Time to Get Real About Health and Safety Resolutions

The roots of New Year’s resolutions stretch back to hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, when the Babylonians of Mesopotamia would mark the turn of the new calendar by promising their gods to return borrowed objects and repay debts. 

These days, about half of all people in the Western Hemisphere participate in what has become an annual reflection upon self-improvement. Studies have suggested that those who make life-changing decisions at the New Year are ten times more likely to succeed than those who do so at other times. 

Of those who fail, more than a third admit that their goals were impractical. So if you’re resolving to improve your company’s health and safety systems in 2020, here’s how technology can make that a reality. 

Within many organisations, health and safety remains a poor cousin to other business priorities, creating a “make do with” approach. One common alternative is to plug into another system – often HR – which isn’t fit for health and safety purposes. 

Or of course you try to limp along with the existing system of paper-based reporting, manual data entry and juggling multiple spreadsheets.  

Given the heavy time drain required to administer that kind of process, it’s all but impossible to turbo-boost such a system. The reality is that this past year’s weaknesses will continue into the next decade. 

But imagine an intuitive, automated system that allows staff across the spectrum – from shop floor to C-Suite – to engage on a regular basis in your health and safety activities and culture. One which gives you an accurate ‘bigger picture’ view of different departments and teams performance, engagement and overall compliance status, helping you to allocate resources to the right areas.  

Health and safety software platforms such as Assure from SHE Software deliver exactly that, driving transformation with the functionality to react to the information available, rather than simply recording it. 

So what should be on your list of health and safety resolutions for 2020? Here’s a few suggestions: 

Minimise or eliminate paper from your systems 

Using a smartphone or tablet to easily and immediately log incidents or near-misses, Assure removes the tedium of paper forms and allows every member of staff to get involved. The best source of high-quality data are the eyes and ears across your organisation. By removing the barriers to reporting, you’ll dramatically raise the quality of the information upon which business decisions are made.  

Lead by example 

Investing in a modern app-based system – the kind we have all come to expect as consumers – sends a strong message that health and safety is a key priority within your organisation. Workers can see that their concerns have been logged, and more importantly, they can track what actions have been taken to rectify a situation. 

Move away from monthly reporting 

Health and safety is everyone’s responsibility, every day on the job. With easily-accessed dashboards kept up to date with accurate information, senior managers can call up an immediate overview of what’s happening throughout operations. Stay on top of events – rather than examining incidents on a historic basis – and working proactively to ensure a safe prosperous 2020.