In a recent poll we asked EHS professionals: what is your biggest barrier to collecting accurate EHS data? The clear winner was “cultural barriers to data entry” followed by “training of data collectors” which received 39% and 30% of the vote respectively. Culture is a word that is commonly used in the EHS industry and building a safety culture is often a focus of EHS professionals.

So, what is data accuracy? Data accuracy is one of the “six dimensions” of data quality and it can be defined as the “degree to which the data correctly describes the ‘real world’ objects being described.” This definition makes it easy to see how poor data accuracy could greatly impact your ability to use your data effectively.

Make sure you protect your organization when implementing technology that collects data from your workers. Data security is imperative, now more than ever.

Many companies starting their data analytics journey make the mistake of skipping the data cleaning process all together. None of us want to see how the sausage is made, we just want the bratwurst to magically appear. But as we have seen over, and over, insightful analytics cannot be achieved with poor data quality.

The data “will speak for itself.” If you have spent any time in the data analytics world you have heard this phrase thrown around. But is it true?

Manufacturing leaders know that people and processes are most productive when safety, compliance and operational objectives align. Some people used to fear that focusing too much on environment, health and safety would undermine productivity.

Back in 2015 I had a widow-maker heart attack. That near-death event focused attention on my heart health, particularly when I push to physical extremes during mountain backpacking.