Management of employee rights

Paper permits vs E-permits

Are paper permits better than E-permits?

A careful analysis of the process and the outflow that the use of paper work permits brings to the average workday gives an idea of what progress might look like. Technology-assisted tools are now available that completely transform the process.

Statement of costs – profit and loss – is the only way to break out of the shackles of bureaucracy. Year after year, many repetitive processes that can already be automated still remain in their original form. They shape the workday of many engineers and industry professionals. The introduction of progress is often seen in terms of cost. The return on such an investment should come in a short time.

Much also depends on the company’s own policies and mechanisms for implementing change.

Consider the organizational inertia and the vicious cycle of excess tasks that bureaucracy itself generates. Maintaining a process of paper permits as well as many other processes is so deeply tied to the work culture that it is hard to imagine doing without them. Interrupting work on projects is normal. All it takes is one phone call from subcontractors and you have to rearrange your priorities and get on with printing the paper, filling it out, interrupting the work on projects for other people occurring in the process. All this in order to deliver a document to the site of the work in progress, which will have to be disposed of by someone in a few hours.

If we were to analyze the real value that paper forms bring to the workplace where the work is carried out, by an outside company or maintenance workers, we might even find it negative.

The paper is often very dirty, crumpled and soaked in oil. Signatures and initials left by employees, on various substrates, on tables, machines, or on the knee would be hard for a graphologist to identify. The need to identify the hazards and risks associated with working in a specific location is only analyzed in greater depth in particularly dangerous places. Nonetheless, permits cover all work – even work that will take less time in total than the entire process of organizing permits to carry it out.

Communication in the process also leaves much to be desired.

Moving around the plant, one can meet many colleagues and work acquaintances. The more time the moving process takes, the more time is spent in short conversations with people we pass. The worst aspect nowadays is receiving dozens of phone calls during the working day. Most of these calls in an industrial environment involve communicating with people who are a few (sick!) to tens of meters away from us. We interrupt ourselves by putting the hot need that is important now in the foreground. The strength of this need is quite understandable – if I wait for permission then I won’t do the assigned work on time. Without a permit, no one can do any work. The process of issuing permits for work therefore has a very high priority. It occurs several to dozens of times during the working day on a typical industrial plant such as Automotive or Energy.

InnerWeb is progress in a completely different direction. It allows us to take a step back and completely remodel our approach and the course of our workday. The rapid implementation of E-permissions gives savings and benefits from information that was not accessible before.