Four Key Safety and Compliance Lessons We Can Learn From COVID-19

COVID-19 changed the face of the world and businesses overnight. With the directive to work from home where possible and limit movements, businesses were given the ultimate stress test. Adapt to the changing times or risk closure.

While the past 18 months have been undoubtably difficult for businesses across Australia—even now with large sections of our east coast currently in lockdown—there have been many lessons in resilience and change learnt from COVID-19. These lessons don’t have to disappear when we finally live in a post-COVID world.

For instance, businesses who opted to set up new tiers of suppliers and contractors, have discovered new opportunities they can use after the pandemic as the business environment recuperates. The lessons learned will stay with them, allowing them to sustain operations during other future disasters.

Lessons about safety and compliance can also be instrumental in ensuring business continuity and profitability.

Here are four lessons on safety and compliance we can learn from COVID-19.

1 – Crisis Management Training

While contractor management services and safety training programs are usually part of workforce management systems, the pandemic has highlighted the importance of crisis management training for your workers. In the event of unforeseen circumstances such as bushfires, floods, other natural disasters or public health crises, how will your contracting companies adapt? Alongside safety and compliance qualifications, another piece of the puzzle to collect might be their crisis management plans.

Training will become essential in ensuring smooth and safe operations going forward. Imparting the training instruction effectively using cloud-based training platforms like the Pegasus Learning Management System (LMS) can be the key to ensuring effective worker management that raises the overall bar for operational efficiency.

2 – Worker Health Management

With QR codes and hand sanitiser a staple in every workplace and social distancing strongly encouraged, returning to work is unlikely to be straightforward. Fears of outbreaks are sure to be prevalent for months and potentially years.

With the safest companies set to dominate the future of work, it’s more important than ever to adopt stringent safety rules and keep stocks of hand sanitiser and cleaning products onsite to prevent any illness.

Working from home will remain the norm; with many never returning to the office full-time. Many businesses have already established remote working infrastructure to ensure workers remain productive. Regular health check-ups might become a thing of the future workplace.

3 – Cybersecurity Compliance

With automation on the rise, most businesses in a post-COVID world will use software-defined networks and advanced data analytics platforms to enhance decision-making. While leveraging technology is a great move, the flipside of it is that it comes with the risk of cyberattacks and data thefts.

For this reason, you will need stronger cybersecurity management systems than ever before. Prequalified system integrators and solution providers hold the key to ensuring cybersecurity compliance and protection from vulnerabilities.

4 – Workforce Data

It’s more important than ever to have complete visibility over your workforce.

The data collected in your Pegasus platform tells the story of your contracting companies and workers. There’s detailed information about all the companies who work for you and their relationships to one another.

It knows everything about your workers – their roles, who they work for, their attendance, and their competencies. You will see everything happening on your sites – who is working for you, where they are, their training, and what they can do.

When you resume operations, the stories in this data will allow you to see the contracting companies and workers who were the most efficient for your business.

Nobody can predict when the COVID-19 pandemic will end, but your constant efforts to stay prepared will help ensure worker safety and sustain your business when we return to a new normal in the workplace.

Talk to Pegasus today to find out how we are helping businesses adapt in a COVID-19 world.

A version of this blog first appeared on the Avetta blog here and has been republished with full permission.