Businesses are taking more and more responsibility for setting guidelines to help their employee thrive during this time of COVID-19. It is imperative to instantly and carefully solidify corporate procedures to give employees surety that precautionary measures are being taken which will help taper off the trajectory of the outbreak and ensure employees’ safety and wellbeing.
With the constantly changing situation, Health and Safety (H&S) leadership is expected to have frequent and ongoing communications from their field staff and business partners. Luckily for us, living in the digital makes these communication efforts easier and more transparent.
Despite the lockdown, several of our customers in EC&O, transportation, manufacturing, public sector, healthcare, and utility sectors have been listed under “essential businesses” – which means business continues to run during the COVID-19 pandemic. These companies are finding advantage in using Sodales Employee Health, Safety and Environmental Management (EHSHEM) available on the SAP App Centre portal to cater to the following needs:
Daily Job Safety Monitoring: The COVID-19 situation is constantly changing which is demanding changes to occur rapidly and efficiently in workplaces job safety tools as well. Companies are required to have a highly agile Risk Assessment Framework in place which can adapt to the altering conditions. While the EHSEM tool available on the SAP App Centre supports standard Risk Management features, customers are also seeking flexibility in their approaches. The Sodales tool is recognized for being agile and adaptable with the help of the administrative console. The app administrative capabilities allow easy changes to the applications which include making edits to the standard forms, field updates, change of rules, etc.
Communication, Notices, and Bulletins: As social distancing becomes mandatory during these times, companies initially started thinking of new ways to implement it in their workforce. Some companies split up their staff into two teams on their office floors, designating days for each team to come into the office. The teams were split based on the cubicle arrangements of the office floors, enforcing a continuous 6 feet gap between the staff. Other companies have reduced work shifts and are requiring a smaller group to be present on each day. In-person meetings have been discouraged and online conferences have become the only medium of communication. These types of company policies can be communicated frequently, updated directly in the Sodales EHSEM tool and sent out to the entire staff via a mass email notification tool available within the app.
Leave of Absence – Claims: Additionally, if any person in the staff starts to experience symptoms of COVID-19 or has a family member who is experiencing the symptoms, they can file a claim through the EHSEM tool. The staff can create a Leave of Absence request from their mobile devices in the comfort of their homes. Upon the creation of a request, the system will automatically notify their supervisor and HR. This allows for management to assess and follow up frequently with the employee, check on their symptoms and decide whether they are to be quarantined for a 14 day period or are ready to return to work.
Supplier Relations and Safety: Many of our customers have built new checklists and audits for supplier relations, especially for delivery and drop-off related items as well as for visitors entering their buildings. These checklists and forms must be filled out by all delivery personnel or site visitors and brought to the site OR sent to site contact prior to arrival. The data from these digital supplier safety checklists are also being used to streamline operational activities. The Sodales EHSEM audit module is a perfect fit for this functionality as it allows a flexible engine for building such checklists across processes.
Job Safety Talks: Many of our clients are using mobile applications to carry out their daily safety talks at job sites. Supervisors use a checklist-based form on their tablets with configurable dropdown lists to select and highlight current risks to their crew. This allows supervisors to reinforce safety measures such as increased cleaning of equipment, reducing the sharing of equipment, reduction of social contact (handshakes for example) and practicing hand washing.
Occupational and Non-occupational Reports: The incident management tool allows reporting incidents that took place both – in the workplace or outside of work. If employees feel they were infected while being on the job, they can report that through our tool to allow for future reporting and tracking. This will also allow for remote investigations to take place and to be circulated across the management team using the company workflow.
Employee Assistance Programs (EAP): Let us not forget about mental health! While the current health crisis is the source of anxiety for everyone – it is posing a range of challenges for individuals who are already suffering from a mental health crisis. Our system supports EAP programs with HIPAA Compliant remote investigation capabilities. These employees can be assigned a counselor through the tool and can schedule video or telephone consultation appointments to help them get by during these challenging times.
The Sodales Employee Health, Safety and Environment (EHSEM) Software is a fully integrated SAP extension bringing innovation and agility to workplaces in order to help combat the global COVID-19 spread. Having real-time and scalable reports has become crucial for management so lessons can be learned, data is not lost in translation and quick executive decisions can be made. The Sodales tool simplifies this by delivering industry-standard best practices with a quick to configure/change the H&S platform.
If you would like to adopt the best practices which are already being implemented by our customers, for enhancing organizational wellness and contribute to the spread of the COVID-19 spread; please check out the SAP App Centre listing for Sodales EHSEM tool.
