Consultancy during COVID

The Compliance People Consultant, Esther Morrissey, outlines how the Consultants continue to provide legal and management systems compliance support throughout the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.  

The Coronavirus pandemic has required most businesses to adapt and find more flexible ways of working. The Compliance People are no exception. In order to minimise risks and remain fully compliant with Government guidance, we have adapted our services to enable us to deliver all of our services either remotely, or on site (with proper precautions in place), or a hybrid of the two.

Over the past months our consultants have continued to successfully deliver high quality audits and other consultancy services. Below are the options we can currently offer:

Remote working: by making use of video conferencing, we can offer the majority of our services remotely. In addition to being ‘Covid-secure’, remote working offers a number of other advantages such as greater flexibility in time, and reduced cost for our clients for travel and accommodation.

On-site working: we understand that sometimes you still need us to come to site. We are therefore continuing to visit sites to deliver our services where we are able to, subject to government guidance and suitable ‘Covid-secure’ measures being in place.

Hybrid working: we are also able to deliver a hybrid service where we travel to site to carry out a site inspection/ audit, but then travel home and conduct the subsequent meetings/ work remotely. This has the advantage that we see the site in person, but then conduct the riskier part of the work (i.e. long face to face meetings) in a fully ‘Covid-secure’ manner.

How does a remote legal compliance audit work?  

In preparation, we’ll provide a detailed list of records and documentary evidence that we’ll need to review, based on a preliminary questionnaire and video conference call.  We’ll ask where possible that you take photos, or better yet, a video walk-about so that we can get a visual idea of the operations and activities at the site.

Video conference calls will be conducted with relevant personnel, scheduled in whatever way suits you best, to evaluate compliance against all the relevant legislation contained within the legal register.

At the end of the audit, we’ll hold a close out video conference meeting to provide an overview of our audit findings. We will then record our findings from the compliance audit into the legal register against each piece of relevant legislation, including any required compliance actions and a visual representation of your compliance status using the traffic light functionality of the Legislation Update Service.

 

We now routinely and successfully conduct remote audits and have received some great feedback from our clients:

“The remote legal compliance audit, conducted following a brief site tour, was efficient and thorough. I was impressed by the depth of knowledge of The Compliance People and the best practice advice provided to us.”  
Ritherdon  

“After years of legal and aspects audits provided by The Compliance People on site, I wasn’t quite sure how well it could be completed remotely. We used Teams to conduct the audit and aspects review. The consultant was friendly, professional and extremely efficient. I wouldn’t hesitate to complete further audits remotely.” 
Vita Comfort Middleton

What other services can you provide remotely? 

We have also been able to adapt our services to continue to deliver quality consultancy support with:

• Management systems – including internal audits and developing and reviewing environmental aspects registers and risks and opportunities.
• Environmental permitting – including help determining if a permit is required, assistance with permit applications, management plans, and guidance on what to expect from the regulator and how your organisation will be regulated.
• Training – we currently have remote training courses available on waste duty of care and environmental aspects or can design and deliver bespoke remote training tailored to your organisation, as required. This could be for an introduction to environment or health & safety legislation, Risk assessment or ISO Standards requirements (ISO 14001, 50001, 450001, 9001)

More information on the support we are able to offer can be found here.