3 Signs Safety Software Might Be The Solution For You
Safety software is a relatively new solution to an old problem. Have you ever thought to yourself, there has got to be a better way to stay complaint with safety regulations? Do you ever get frustrated that you have to fill out so many assessments and statements on paper. Do you find yourself missing things in your assessments because you are worried that it’s not in the right format?
These are just some of the frustrations that come with the process of staying compliant with safety regulations. It can have significant effects on your safety culture if you find the process of safety too difficult. If you have ever ran into any of the above, it might be time to consider finding a solution before it becomes too much of a headache that safety goes out the window and all your effort is spent just to be compliant.
In this article we will cover in depth 3 signs that it might be time to consider utilizing safety software before your safety is ignored for compliance.
You’re worried about compliance incase of an incident
Running a business is no easy task. It’s like juggling 10 things at once. When things are going well, it’s a great feeling. But it only takes one slip up or incident to cause everything to come crumbling down. The stress and anxiety of a WHS incident happening in your business is enough to keep anyone up at night. On top of that, if you know you might get slapped with a fine after the incident you’ll always be stressed or worse, you’ll delay reporting an incident. This can lead to huge fines and even jail time. No one wants that.
Safety compliance in the modern day is no simple task. There are a lot of regulations and legislation that you must adhere to in your day to day business. This can become quite a headache and adds to the stress of making sure you have ticked all the boxes. Or worse, leads you to ignoring your requirements and hoping that an incident doesn’t occur. As we have covered in a previous article, incidents happen to even the best of employers who are proactive with safety, its simply the reality of probability. If there is a chance, eventually it will happen.
Ask yourself this. If there was an incident at your workplace tomorrow and it lead to an inspection, would you be confident you would pass? Have you got a solid and refined risk assessment process in place to identify, assess and control risks in your workplace?
If the answer is not a confident yes then it might be time to look at solutions. Safety software like our platform SafeWorkPro allows you to focus on your process more while making the document compliance side of things a worry of the past. While SafeWorkPro won’t solve all of your safety worries, it will help you be more effective with your time so you can spend less time filling out forms and more time focusing on the actions that lead to a safer workplace. We have talked about how your process is more important than your documents in a previous article. In the eyes of the law, the concern is about what you actually do to keep people safe.
If you want to spend more time on safety and less time on the books, then safety software might be the solution for you.
Safety software makes documentation simple and easy
How long does it take you to complete a risk assessment from start to finish? What about a SWMS? Do you find it difficult to complete documents because of all the back and forth that is required between the site, office and in between your workers? If your documentation process is top notch and you have no issues with filling out lengthy paper documents then this might not apply to you. But for those that get frustrated with how much time away from work they have to take to complete documents, this one might be for you.
When the bottle neck for starting a job is the paperwork you need to complete for safety compliance it can become frustrating. It can sometimes feel like too much time is being wasted on paperwork when you could be working. This can lead to rushing through it which defeats its purpose. It also means that you are more likely to skip the processes that really matter to keep people safe.
If you are on a site that needs a SWMS and something changes that requires you to re-evaluate your SWMS, the process starts again and the tools are down until it is done. With safety software, the process of completing documentation is significantly easier. In principle, it is the same but in practice you’re saving time that would otherwise be spent filling a document and running around to get it signed. SafeWorkPro’s simple form based builder allows you to build custom documents which are super simple for your workers to complete on site when needed.
Save the hassle of the back and forth trying to get your documents read and signed by those on site. Have workers fill and sign documents from anywhere on site and have them submitted to the cloud for you to review from any location. SafeWorkPro even lets you get notifications when certain actions happen like a risk rating on a risk assessment matrix being too high or an incident is submitted. SafeWorkPro can help you save time on compliance and let’s you focus on what you do best.
Safety software helps you find old documents quick
Ask yourself this, can you find your risk assessment or SWMS from a job 2 years ago? If you were audited, could you produce it? This is something that isn’t obvious until it is an issue and by then it’s too late. How much of an impact on your day to day operations would a surprise audit have? Would you need to go digging through the back office folders to find the documents required? What a headache!
Even while you are on site, your documents like a SWMS need to be available for everyone to see. While they are there, they are likely to get damaged or degraded by weather. Sometimes, by the time they get stored for safe keeping they are almost falling apart.
With the safety of cloud document storage, SafeWorkPro can store all of your important documents online forever. With all of your documents in one place and neatly organized it’s super simple to find the documents you need, even if they are from years ago. Our software also makes audits quick and easy with next to no disruption in your operations. Export all of the data from your SafeWorkPro site for review without having to spend hours digging through folders, photocopying and physically delivering documents.
Conclusion
If any part of this article resonates with you, it might be time to consider trying out a better solution to using a manual safety process. Beyond just the convenience, SafeWorkPro can help you focus your time on the actions that truly make people safe, not just the actions that make you compliant. At the end of the day, that is what you will be judged on if you have an audit or investigation. Documentation is required of course, but that is simple the surface level when it comes to safety.
If you want to learn more about how SafeWorkPro could help you in simplifying your WHS, reach out to our friendly expert staff for a free, no obligation live demo.
Risk Assessment and Method Statement Free Template Download
In military speak, safe work method statements (SWMS) combined with risk assessments can be like enfilade fire from a defilade position. Pretty awesome if you can achieve them. SWMS are used to instruct safety procedures for known work place hazards and risks in construction. Risk assessments are used for identifying risks in the workplace and and can be used when a SWMS may not have been developed yet. We have some risk assessment and method statement free template downloads over here or you could read up some more on free swms templates.
Like all workers, soldiers are constantly balancing their risk between safety and productivity. Thats why enfilade fire from a defilade position is so inviting. This is the ultimate situation for a soldier to be in as enfilade fire means you have exposed the enemy along their longest access while being in a defilade position where the enemy cannot fire upon you. This minimises the risk of the solider being injured or killed while inflicting maximum damage to the enemy. Military tactics can be used in many contexts.
A construction worker faces life and death everyday as well though not to the same extreme as a solider. However, in Australia 186 workers were killed in 2013. Thats a sobering thought and emphasises why safety is so important. As convoluted as legislation can be it cannot be denied that safety is important. On one hand, if we swung the safetyodromitor completely towards being safe we could possibly lose productivity, or if the safetyodromitor was all about productivity we could compromise safety. The wise man says that it has to be somewhere in between or the intelligent man says we can do both.
The tool we have developed here at SafeWorkPro was born out of years of frustration with a paper-based process that compromised both safety and productivity. Cole Contracting has just made the finalists list for the Queensland Safe Work Awards 2014! Our tool streamlines the risk assessment and SWMS process by making it available on many devices like iOS and Android phones. It gets workers on the job quicker, safer, and compliant while making improvements to both safety and productivity.
Risk Assessment Matrix Template
Having a hard time understanding what a risk assessment matrix template is? Don’t worry you are not the only one confused, but getting a grip on the OHS risk assessment matrix is a central part of any health and safety program. All you need is an example of risk assessment matrix. This risk assessment matrix template is set up with the likelihood of a risk occurring on one side and the consequence involved on the other. The severity of each factor is given a number and when multiplied together, the value of the total risk involved is estimated. This isn’t to say that the safety risk assessment matrix is perfect. In fact it is considered to be overly broad in definition but that’s where a software solution may be helpful. In the meantime check out our matrix template below to get started.
How to improve your risk assessment & management
According to How to Manage Work Health and Safety Risks on Safe Work Australia there are 4 key factors involved in managing risks. The list of responsibilities to conduct proper risk management includes; management commitment, a step-by-step process, consulting your workers and consulting, co-operating and co-ordinating activities with other duty holders.
Management commitment is about demonstrating to your employees your investment in creating a safe working environment for high risk construction work. This task should be easy to fulfill when using SafeWorkPro as workers can easily access any procedures or documents you create as soon as you have published them. In doing this you are instantaneously able to communicate new or changes of safety standards to your workers. Additionally, the dashboard of the application offers statistics to demonstrate key indicators of safety performance on your site.
As a site manager it is also your duty to create a step-by-step process for risk management. The risk assessment planning process of identifying, assessing, controlling and reviewing measures is easy with our software. You can create new workplace risk assessments for your particular job or worksite using our document builder or alternatively fill out a questionnaire to complete a safety document from one of our free SWMS templates.
The final responsibilities to manage involves ensuring effective communication lines between both you and your workers, as well as you and other duty holders. As workers create safety documents, they are sent directly to the database where all admin users may have access to them. Our application also has a push notification feature to alert admin users of workers completing safety documents with high risk ratings creating risk assessment hazards. Our key to improving your consulting, co-operating and communication lies in using technology to share data on work safety.
