It is no secret that one of the basic procedures in HSE is the special assessment of working conditions. It is the foundation for other procedures, such as medical examinations or training. It is crucial to have all the necessary data readily available so that when hiring a new employee, you can immediately inform them of their working conditions class, or when transferring an employee to another department, you can check whether they need to undergo a preliminary medical examination. It is great when an organization already has an established and functioning automated system that makes it easy to track such things, but what should you do if there isn't one?
When I joined my company, the first thing I did was transfer data from 30 huge folders of documentation on the special assessment of working conditions to a computer, breaking it down by year. I compiled comprehensive statistics on the special assessment of working conditions, primarily to identify whether all workplaces in the organization had been assessed and whether any changes had occurred at existing workplaces. Every card, every employee who signed, and every position on the staffing table was checked. By the end of this work, all the gaps that needed to be filled and all the inconsistencies that needed to be corrected were identified.
What do these statistics look like? It is an Excel spreadsheet that reflects all the most significant data from the special assessment.
The first version of such statistics is based on a consolidated register. That is, we go through the assessed workplaces: Department name → job title → number of workplaces → number of employees at the workplace → report date → workplace number → working conditions class → medical examination based on the assessment results (we simply indicate the clauses) → full names of the employees working at this workplace. Each conducted special assessment is a new sheet in the Excel workbook. When a new one is conducted, a sheet is added, and the data is consolidated.
Thus, with an up-to-date staffing table, you can identify the workplaces that need to be assessed. You can see who has been transferred and whether they have been familiarized with the assessment results at their new workplace. You can check if enough workplaces have been assessed and if all employees are accounted for. We familiarize employees with the assessment results in a special logbook, as the company has a large workforce and it is not very convenient to do this directly on the assessment card. The logbook format was approved by an official order.
The task of the HSE specialist who manages this complex block of "Special Assessment of Working Conditions" is to keep these statistics up to date and never abandon them. After all, these statistics will be needed later when compiling reports for Rosstat and when forming a list of workplaces to prepare for scheduled and unscheduled special assessments of working conditions.
I have now developed a new statistics format. Since it is in Excel, I added some formulas to the cells to make it easier to track data. For example, when entering new employee information, the cell is highlighted if there is an overlap in workplaces.
By implementing such tools, we minimize the risk of missing something. Automated systems are great, but at the very initial stage, you will have to work with a huge amount of information anyway. Having at least some kind of database, even before the full implementation of automation, makes the work significantly easier.