California SB 553: How Can Technology Help Your Company Comply?

Workplace violence is a pressing concern for employers and employees across the U.S. A recent survey revealed that almost one in four employees has witnessed an incident of workplace violence against another employee in the last five years. And nearly a third of respondents haven’t received workplace violence training, revealing a large gap in safety planning and preparedness that leaves companies and their workers vulnerable.

The state of California is poised to take the lead in cultivating a safety-first mindset by requiring companies to take proactive steps to prevent workplace violence. On September 30, 2023, Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill (SB) No. 553 into law, which mandates that virtually all California employers implement a comprehensive workplace violence prevention plan by July 1, 2024. At a high level, the law requires California employers to:

• Implement a workplace violence prevention plan.
• Maintain a log of violent incidents.
• Conduct annual training for employees on how to identify and avoid workplace violence.
• Provide access to violence prevention plans, vulnerability assessments and reports of violent incidents to keep employees informed and safe.

In addition to ensuring compliance with the new CA SB 553 law, building employer/employee trust and organization-wide situational awareness requires fast, accurate and reliable communications as part of any workplace violence prevention plan. Mass notification technology streamlines the process to not only ensure compliance with the law, but also lets your employees know their safety is your priority.

Alerting Technology: Foundational to Employee Safety

According to the 2023 OnSolve Global Risk Impact Report, 93 percent of CEOs believe technology would help them protect their employees and operations. However, only 26 percent of CEOs reported having invested in technology for that purpose.

There are many ways alerting technology can keep you connected with your people to help keep them safe. From day-to-day operational communications to crisis response, organizations can use OnSolve capabilities to gain compliance with certain elements within CA SB 553 including:

• “See something, say something” reporting tools
• Response team activation
• Mass group alerting to impacted individuals
• Reporting for post-event audits

Below are some of the safety features OnSolve offers to make it easier for organizations to protect employees:

LookOut: An alerting feature for reporting incidents people encounter while on the job. Employees are empowered to “see something, say something” when they encounter suspicious activity, persons or objects. When an incident is reported, it triggers a notification to a pre-determined group/response team who can view all active/inactive LookOut incidents, and assess and escalate the situation.

SOS: Connects traveling or offsite employees with emergency services while simultaneously notifying the organization. The individual activates an SOS that connects them directly to whatever emergency services they need. Meanwhile, the organization is notified about the SOS so they can monitor the person’s status via an interactive map. Organizations can define who employees contact when triggering an SOS, whether that’s an internal emergency service (like a GSOC) or the local emergency services at their location.

Check-In: A self-reporting feature people can use to submit their location at any time. Traveling staff can check in at a given destination (conference, event, customer meeting, etc.) via a dashboard to ensure they receive alerts for the area in which they’re geographically located.

Life Check: A lone-worker safety feature that allows people to set a countdown timer for a designated set of time before an SOS is activated. This provides truck drivers, factory workers, service technicians, social workers or anyone traveling or working offsite in a remote location with technology to help keep them safe.

Organizations can also use OnSolve technology to disseminate sensitive workplace violence documents, including vulnerability assessments, training documents and reports of violent incidents. Sharing these documents in a secure environment is critical and informs people on how to take proper precautions or actions during an incident.

Your people need to trust that you care about their well-being. The first step in doing that is training and education. Your people need to be informed and knowledgeable about the safety procedures and capabilities available to them to improve safety and communications.

Want to talk to one of our specialists on CA SB 553? Contact Johnny Campbell to set up some time with one of our Solution Engineering experts!

The information provided on this blog post does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice; instead, all information, content, and materials available on this site are for general informational purposes only. Information on this blog post may not constitute the most up-to-date legal or other information. This blog post contains links to other third-party websites. Such links are only for the convenience of the reader, user or browser.

https://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/100726-california-sb-553-how-can-technology-help-your-company-comply