Depending on your business, compliance means many different things. All companies should understand the importance of compliance managment to meet regulatory requirements. This also helps ensure the health and safety of your employees and customers. The company owners should be aware they are ultimatley at risk from accidents at the workplace. We often talk to customers after they had a near miss event when they realise they have to take it more seriously!

For small businesses, employees can wear many different hats to cover different responsibilities. This is nessessary due to limited resources and should be carefully managed to ensure resources are not spread too thinly. This is particularly important when staff leave along with alot of information and experience. Accidents and equipment failures can happen at any time. Having an audit trail with inspections and servicing records for each asset could prove vital to business continuity and preventing major disruption.

What is Cloud Software?

Software as a Service (SaaS) is any software application that is provided through a subscription plan and typically delivered using a web browser and/or a mobile device. The provider of the software hosts the application and users access the software by logging in through a web browser or their mobile device. This brings many benefits to the user.

The role of software in managing compliance is clear; 1. Assets that requires compliance activities should have a schedule of work with alerts and reminders when it is due. 2. The activity must be assigned to someone who is accountable for ensuring the work is completed. 3. Top level management must be able to check the system and ensure it is up to date. 4. Maintaining accurate records is essential along with reports and service sheets from 3rd parties. 5. Maintaining record offsite in a secure environment is also a consideration. For example, floods or fires destroying on-site records that might be able to prove you have met insurance obligations.

Keeping up to date with legislation and updating requirements should be performed periodically. Software can't tell you what the applicable legislation is, so someone has to review legislation and the assets of the business. This also includes buildings and safety systems such as fire alarms, fire suspression.

Smartspanner CMMS is ideal for small businesses to manage compliance tasks. It will help you meet all the requirements laid out above, with email reminders when items are due. You can even assign work to your subcontractors.

For our UK customers, if you are looking into a compliance review, we recommend to start with the HSE website. https://www.hse.gov.uk/guidance/topics.htm