Do you have an implemented digital environmental, health and safety (EHS) system and want to know how it’s performing? Do you want to identify opportunities to more effectively use your EHS system? A simple high level diagnostic check on your implemented system can provide you with helpful insights. If you’re wondering where to start, take a look at the list below for some ideas. You should pick and choose the items that make sense for your digital EHS system.
Diagnostic Health Checks
- Interview or survey end users. Structured interviews can provide insights that a survey cannot.
- Ask about challenges they face using the system in their day-to-day work.
- Ask about what features they appreciate and why.
- How many times does an administrator need to get involved in system updates?
- Administrators might be changing data within records, changing workflow status, etc.
- How many times should data be entered directly into the system but instead is manually entered afterwards or reported another way?
- How many records are incomplete or not fully processed through the workflow that should be completed?
- If applicable, how many records are past their due date, but the record has not been completed or date has not been updated?
- How many completed records are missing data that should have been required or completed?
- Have any tables not had any new records added in two or more years? You can use this to know if you:
- Potentially no longer need to pay for a software license.
- Are no longer collecting information you thought you were.
- Potentially your workflows have changed over time to make these tables no longer necessary.
- How many and which users are accessing the system?
- If your users are not using the system as planned, changing the number of users can save on licensing costs.
- How many functions/tasks for the system are only done or known by one person, such as adding new users?
- This can indicate an issue with institutional knowledge which could be addressed by documenting processes or training additional administrators.
- Evaluate how you are using the data to produce internal or external reporting. Are you spending significant amounts of time exporting and formatting data?
- If so, you might want to consider some reporting improvements such as a connection to a business intelligence (BI) tool to increase system automation and reduce manual work.
You can implement a health check by reviewing the high-level list above, selecting the items that make sense for your tool, and performing these simple checks on how the system is operating. You can also work with the ALL4 team to develop a health check plan that is customized to your operation and implementation or create dashboard(s) to visualize health checks.
If you would like to discuss more about EHS systems, please contact our team, including Phillip Greene at pgreene@all4inc.com or 610-422-1148 and Julie Taccino at jtaccino@all4inc.com or 281-201-1247.
