Health and safety risks are ongoing concerns for any organization with field operations, particularly when teams are isolated from the home office or deployed to unfamiliar environments. When field teams don’t have the right knowledge or tools to identify and mitigate potential hazards, safety risks increase, especially if they are isolated or lack resources in emergencies.
To mitigate these risks, most organizations have health and safety programs to provide safety training and resources, including measures that range from protective equipment to emergency response plans. But to enhance safety most effectively, companies need to leverage mobile technologies. By keeping field teams always connected and updated, health and safety inspection software simplifies your team’s efforts to manage their own safety effectively in a way that improves communication, productivity, and situational awareness – all of which make a safety manager’s job easier.
In this post, we’ll look at how health and safety inspection platforms keep field teams safe, even under adverse conditions, so they always get home safely with the job well done. First, we’ll go through some of the common challenges faced by organizations as they try to ensure the safety of their field teams.
Challenges to ensuring safety for field teams
Lack of experience
Increasing on-site safety risks, inexperienced workers may not have the skills, knowledge, or expertise to identify and mitigate potential hazards, resulting in higher accident rates (for example: a whopping 60% of construction worker injuries occur in the first year on the job). This means they may either fail to properly inspect a site’s equipment or installation, be unable to respond to a safety situation at hand, or be the cause of an accident themselves.
Lack of supervision
Field teams operating independently from the home office may not adhere to the latest inspection specs and compliance standards. Without prompt and reliable supervision, these teams risk making misinformed decisions. This can compromise the safety of team members and others, both now and in the future.
Lack of communication
Communication gaps among teams lead to confusion and misunderstandings. This leaves everyone, from field teams to upper management, unprepared for potential dangers. Poor communication also hinders response to safety hazards and long-term remediation efforts.
Lack of connectivity
Without a connection, teams lack vital information. This can lead to reliance on paper methods, missing the advantages of a digital inspection program. Teams can’t monitor their environment or coordinate with headquarters on complex safety threats without data access. This results in poor situational awareness and unexpected hazards.
Lack of available field resources
If field teams discover potential hazards during inspections, they may not have the resources to mitigate them on the spot, be it specialized equipment or personnel. Even if prepared for most eventualities, conditions on the ground can change at a moment’s notice, leaving them unequipped to deal with unfolding safety issues.
Lack of visibility
Field teams may identify hazards but lack immediate resources for mitigation, like specialized equipment or personnel. Despite preparation, conditions can rapidly change, leaving them unable to address emerging safety issues.
Overcoming challenges – even without internet
Health and safety inspection software resolves challenges for EHS inspection teams and supervisors by seamlessly integrating data, tasks, and workflows. This holds true even when they are offline, offering the following benefits:
SOPs
EHS managers can customize inspection checklists with detailed SOPs and step-by-step instructions. These instructions are easy for anyone to follow, particularly for inexperienced workers. Supervisors can make real-time SOP updates to ensure correct task execution by field teams. This improves safety and compliance, reducing the necessity for revisiting the field.
Offline maps
Field teams require continuous location awareness, including specific inspection point coordinates. Health and safety inspection software enables them to download offline maps. This ensures they can reach inspection points even in remote, internet-disconnected areas to address safety risks.
Mandatory fields and multimedia uploads
Digital inspection software maintains your field team’s adherence to SOPs by including mandatory fields. These fields guarantee thorough inspections, preventing oversight of safety risks. Requirements may include taking and uploading photos or videos to demonstrate compliance or provide visual data for further risk mitigation if issues arise.
Location verification
Leveraging a mobile device’s built-in GPS, inspection software gets your team to where they need to be faster. Field teams can swiftly and effectively assess and mitigate risks when they have instant access to their inspection locations on their phones. This applies whether they are conducting overdue inspections, addressing ongoing safety risks, or proactively preventing future hazards through regular inspections.
Reference documentation
EHS managers can attach numerous reference documents and photos to records. This equips field teams with comprehensive information for safe and efficient work. It promotes thorough inspections and ensures uniformity in safety standards when the entire field team operates from the same updated data and protocols.
Digital tools for better management and better safety
Always updated. Real-time data sharing is critical to ensuring safety. In the field, when teams are disconnected on the road, they might lack up-to-date information for inspections and safety. Connected digital inspection tools allow supervisors to swiftly share updated SOPs and safety protocols with the entire team at the touch of a button.
Always monitoring. Through real-time data and automated workflows, cloud-connected platforms let managers remotely monitor field teams with ease. By tracking their progress, off-site supervisors have better visibility into both the work at hand – helping ensure compliance and timely remediation – and the wider productivity of teams, equally needed to better manage emerging safety issues and resources.
Always guiding. With full connectivity, supervisors can provide guidance should field teams need information or advice about either routine work or emergencies, especially useful for new and inexperienced employees. To assist, field teams can upload pictures and videos so that supervisors have as much data as possible to provide the best guidance.
Always timely. With instant communication, field team members can immediately share information about working conditions for off-site supervisors to assess in real-time. If further action is required, supervisors can create new records assigning remediation tasks to the on-site field team or a specialized remediation team. And with automated workflows and notifications, supervisors can track remediation efforts to ensure hazards are eliminated for good.
Software that always puts safety first
Health and safety inspection software makes field teams safer and everyone’s job easier.
Fulcrum’s digital platform offers field teams various communication and data collection tools, improving situational awareness and self-management of safety. This simplifies supervisors’ roles and provides enhanced visibility to monitor progress, support teams, and analyze safety trends with data-driven insights.
Give your field teams the tools they need to stay safe by signing up for a free trial today.