Technology's Role in Elevating Health and Safety Maturity and Culture
From virtual reality to the Internet of Things (IoT), technology has changed many leaders’ approach to health and safety within their organisation. With all the advancements we have seen over the past few decades, technology has provided new digital solutions which have helped to drive not only a company’s safety maturity level and performance, but their safety culture as well.
With one scalable platform, health and safety professionals, like yourself, have been able to elevate health and safety at work, allowing their organisation to reach new heights. Keep reading to discover:
- What is health and safety maturity?
- What is safety culture?
- 5 ways technology can drive both health and safety maturity and culture at your organisation
- Your next steps
What is Health and Safety Maturity?
Before we dive into how technology can be a game changer for all things health and safety, let’s take a step back and explain what health and safety maturity means. This term is defined as how advanced your organisation’s health and safety program, processes, and procedures are.
According to the Keil Centre, there are 5 levels of safety maturity which have been adopted by the United Kingdom Health and Safety Executive. To get a high-level summary of this safety maturity model, check out our blog How to Elevate Health and Safety Maturity at Your Organisation.
What is Safety Culture?
Are safety culture and maturity the same? No. They are two different concepts. Safety culture is the beliefs and values your employees and organisation place on safety. According to a previous EcoOnline study including 502 EHS professionals, we analysed organisational safety performance of companies over a 5-year period.
According to our findings, organisations were in one of the below categories:
To find out more about what these categories entail, check out our blog How To Evaluate Your Health and Safety Culture.
5 Ways Technology Can Drive Both Health and Safety Maturity and Culture at Your Organisation
Now that we’ve defined safety maturity and culture, it’s time to dive into 5 ways technology can drive both at your organisation. From empowering your employees through mobile applications to collecting the data and analytics you need to enhance safety maturity; technology can truly revolutionise your approach.
Here are just some of the things it can offer:
1. Complete insight into your safety program
A single, digital EHS solution can give you complete transparency into your safety program. With one 360-degree view into all areas of health and safety, you can quickly identify hidden gaps and deficiencies within your safety program or culture. This will allow you to prioritise areas of concern and develop a plan to put the necessary corrective actions in place.
Over time, this will help improve your safety maturity level and performance, as you are pinpointing areas of weaknesses and working to improve them. You can also break down siloes using this method, with the ability to access information from different locations and sites. This will help strengthen your data, giving you a true view of your safety program and culture.
2. A digital tool that connects everyone
Safety management systems also help connect everyone, whether they are located on different sites or in a remote area. This will help improve safety culture and maturity levels, as everyone will hold safety within the palm of their hands.
All team members can easily access information or contact others, connecting relevant functions of the business. Certain processes can now be automated with alerts or notifications, automatically sent to the necessary stakeholders when a hazard is identified on site. This can help accelerate the necessary processes to implement corrective actions, elevating your safety maturity and performance.
3. A way to empower your employees
A mobile safety solution can help you empower employees and make them the driving force for a safer workplace. Giving them the ability to easily conduct ad-hoc inspections right from the phones, collect data and access information no matter where they may be located, will help elevate your employee engagement and adoption rates. This will ultimately lead to an increase in participation and a stronger, positive safety culture.
Mobile applications will also help you hold your workforce accountable for each other’s safety. This will gradually engrain the idea that safety is everyone’s responsibility and with a single source of truth, it will be easy to go back and track who completed which task.
4. Robust analytics and reporting
With all data and analytics in one EHS platform, you can efficiently track all safety metrics and KPI’s. This will help provide you with a baseline to understand where your organisation currently stands. It will also help you uncover your strengths and areas you can improve. With such insight, you can implement an effective strategy to improve your safety maturity level and performance.
Customise your own reports with a digital EHS solution, so you can collect the right data to help you achieve your safety goals. After analysing and assessing the right analytics, tracking key patterns and trends, you can then make data-driven decisions to help you create a safer working environment for your employees.
Monitor your performance and check your progress in a few months' time to see where you have improved and what you still need to work on. This will truly help you elevate your safety approach and strengthen your maturity level.
5. A means of continuous improvement
Much like analysing the progress of data over time, a digital EHS solution can allow you a means of continuous improvement. One platform used across all locations will allow you to standardise all health and safety procedures and provide a record of different areas related to health and safety. If you can easily monitor and assess how things were done, you can easily implement methods of improvement.
This will help elevate your safety maturity level and allow you to strengthen your safety culture as there is a single platform to track your progression. All information is visible, and teams can analyse the data to hold themselves accountable and come up with fact-based decisions to create a safer workplace.
Your Next Steps
Now that you’re more familiar with how a digital, EHS solution can help you drive both safety maturity and culture at your organisation, it’s time to plan out your next steps. Our eBook, What is the Role of Technology in Driving Health and Safety Maturity and Culture, can provide you with more information on this topic.
Download your free copy now to discover more about how technology can drive maturity and culture, as well as how to assess which EHS platform would be best for your business.