How to Manage Health and Safety at Universities with Office 365
Health and safety is crucial for any organization, but especially for universities. They face many hazards and risks, such as lab experiments, field trips, equipment maintenance, and campus security. Effective health and safety management can prevent accidents, injuries, and illnesses, and ensure legal and ethical compliance.
Universities usually have a licence for Microsoft Office 365 and by exploiting its amazing potential you can improve safety and efficiency dramatically. Let us show how you can do this for free.
How to use SharePoint
Office 365 includes SharePoint, a platform that can improve your workflows, communication, and collaboration. With SharePoint you can:
create a risk log to document and manage risks throughout the university. You can use a template or customize your own.
store and share health and safety forms, checklists, risk assessments, and policies with your team and stakeholders. You can also automate notifications and approvals.
provide online training and guidance on health and safety topics, such as fire safety, manual handling, and risk assessment. You can create and deliver courses, quizzes, and certificates.
prepare for and respond to emergencies with a crisis management site. You can use the Microsoft template or customize it to your needs. The site has features such as a news feed, a dashboard, a document library, a chatbot, and a crisis response team.
SharePoint has many advantages over other tools for health and safety management. It is flexible, secure, compliant, and collaborative. You can access it from any device, anywhere, anytime. You do not even need a licence, and you can use a QR code to go straight to a Microsoft Form.
How to use MS Forms to reduce admin
Forms in Office 365 is a tool that allows you to create and share online surveys, quizzes, and polls. With MS Forms, you can:
conduct risk assessments on mobile devices
manage incidents ensuring they are communicated to the right teams and management and providing root cause analysis and corrective action follow-up.
collect feedback from employees, students, or customers about their health and safety concerns, satisfaction, or suggestions.
evaluate the knowledge and skills of your staff or students on health and safety topics, such as fire safety, manual handling, or risk assessment.
Presenting data with Power BI
The data collected by Forms can be connected to Power BI, a tool that allows you to create and share interactive reports and dashboards. You can use Power BI to analyse and visualize the data from Forms in various ways, such as:
creating charts, tables, maps, or gauges to show the trends, patterns, or distribution of your health and safety data.
creating key performance indicators (KPIs), goals, or alerts to measure and monitor your health and safety performance or compliance.
Connecting data from Forms to Power BI
You can connect the data from MS Forms to Power BI in different ways, depending on how you create and store your Forms. For example, if you:
create your Forms directly in SharePoint or OneDrive, you can use the Excel connector in Power BI to connect to the Excel file that stores the responses from Forms.
create your Forms directly in Forms.office.com, you can use the Web connector in Power BI to connect to the API that provides the responses from Forms.
want to stream the data from Forms to Power BI in real time, you can use Power Automate to create a flow that sends the responses from Forms to a streaming dataset in Power BI.
Slashing admin with Power Automate
You can also use Power Automate to automate various tasks related to health and safety and facilities management at universities. For example:
notify different teams depending on the details of an incident submission.
book car park spaces using a form accessed via a QR code and or a MS Form. The process will alert the Reception team the availability of the car park request include an approval stage and provide confirmation of the booking.
automate campus screening and notification. You can check for COVID-19 symptoms and exposure, and provide guidance on whether the person can enter the campus or not. The tool can also send notifications to the relevant authorities if someone fails the screening or needs further assistance.
manage holiday requests and approvals: Power Automate can send an automated request to a manager when an employee requests leave, and then notify the employee of the manager’s response. This can save time and reduce errors in managing leave records.
How to Enhance Your Health and Safety Management with Other Tools
Microsoft 365 is a great tool for health and safety management at universities, but it may not cover all your needs. You may need other tools to provide on-boarding and refresher training, manage the training matrix, and design detailed risk assessments, for example. You may already have these tools, or you may want to explore the best options.
We are experts in what is available and how to integrate it with Microsoft 365. We can help you find the best solution for your needs and budget. Contact us for a free consultation and let us help you improve your health and safety management at universities.