In 2019, a staggering 2.8 million people suffered a workplace injury, and 5,333 workers died on the job, an average of 15 deaths every day. Outside the very real human cost of suffering, companies pay out millions each year in fines, legal fees and increased insurance premiums.
“Boots on the ground” safety professionals are often all too familiar with these tragedies. Responsible for reporting safety data, complying with regulations, and reducing risks and incidents, you know first-hand the complex challenges of managing safety in potentially dangerous situations.
While danger can never be fully eliminated from certain industries, rigorous safety reporting helps you minimize risk and protect your employees. And a safety professional who prioritizes data-driven, streamlined reporting will be able to identify problems before tragedy strikes again.
The value of thorough safety reporting
Even as safety measures and inspection procedures vary from project to project, reporting accurate and thorough safety data remains a consistent, and critical, part of the job.
Bound to various levels of compliance, safety professionals are obligated to follow best practices when it comes to collecting and reporting data. Wide-reaching OSHA standards, as well as state and local regulations, must be consistently observed, and failure to do so, even for common violations, is costly. Outside government bodies, as a safety manager, you are also responsible for compliance with any specific safety measures demanded by a business client. At all levels, safety reporting is the key to compliance, and compliance both avoids regulatory violations and prevents workplace injuries.
This includes:
Compliance: By documenting the details of every inspection.
Awareness: To inform managers when an issue is reported.
Remediation: To track what needs to be fixed, and proof that it’s been handled.
Analysis: To find areas for improvement as well as demonstrate the value of your safety program.
But an established, data-driven safety posture makes great business sense too. Thorough safety reporting very clearly communicates to insurers that safety is prioritized and measures are consistently followed, which actively keeps your EMR and insurance rates low. The advantage goes beyond immediate cost savings, too, boosting your reputation and your chances to win contracts, attract talent, secure financing and, ultimately, grow your business.
The challenges of an outdated paradigm
Despite the digital revolution, safety managers are often stuck with “old tech,” using pen, paper, and convoluted spreadsheets to do the most important part of their job: collecting, analyzing and sharing vast amounts of safety data. As the foundation for any sound safety program, data shouldn’t be trapped in another century.
As the amount of data you need increases, inefficiency and errors compound exponentially. Each different type of report requires a different action: Someone needs to send it to the compliance officer, someone has to email the manager (likely with a scanned attachment for context), someone needs to enter the data into a spreadsheet so someone else can upload it into an analysis tool.
With hard-copied, written data, following even simple reporting standards can be exhausting. And if your company is growing or is spread out across different sites or field teams or districts, managing projects becomes more complex, and the influx of data can become overwhelming quickly.
But when you digitize the inspection process, every facet of your safety reporting is transformed. One digital inspection record can contain all the information that compliance officers, managers, and remediation teams need, and be easily shared with other programs for analysis.
What’s more, digitizing these processes results in fewer transcription errors and delays, which means you get faster and better-quality data. (And no more forms lost to coffee spills or a sudden gust of wind.)
Safety reporting for the 21st century
Fulcrum is a mobile data collection and workflow automation platform purposefully built to tackle these challenges and help the modern HSE manager improve safety, ensure compliance and streamline all these different types of reporting.
Without coding, Fulcrum’s user-friendly app builder enables you to transform old paper checklists into fully functional mobile apps with a few clicks and easily modify them with the drag-and-drop interface until you get exactly what you need. When you’re ready to hit the field, anyone on your team with a smartphone or tablet can start collecting data, and Fulcrum’s versatility adapts to the everyday challenges faced by all safety professionals.
Once collected, all your safety data lives in one place, always up to date and easily accessible for analysis. Automatic geotagging of every record in Fulcrum gives you full visibility over all your projects in real time.
Zoom in on the map to make on-the-spot safety decisions. Zoom out to get a more complete picture of your company’s overall safety posture. Analyze data patterns to reveal new opportunities for training, improvements or corrective actions.
And you can share data directly from the platform in a variety of formats, so you can quickly and easily update stakeholders or demonstrate safety compliance to insurers, clients or regulatory agencies.
Fulcrum’s no-code platform allows you to collect, share and analyze the exact data you need. And its workflow automation capability makes reporting easy, so you can spend less time on administrative tasks and more time improving safety.
Join us for a webinar with Safety & Health Magazine and two leading safety experts on April 28 to learn more strategies for making data-driven decisions to mitigate today’s mitigating health & safety risks.