ll often see in risk management, removing the issue isn’t always an option but minimising its likelihood of occurring and controlling it efficiently is. The same applies to admin and the use of digital tools in the compliance process: you still have to do it and human errors can never be completely removed from the equation but using an all-in-one software, such as RiskMach can help you manage the problem and achieve outstanding compliance results.

RiskMach is a fully-integrated platform, which means that you can perform, log, track and monitor all health and safety regulatory compliance activities in one central place. From risk assessment, risk management and reporting to pre-use checks, near misses management and product self-certification – it can all be managed via a single, user-friendly dashboard, accessible from any device, anywhere in the world.

Thanks to the Cloud-based nature of the product, every person involved in the compliance process, be it a company employee or an appointed third-party responsible person, can access the data and collaborate on risk-related tasks at any time with immediate updates available. RiskMach also provides business owners with a standardised output that is seamlessly integrated into your safety compliance platform, so that third-party technical service providers can complete their work as required without having to worry about discrepancies with your existing compliance procedures.

Keeping your technical files safe and secure for a decade also won’t be a problem because they are all stored in The Vault – RiskMach’s secure digital storage space, and since both your in-house team and the third-party providers can use the system, loss of information in transit shouldn’t be a problem.

With all that in mind, making the decision to switch from a combo of various apps and tools to one centralised, multi-purpose regulatory compliance platform, such as RiskMach, should be a no-brainer. Check our free RiskMach PDF to learn more about the system or speak to us to find out how we can help you stay compliant with the relevant industry standards.