Cerebos Reduce Risk with a Comprehensive Site Induction and Safety Management Solution from ComOps

Sydney, 28 February, 2013 - ComOps, a leading Australian provider of workforce management software has won a contract to extend their software within Cerebos, a successful sauce, spice and coffee manufacturer, supplying well-known brands such as  Fountain, Gravox and Toby’s Estate to the Australian and New Zealand markets.

Cerebos has been using ComOps’ sophisticated Incident Management software, Salvus, for some time. More recently, they identified that much of their processes around safety, audits, and reporting were quite convoluted, time-consuming and open to risk, due to manual and double handling. All corrective actions, audits, contractor compliance and inductions for visitors were being done manually, meaning that accurate safety and risk reporting across their five divisions was taking up to a week every month to produce.

Mariana Assandri, Safety Manager at Cerebos, said  “When I came on board, I realised we were only using the system to log incidents and nothing else. Compulsory safety reporting on KPI’s and injury frequency rates were being done manually from separate spreadsheets and involved a great deal of manipulation, which was not only very time consuming, but also very risky, so I went to market to look at available solutions.”

Assandri was after a system that could handle the whole process. She wanted a system that was not only a portal for recording incidents, but one that could facilitate incident investigations, hazard reporting and corrective actions.  “As it stands at the moment, we have cases of people not reporting injuries because of our convoluted manual process. It involves a double up in manual reporting, by both first aiders and supervisors, before investigations by team managers can even begin. Corrective actions from these investigations are then recorded in excel spreadsheets and manually assigned to Managers, who are then responsible for following up the corrective actions and updating the spreadsheet.  I myself then double check these spreadsheets every month – a very time consuming process” added Assandri.

Contractor Management was also a challenge. With many contractors coming on site every day and the only means of monitoring the certifications for these contractors being yet another spreadsheet maintained by security guards, they were exposing themselves to potential risks. There were no alerts for expired information; it was a purely manual process.

It was also identified that Cerebos needed a better process for handling site inductions. Contractors needed to be inducted to the site before entering, currently done with a simple booklet that the contractor is given to read and sign before entering. Cerebos Employees from other sites were also at risk, as they were only given corporate, not site specific, inductions.

Cerebos found that ComOps was the only solution provider in the market that could address both these issues with a comprehensive safety management solution encompassing contractor and employee site inductions.

The ComOps Salvus system will be used for safety, risk and claims management. Capturing injuries and environmental incidents through a portal then enabling corrective actions to be assigned to minimise the risks and hazards related to these events. Contractor records will be maintained in the system including certifications and their expiry details, and risk assessment tools enable better risk analysis and management. Automatic workflows then enforce responsibility and escalation processes around any time sensitive and action orientated data.

The claims management, rehabilitation and return to work modules will be used to help simplify workers compensation procedures and link this important information back to the original incident, for complete visibility into incidents and their outcomes.

Inductions will be addressed with the ComOps LearnSpace module.  A complete Learning Management solution (LMS) within itself, LearnSpace will enable contractors and visitors to electronically complete a short site induction, and once completed, the system will print a visitor pass to allow them entry on site. The ComOps eLearning team will build role appropriate custom induction pieces, ensuring that everyone receives the most suitable training before stepping on-site . The LearnSpace software then keeps an auditable record of these inductions and can also be extended out to cover any learning or training across the organisation.

According to Assandri, “It is expected that the implementation of the ComOps solution will have a huge impact on both productivity and incident rates at Cerebos.  Managers will save hours of time compiling reports each month, the integrity of our data will be assured, and with the ability to drill down into the specifics of each and every incident, management will be empowered with the information and knowledge that they need to more proactively manage safety,

“The reason that we chose the ComOps solution was that they had all of the modules that we needed, including induction. We really liked the power of the automatic workflows and alerts, which we could configure to our own business model, helping to ensure accountability and speed up the corrective action process. The system is also configured to comply with both Australian and New Zealand safety standards so we could implement it across both countries.”

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About ComOps:

With a 40 year history of delivering competitive edge through technology, ComOps’ Workforce Management Solutions are built on a simple premise: best fit, lowest price, least risk.

The company specialises in Workforce Management Solutions & Services, covering; Rostering & Scheduling, Award Interpretation, Labour Cost Management, Fatigue Risk Management, Leave Management, Time & Attendance, Employee Self-Service Portals, Workforce Analytics, Risk Management & Safety Compliance, and Learning & Development. By focusing on the three crucial areas of people, productivity and profit, our end-to-end solutions have restored millions to the bottom lines of our clients, made entire workforces more productive and also bullet-proofed businesses against future risk.

ComOps solutions are used by some of the world’s most recognised global brands; Toshiba, the Hyatt Group, Sara Lee, Bundaberg Brewed Drinks, Melbourne & Olympic Parks Trust, RailCorp, QUBE Logistics, BHP Billiton Iron Ore, DP World, Queensland Department of Public Works, City of Melbourne, and Tasmanian Fire Services to name just a few.

ComOps is a Microsoft Gold Partner, is ISO 9001:2008 Quality Accredited and Government Endorsed.