Hochland Poland has been working on the SAP HR system since 2006. The implementation was a roll-out of an HR and payroll solution from the German headquarters. It was carried out in cooperation with BCC (currently All for one Poland). Since then, the Polish branch of the concern has also been using the SAP HR user support service under the BCC application service.
The company focuses on efficiency and quality of work not only in cheese production, but also in all other business areas. At Hochland, great importance is attached to making the most of the potential of its IT systems and the standard functionalities that these tools offer. The company also appreciates solutions that extend the standard functionalities of the SAP HR system, which contribute to saving time and money with little effort.
At the beginning of 2010, Hochland Polska launched the e-Declarations solution in SAP HR, allowing tax forms to be sent electronically, and since February 2011 the company has been using Health and Safety Support in SAP HR. Both of these tools are available as part of the BCC offering – proprietary products that, at a small cost, allow the company to increase the efficiency of using SAP systems.
Handling health and safety in SAP HR
Recording accidents at work and compiling the required documentation is a legal obligation of the employer. The handling of health and safety processes is particularly important in companies with a large number of employees in positions where statistically the probability of an accidental event occurring during work is higher. These are primarily retail chains, companies with large warehouses and, of course, manufacturing companies in virtually all industries.
Hochland Poland employs about 1,000 people. With such a large number of employees, managing health and safety documentation and periodic reporting requires a lot of work for the company. A company that wants to monitor and work to improve workplace safety first needs comprehensive, reliable and off-the-shelf information.
An extension of the standard SAP HR functionality for health and safety, launched by BCC at Hochland, makes it possible to handle these processes in the SAP HR system. Accident documentation is created using master data from SAP and has an analogous structure to HR documentation. As a result, employee data in accident documentation is always up-to-date and consistent with other HR documentation.
At Hochland Polska, three health and safety inspectors, one at each of the production plants, are responsible for collecting accident documentation. The H&S inspectors in Wegrow and Baranow are responsible for the documentation at their respective plants, and therefore have the authority in the system to manage the accident records of the workers at those plants. The inspector at the Kazmier plant, in addition to administering “his" documentation, also serves as the tool’s main administrator, which means access to all data. Access permissions have been defined in accordance with security requirements.
Agnieszka Czekalska, HR Information Systems Coordinator, Hochland Polska
For health, safety and HR professionals
Hochland Poland is a company where we try to make full use of the resources we have, and as far as is reasonable, we develop further functionalities. Accident handling in SAP HR is a very flexible, fully customized solution that has not only allowed us to facilitate the work of health and safety specialists, but also the work of HR and payroll staff. Of course, the tool in itself will not eliminate accidents, but having the ability to easily monitor risks, we will try to reduce them to a minimum.Agnieszka Czekalska, HR Information Systems Coordinator, Hochland Polska
Event registration
When registering a new event, the health and safety inspector selects the appropriate type of accident on the screen and creates a new entry in the system. The application allows registering all types of events required by the legislator: accidents at work, on the way to and from work, treated on a par with accidents at work, near-misses, and contractor accidents.
Then, the next screen presents all information about the incident and the injured party. Basic employee information, organizational assignment and contact information are pulled from SAP HR.
After registering the event, the inspector proceeds to enter the details in the following tabs of the application.
In the individual items of the tree are recorded:
- Accident data (including classification according to CSO codes, days of incapacity, whether the incident involved a juvenile);
- data for the protocols of explanations of the injured party, information obtained from the witness and the protocol for determining the circumstances and causes of the accident;
- data for the statistical accident card (this information will then be used to generate Z-KW);
- post-accident orders,
- Other documents (e.g., N-9 printout, application for compensation, letters, applications, disability certificates),
- annotations and attachments (e.g., photographs of the scene, descriptions of the circumstances and location of the accident).
The tool allows you to create any number of annotations and allows you to format text, as well as add attachments (photos, scanned documents). Each can be annotated with a user comment of unlimited length.
If necessary, for example, when new circumstances or causes of the accident are established, it is possible to change the data, while maintaining the previous version of the documents.
Przemysław Sikora, Health and Safety Specialist, Hochland Poland
Szyfaster, because with SAP HR
The biggest change “on the plus side" after the implementation of the Health and Safety module is the time saving associated with searching for employee data necessary for entering into post-accident documentation. All you have to do is select the name of the accident victim or witness from the list, and all the necessary information will be retrieved automatically. I estimate that accident handling time is reduced by 30-40%.
Time is also saved in obtaining information about incidents that occurred at another plant – management is centralized. A great convenience is the way of entering data into the statistical accident card (Z-KW) – the data required in the card are entered by selecting the relevant entry from drop-down lists.
The management of preventive examinations has also been automated. First of all, the application, at the user’s command, generates a list of persons whose periodic examinations expire in a preset period. For these people, and on the basis of previously entered definitions of exposures in the context of a given workplace, it is possible to quickly generate referrals for appropriate examinations.Przemysław Sikora, Health and Safety Specialist, Hochland Poland
Statistical accident report, IWA and more
In addition to adding notes, the solution provides the ability to print documents: the protocol of the injured party’s explanation and information obtained from the witness, the protocol for determining the circumstances and causes of the accident, the statistical accident card, the post-accident order, the cover letter to the Social Insurance Institution, as well as notifications to the prosecutor’s office and the State Labor Inspectorate.
It is important that the printouts of the protocol for determining the circumstances and causes of the accident and the statistical accident card retain the form prescribed by the relevant regulations. Thanks to this, reporting to authorities (CSO, ZUS) required by law is much easier, and the preparation of documents takes less time.
Reports and reminders
The solution also provides reports to monitor the number of accidents by plant or organizational unit.
Another report illustrates accidents by grade according to the CSO classification (light, severe, fatal).
The solution’s architecture also allows the creation of custom reports, using ad hoc tools. At Hochland Poland, the most commonly prepared reports are accident statistics by employee group or organizational assignment.
A great advantage of the solution is its friendly and intuitive operation. All information concerning a given accident is sorted and presented in a clear form on successive screens, which affects the ergonomics of the work of health and safety inspectors. For employees responsible for correspondence with authorities and monitoring of accident statistics, access to complete and up-to-date documentation in one place and support in filling out Z-KW is a great convenience.
As an additional functionality, management of referral for periodic preventive examinations has also been implemented in Hochland Polska. The expiration date of the examination is stored in the employee data, and 40 days before the deadline the system sends a reminder message to the administrator.
Safe workplace
A health and safety records management application in the SAP HR system will not by itself improve workplace safety. However, online access to information about hazardous incidents in the company and the ability to report them in the required dimensions allows better monitoring of accidents and identification of particularly dangerous places. Information that a particular workstation or traffic route, for example, has a statistically higher risk of an accident is the first step to improving workplace safety at the company.
As is well known, the number of accidents at work has a direct impact on the premium paid to the Social Security. In large companies, even a slight improvement in accident statistics can translate into a significant reduction in the accident premium.
Health and safety in SAP HR
- Integration with HR module
- Always up-to-date employee data
- All documentation in one place
- Saving time
- Full support for printouts and forms
- Friendly user interface
- Flexible reporting with ad hoc tool
- Easy configuration and administration of the module
- Comprehensive handling of authorization and entitlements
- Indirect effect on the reduction of the accident premium