Customisation To Suit You

When you first start using OSH At Work you set up the options you would like to see in the various Pick-Lists - such as Work Areas, Departments, Occupations, Mechanisms of Injury, Contributing Factors, etc.

This: configures OSH At Work to your workplace and to applicable Standards, provides for consistency in recording, and ensures a good foundation for analyses.

Personnel

The basic details that can be kept on each person include name, staff number, address, phone, emergency contacts, occupation, supervisor, etc.

A page is also provided for recording comments about a person. Each comment can be marked for Review on a specified date. This creates a Task - which will appear in the Tasks Viewer.

Health and Medical

In addition to the health and medical details that can be recorded in the Rehabilitation section of OSH At Work, the following are also provided for:

• blood type, usual doctor, etc;
• known conditions and allergies;
• vaccinations - including complete scheduling of required vaccinations from 1st injection, through to boosters and tests; and
• first aid which is unrelated to any incident, eg bandaging of an injury which a staff member sustained in a sporting incident on the weekend; headache medication; etc.

Routine use of the first aid section can uncover patterns that indicate the need for action. (eg Excessive headache medication may indicate an underlying problem).

Hazards

Comprehensive details can be recorded about each Hazard.

• Basic Details
• A Hazard can be identified as either Inherent or Temporary, and assigned a Hazard Category (from YOUR list of Hazard Categories - such as Chemical, Heat, etc).
• Other basic details on the first page of the Hazards data-entry form include the date on which the Hazard was identified, and the person who reported it.
• Each Hazard can be associated with an Employer, a Department, a Supervisor, and the applicable OSH Committee and OSH Representative.
• Investigation, Notifications
• An investigation, and a report from the investigation, can be scheduled. This creates Tasks which will appear in the Tasks Viewer. Various notes arising from the investigation can be recorded.
• The layout of the Investigation page for Hazards is virtually the same as the one for Incidents. Throughout OSH At Work, consistency is maintained - to make the system easy to learn and use.
• As with Incidents, any number of Notifications can be recorded for each Hazard. Each recorded Notification creates a Task (which will appear in the Tasks Viewer).
• Associated Incidents
• Each Hazard can be associated with zero, one or more Incidents. So, after investigating an Incident and discovering Hazards which contributed to it, you can record the Hazards and then associate them with the Incident - and set up any necessary Corrective Actions on the Hazards.
• Contributing Factors
• Any number of Contributing Factors can be recorded for each Hazard. These are chosen from the list of your standard Contributing Factors - which you may have grouped into Management Factors, Environmental Factors, Personal Factors, etc.
• Each factor contributing to a Hazard can be assigned a Rating - to indicate how important it was relative to other factors.
• Affected Work Areas, Affected Work, etc
• The work areas, work and personnel (workteams) affected by a Hazard can all be recorded via descriptions and/or via selections from your predefined PickLists.
• Corrective Actions
• Any number of Corrective Actions can be recorded for each Hazard. Each Corrective Action creates a task, and optionally another task for a Close-Out Review, which will appear in the Tasks Viewer.
• Detailed and summary reports are available on Corrective Actions.

Incidents

Comprehensive details can be recorded about each Incident.

• Basic Details
• The first page of the Incidents data-entry form records the basic details of an Incident. You are not compelled to enter any more than just the underlined fields. Many more features are available to you but it is not necessary to use them.
• Comprehensive details of employment at the time of an Incident can be recorded (screen shot 1; screen shot 2). If these details are already recorded in the personnel file, they will be automatically imported into the incident record when the person is selected. This data can be used in a subsequent analysis to ascertain the number of incidents in each Occupation, or Roster, or Shift, or for each Supervisor, etc.
• What, Where, How, Agency, Mechanism, Nature of Injury
• You can keep descriptions of where the incident occurred, what was being done, and what happened. From your own lists, you can choose the corresponding Work Area, Task, Agencies and Mechanism.
• Continuing the concepts of the Where, What and How page, you can keep descriptions of the resulting injury and then, from your own lists, you can choose the corresponding Nature of Injury/Disease and Bodily Location.
• Using the analysis capabilities of OSH At Work you will then be able to determine the number of incidents in each category (ie the number for each Task, each Work Area, each Mechanism, each type of Injury, etc).
• Investigation, Notifications, Tasks, History
• An investigation, and a report from the investigation, can be scheduled. This creates Tasks which will appear in the Tasks Viewer. Various notes arising from the investigation can be recorded.
• The layout of the Investigation page for Incidents is virtually the same as the one for Hazards. Throughout OSH At Work, consistency is maintained - to make the system easy to learn and use.
• As with Hazards, any number of Notifications can be recorded for each Incident. Each recorded Notification creates a Task (which will appear in the Tasks Viewer).
• For each Incident you can keep a complete record of all steps completed, or due to be undertaken, in managing the incident and its associated claim. By recording the Scheduled date you create a Task which will appear in the Tasks Viewer.
• Workers' Compensation Claim
• Details that can be recorded for a Workers' Compensation Claim include the current status (such as 'submitted', 'more time needed', 'appoved', etc); the policy; the claim number; etc.
• The current cost as advised by the Insurer, and the claim reserve (or estimate) can also be recorded.
• (Also see below in the "Incident Costs and Workers Compensation Claims" section).
• Events
• As a result of the investigation, or from the report presented by the affected person, you may be aware of a sequence of events which led up to the incident. These can be recorded on the Events page. This will probably only be used for complex scenarios.
• You can also specify a Common Event. Eg if several people were hurt in a car accident, there would be an Incident record for each - linked via the Common Event.
• Contributing Factors
• Any number of Contributing Factors can be recorded for each Incident. These are chosen from the list of your standard Contributing Factors - which you may have grouped into Management Factors, Environmental Factors, Personal Factors, etc.
• Each factor contributing to an Incident can be assigned a Rating - to indicate how important it was relative to other factors.
• Corrective Actions
• Any number of Corrective Actions can be recorded for each Incident. Each Corrective Action creates a task, and optionally another task for a Close-Out Review, which will appear in the Tasks Viewer.
• Detailed and summary reports are available on Corrective Actions.
• Medical Certificates
• For each Incident, any number of Medical Certificates can be recorded. A summary report can immediately be generated from the Quick Report button.
• Lost Time
• For each Incident, the number of full days (or shifts) lost (as used in the calculation of Average Time Lost Rate) can be recorded for each month.

Rehabilitation

• Rehabilitation Programme
• For each Incident, a detailed Rehabilitation Programme can be recorded.
• As with most of the reports in OSH At Work, you can include Signatories on the bottom of the Rehabilitation Report - so you can file a record of the approval of various people to the Rehabilitation Programme - such as the Doctor, Case Manager, Affected Person, Supervisor, etc.
• Treatments
• All treatments which were given to the Affected Person as a result of the Incident can be recorded.
• Case Managers
• The in-house Case-Manager, and the external Rehabilitation Provider, can be recorded for each Incident. If they change, the new ones can be recorded too.
• Case Notes
• Importantly, full Case Notes can be kept in relation to the rehabilitation process.
• Each Case Note has a date, a type (from YOUR list of Case Note Types), a reference to the person making the Note, and the actual note itself.

Incident Costs and Workers Compensation Claims

• Incident Costs
• For each Incident, any number of costs can be recorded (screen shot). These can include costs which are reimbursable under Workers' Compensation, and those which are not.
• You define your own Cost Types and Cost Centres. A Cost Type and a Cost Centre can be assigned to each cost.
• Costs can also be marked as estimates.
• Analyses can be performed to determine the total costs within each Cost Type or within each Cost Centre (or you can perform thousands of other variations of analysis such as total cost within each Cost Type in each Department, or Work Area, or Bodily Location, etc).
• Claim and Reimbursement Management
• Each cost recorded for an Incident can be placed on a Reimbursement Request. This is an invoice to your Workers' Compensation insurer. (If you are a self-insurer, it can be regarded as a Reimbursement Approval Request).
• After your insurer has paid reimbursements to you, these are recorded in the Reimbursements Received section ('Reimbursement Approved' section for self-insurers).
• A Workers' Compensation Reconciliation Statement can be generated at any time to determine whether any amounts are outstanding.
• In addition to the cost analyses mentioned above, you can perform numerous analyses on workers' compensation claim amounts. Cost and claim analysis can help you to identify problem areas or trends. By allocating your remedial resources to the areas with the highest current costs, you may achieve substantial reductions in costs and insurance premiums.
• Total Cost of Incidents
• Workers' Compensation costs may be significant, but many organisations overlook the other costs associated with incidents - such as the costs of lost production, temporary staff, management time, etc. OSH At Work allows you to record all these costs perform Total Cost of Incident analyses - to find out what your incidents are really costing you.

Incident Costs and Workers Compensation Claims

The analysis capabilities of OSH At Work are truly exceptional. You can identify problem areas, or clearly confirm what you already suspect, and prepare concise reports for staff and management.

Incident Counts, Costs and Claims

• The simplest analyses calculate Frequency Counts (ie number of incidents), Costs or Workers' Compensation Claim Amounts.
• They may be the simplest but they also offer many variations. These calculations can be performed within any of 60+ categories - such as Division, Department, Work Area, Occupation, Age Bracket, Gender, Employee Type, Shift, Day of the Week, Bodily Location, Nature of Injury, Task, Incident Category, etc.
• An analysis of costs within say Work Areas may be a good indicator of where to allocate resources to yield maximum benefits.
• Various layouts are possible for analyses of Frequency Counts, Costs and Workers Compensation Claim Amounts and charts can be produced via say MS-Excel as described below.

Incident Contributing Factors

• Analysis of the factors contributing to Incidents can provide useful insights - particularly when they can be conducted in several different ways:
• as a count of the associated Incidents;
• using a weighting which takes into account the relative significance of each factor associated with an Incident; and
• by proportioning costs based on the weightings.

Corrective Action Timeliness

• The performance of individuals assigned to undertake corrective actions (on Incidents and Hazards, and also including 'pro-active' actions) can be assessed by examining the timeliness with which they complete these tasks.

Lost Time

• A number of Lost Time reports and analyses are available - some which group and total by month and year, and others which list Lost Time against each Incident.
• These reports and analyses can be on the Lost Time of one selected person.

Incident Rates and Combination Analyses

• OSH At Work can perform a simple analysis of say LTIFRs (Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate) within each Recording Unit (typically a Department or Work Area say).
• OSH At Work can also perform combination analyses which present several different sets of statistics in one table. These combination analyses can include any of the following:
• Frequency Counts (ie number of incidents) - LTI's, non-LTI's, etc
• Incident Count Ratios (percentage open or closed)
• Lost Days (or Shifts) and Lost Hours
• Days Worked
• Frequency Rates (LTIFR, MTIFR, TRIFR)
• Incidence Rates (LTIIR, MTIIR, TRIIR)
• Average Time Lost Rate (ATLR)
• Injury Index
• Number of Workers' Compensation Claims
• Costs (actual, estimated, total)
• Workers' Comp. Claim Amounts (claimed, reimbursed, rejected).
• These analyses can be performed at three levels: the organisation as a whole and then typically the divisions/departments or regions/sites.
• The results of these analyses can be sent to an on-screen viewer, to a standard report, or to a spreadsheet file (as described below). The viewer provides a scrollable listing which displays the names of the Recording Units and calculations, and the results.

Spreadsheets, Charts and Graphs

• You can output the results of some analyses into MS-Excel or Lotus spreadsheets and then create pie charts, bar charts, line graphs, etc.
• A few clicks in the MS-Excel charting wizard will produce great charts - and then still allow you to customise them with titles, comments, etc.
• You could produce a quarterly report by generating spreadsheets, sprucing them up, creating charts, then copying the tables and charts into a MS-Word document with suitable surrounding comments. (Custom components could be created to do this automatically at specified intervals).

Training and Certification

Training

• With OSH At Work, you can keep a record of all Training Courses which people are to go on - and record their attendance and the results obtained.
• You can also produce reports of:
• scheduled attendees on a course (with course details);
• personnel who have completed a particular course (and their results); and
• courses completed by a particular person.

Certifications

• All certifications held by each person can be recorded. Their period of validity can be specified - and a re-certification reminder scheduled. (This creates a Task - which will be included in the Tasks Viewer).
• You can produce reports of personnel who have a particular Certification (valid at a specified date, if required), or Certifications held by a specified person.

Combined Report

• For a specified person, you can produce a report of all training courses which the person has attended, together with all certifications held (including the periods of validity).

Tasks and Reminders

A task (or reminder) is automatically created whenever a Due Date, a Reminder Date or a Review Date is specified within OSH At Work.

Each task is associated with a particular person who is to ensure that the task is completed.

When tasks are displayed in the Tasks Viewer, or in printed reports, they can be limited to:

• tasks due today, or in any specified period;
• tasks to be completed by a particular person;
• tasks of a particular type (eg notifications); or
• a combination of these.

Printed reports can show full details of tasks, or just a summary listing.

The setup options allow OSH At Work to be configured to display tasks each time the program is started. A task should never be overlooked again!

OSH At Work schedules all these tasks and reminders:

• Incident and Hazard Investigations
• Incident and Hazard Notifications
• Corrective Actions
• Doctor's Appointments
• Re-Certifications Due
• Scheduled Courses
• Personnel Reviews
• Vaccinations
• To Dos.

Email

All reports in OSH At Work can be emailed.

This includes incident and hazard reports, corrective action summaries, task reminders, and so on.

So, for instance, you could:

• email a report summarising outstanding tasks to a member of staff; or
• email an incident report to the affected person's supervisor, etc.

Security

To get into any OSH At Work data you need a valid logon name and password (assuming that a password has been set).

The system administrator can create individual logon names but it is also possible for users to share one if required.

In addition to simply controlling logon there are a number of security levels in OSH At Work which can be used to limit access to various areas of the data. eg You might restrict access to health details for instance.

Installing the OSH At Work data file on a secure server and assigning appropriate file access permissions via the server operating system can enhance the security provided via MS-Access.