As one of the most highly regulated sectors in the world, the oil and gas industry requires you to ensure that employees are compliant to meet legal obligations, protect lives, and maintain operational efficiency. With high-risk environments, strict compliance requirements, and safety-critical roles, managing a workforce in this demanding environment is no small task.
Compliance requirements vary widely by position, but many jobs require OSHA training, pre-employment drug screening, health examinations, and respiratory fit testing. For HR teams, managing such a wide range of credentials across a distributed workforce can quickly become overwhelming. This task becomes even more difficult because many employees are in remote or offshore locations.
The stakes are high. Non-compliance exposes your company to legal and financial risks and increases the likelihood of workplace accidents, injuries, and operational disruptions. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), safety and compliance violations can result in penalties for your organization reaching tens of thousands of dollars, or even as much as $81.3 million, as was the case for BP Products North America Inc. (OSHA, 2024).
In this whitepaper, you’ll learn how to ensure your workforce is compliant, healthy, and safe. We’ll also explore how BlueHive can help you leverage employee health data to simplify compliance tracking, avoid potential safety issues, and maintain peak efficiency.
Compliance Challenges in Oil and Gas
In the complex web that is compliance for the oil and gas industries, you and your team must be constantly aware of ever-changing safety, compliance, and even environmental challenges. Here are a few key issues that you may face:
- Complex and Varied Regulations: Your organization must adhere to a broad range of regulatory requirements from agencies like OSHA and the EPS and state-level agencies. These requirements often vary based on the specific location and type of operation. Certifications such as OSHA training, respiratory fit testing, and drug and alcohol screenings are just a few of the baseline requirements. (OSHA, 2024)
- Remote and Offshore Workforce: When working in the oil and gas industry, your employees often travel to or are located where the product is. This can make completing compliance items difficult in most cases and almost impossible in others. Offshore drilling platforms and remote sites, where access to health and compliance-related services is limited, require strategic planning and advanced remote tracking and scheduling tools.
- High Employee Turnover: Frequent turnover makes onboarding new hires quickly and efficiently critical. Onboarding new hires quickly and efficiently while ensuring they complete and possess all necessary certifications is vital. Missing key certifications or screenings can easily lead to delays, safety or operational risks, or regulatory penalties.
- Real-Time Compliance Monitoring: Compliance doesn’t end at onboarding but is a cycle your team must maintain throughout a worker’s employment. Your team needs a centralized system to monitor compliance requirements and employee status to ensure no deficits occur.
- Financial and Legal Risks: As mentioned earlier, OSHA violations alone can cost your company tens of thousands of dollars per violation, and repeat offenders may face even steeper penalties. This is just one of the possible outcomes of noncompliance, and your company may also face legal action or be involved in litigation stemming from an accident, which can damage your organization’s reputation and client relationships.
Workplace Compliance Management Best Practices
By implementing some best practices, your organization and your team can help ensure that you have efficient systems in place to meet the needs that compliance in the oil and gas industries requires. As always, the main goal is to streamline compliance and ensure your operations are unaffected.
- Centralize Compliance Tracking: A centralized solution can make managing your employees’ compliance status more efficient. Tracking certifications, training, vaccinations, and health screenings in a single, secure location will help reduce compliance issues and provide a single source of truth for your team. (HealthIT.gov, 2024)
- Automate Notifications and Credential Renewals: Manual compliance tracking requires discipline and can be error-prone. Automatic notifications ensure that your employees and managers are informed of expiring credentials in advance, preventing them from missing a crucial compliance deadline.
- Establish Partnerships with Health Providers: Establishing a network of reliable health providers can simplify scheduling employees for necessary screenings and evaluations. Partnering with a nationwide network can ensure compliance needs are met without delays, regardless of the employee’s location.
- Conduct Regular Compliance Audits: By implementing regular audits, your team can catch expiring credentials and identify gaps in compliance before they can cause operational disruptions or lead to penalties.
- Promote Proactive Health Initiatives: Encourage employees to participate in preventative health measures, such as vaccination or health screening clinics, and promote ergonomic interventions to lessen employee strain and potential injury. These initiatives can demonstrate your organization’s dedication to employee well-being and lead to reduced absenteeism and increased morale.
How BlueHive Supports Oil and Gas Compliance
BlueHive’s innovative platform offers multiple benefits to those in the oil and gas industries. Simplifying complex processes, enhancing efficiency, and reducing risks while helping your organization meet compliance requirements allows your team to spend less time on the minutiae and more time on strategic growth. Here’s how BlueHive can help meet your team’s compliance needs:
- Centralized Compliance Management: BlueHive’s centralized platform allows you to securely store and access employee health records, certifications, and screening results, allowing your team to review compliance statuses across roles and locations quickly.
- Automated Notifications and Tracking: BlueHive automates compliance tracking by enabling you to send timely reminders for expiring certifications, health screenings, or vaccination renewals. This allows you to ensure that your team stays compliant without the burden of manual follow-up.
- Nationwide Network of Service Providers: BlueHive connects your organization with a network of over 18,000 health and certification providers, making it easy to schedule new and existing employees for health screens and drug tests or certification exams and training. This network especially benefits remote and offshore teams, ensuring fast and convenient access to necessary services.
- Real-time Workforce Insights: With BlueHive, you gain access to real-time analytics and reporting, helping you identify potential risks long before they escalate and allowing you to be proactive in decision-making that will enhance safety and efficiency.
- HIPAA-Compliant Data Security: BlueHive safeguards sensitive employee data with robust security protocols that meet the requirements of HIPAA standards. This ensures that your organization remains protected from data breaches while maintaining employee trust.
Conclusion
Compliance is more than a requirement in the oil and gas industry; it’s critical to maintaining safety, productivity, and efficiency. By adopting proactive strategies and a software platform with innovative tools like BlueHive, you can ensure that your workforce – no matter how remote – remains compliant while your team focuses on driving growth.
BlueHive’s centralized platform, automated notifications and tracking, and nationwide provider network empower your team to stay ahead of the curve on compliance requirements and reduce administrative overload. Investing in a robust compliance solution protects your organization from costly fines and reputational damages and enhances workplace safety and employee well-being. With BlueHive, your team can streamline compliance and build a safer, more efficient, resilient workforce.
Sources:
HealthIT.gov. (n.d.). Benefits of EHRs. Retrieved December 3, 2024, from https://www.healthit.gov/topic/health-it-and-health-information-exchange-basics/benefits-ehrs
Occupational Safety and Health Administration. (n.d.). Oil and gas extraction: Standards. Retrieved December 3, 2024, from https://www.osha.gov/oil-and-gas-extraction/standards
OSHA Outreach Courses. (n.d.). OSHA enforcement cases: Lessons from significant penalties. Retrieved December 3, 2024, from https://www.oshaoutreachcourses.com/blog/osha-enforcement-cases
