You wouldn’t put paper near a fire, so why would you use paper-based processes to document safety policies near electrical sites with fire hazards and live wires? While this is logical, you may be surprised to learn that a lot of companies in construction and utilities still use paper-based forms, especially when it comes to documenting activities in the field. 

This is not to say that these organizations’ systems are entirely paper based. The reality is that several technology solutions are often in place because digital transformation is an iterative process. Arguably, the more established the company, the longer the digital transformation takes, leaving many organizations in a middle stage of legacy systems, paper-based processes, and modern technology. 

This mix of digital and paper processes creates unnecessary complexity in rolling out policies, documenting jobsite activities, and getting a bigger picture view of employee and company performance. Meanwhile, best practices that have yet to be fully digitized, and a lack of consistent digital skills across the organization can drive up the cost of technology. And the benefits of digital transformation remain elusive.

The consequences of a slow-moving and disjointed digital transformation can be far-reaching, and nowhere are they more critical than employee safety, especially for workers in potential hazardous environments.

Three considerations for improving safety culture through digital transformation

Keeping employees safe requires an understanding of the environments where work is happening and the processes and policies in place to protect people while on the job. When building a safety-forward culture, a recognition of the relationship between factors like climate change, aging infrastructures, and inconsistent documentation and dissemination of lessons learned is critical. A complete analysis and assessment of current safety policies, alongside an entire company’s approach to reducing risks, provides a deeper understanding of the most critical requirements for improving safety culture. Adding technology systems on top of that foundation can help in the creation and automation of repeatable processes and best practices that can be shared throughout the company. Additionally, you can create opportunities to tap data insights for predictive analytics to get ahead of potential accidents, sharing that data to inform team “Toolbox Talks” and trainings for employees.

Consider these three elements when looking to transform your own approach to safety:

Start with the culture. You can post safety regulations, host training sessions, and reinforce the rules every time a crew goes into the field, but those actions must be reinforced through policies and processes inside a larger safety culture. A true safety culture extends beyond the presence of an onsite safety officer or representative, or a sign posted at the job site; instead, it must be accessible to, and owned, by every employee and embodied as an ethos that governs and guides job performance every day. While you can anecdotally point to employees that embrace a safety culture, it is better to make it consistent throughout the company, accessible through EOTI forms in a platform or accessible via QR codes in the trailer or on the site, ensuring everyone has access to policies regardless of role or location. You can then measure progress by capturing digital data from the field and across business functions to spot trends and reward positive behaviors.

Reinforce using digitize processes. Through the safety evaluation process, it’s not unusual to discover a mix of digital and paper-based forms being used by various teams throughout the company. The lack of consistent, readily available information can make it difficult to get a big picture view of what is happening and be able to hone lead indicators of potential safety gaps. 

For this reason, a work management platform makes sense because it enables a company to centralize and share all its safety policies, processes, templates, forms, and more. Ideally, using a low/no code platform makes it easier to quickly digitize processes, create new or improve existing forms, and integrate information from anywhere. 

For example, instead of simply digitizing a paper form, you can easily include a purpose and explanation for a new safety policy. Presenting this insight from a company, client, and legal perspective educates and reinforces your company’s safety culture. The digitization also creates an opportunity to collect digital signatures and confirm the employee understands the purpose of the form. Along with increasing awareness of safety and easing compliance requirements, this eliminates the data risks of relying solely on paper-based forms.

Use data to identify improvement that leads to positive change. Consistent data offers the ability to leverage predictive analytics, conducting short- and long-term analysis for immediate jobsite needs and documenting progress over time. Capturing information in an electronic form is one way to eliminate gaps in data collection and analysis; when the forms are available to anyone and easy to create, edit and complete, it inspires employees to make positive suggestions for improvement by giving them the power to document, in real time, what they see on a job site.

Ultimately, this can lead to a high volume of forms. Again, these are best managed on a work management platform. By centralizing forms, you can spot trends based on employees’ on-site observations, including near-misses and hazards, and use those observations and risk assessments captured in that data to educate before an incident occurs.  

Since employees have a greater understanding of the safety importance of each task and a safety-based culture encourages them to speak up to improve safety for all, it leads to more shared insights. Those insights become actionable because they can be based on trend data across geographies, employee roles, job functions, and more. Further, the insights can be integrated with site risk assessments, compliance data, and other risk categories to gain a better understanding of all safety risks for proactive intervention.

Data and insights reduce safety risks and formalize best practices

Digital transformation often begins with eliminating paper-based systems, digitizing processes, and integrating information onto a work management platform. However, the best place to start is with an assessment of the safety processes and corporate culture.

Utility providers and construction companies that adopt this approach to their digital transformation create an opportunity to redefine their company’s safety culture, improve their ability to identify and respond to potential risks, and more easily document and share compliance records. In turn, this can potentially reduce public liability insurance premiums and create templates that can be replicated in other offices. And, most importantly, promote a safety culture that keeps every employee, everywhere, safe.