Donesafe News

Five REAL ways safety software saves your workers’ time



1. Instant Audits and Checklists (instead of paper forms and spreadsheets)

All businesses use audits and checklists in some way or another. Say you work for a large corporation that is strong on compliance. All of those inspection forms, ergonomics checks, work-from-home checklists, etc. can and do take a lot of time, especially if they need to be conducted regularly. The same goes for industrial and construction businesses that regularly conduct audits in the field.

If you’re in a situation where there’s any more than one step for a worker to submit a checklist, then it’s costing them, and you, valuable time.

Any good safety software will have a strong auditing tool that will allow checklists to be filled and submitted instantly in the field. Imagine your workers; instead of filling in a form, taking it back to the office, scanning it, emailing it and then filing the form; instead, they conduct the audit on their phone or tablet, hit submit and get back to work, and instantly, anyone who needs to action that audit is notified.

When it comes to filling forms and checklists, if you aren’t using a cloud-based software solution, you’re already being left in the dust by your competitors.

2. Digital documents (instead of repetitive paperwork)

This one hits trades the hardest. If you’re still using paper to submit repetitive forms like Safe Work Method Statements, or your workers are still carrying policy documents to every site, then you’re taking the unnecessarily long way around to meet compliance.

Safety software will allow you to digitize those forms and documents allowing for quick and instant submission of any documents required on site. If your workers are carrying a crate of paperwork around with them at all times, then you’re doing it the hard way.

3. Instant Incident and Hazard reports (instead of those paper reports that everyone hates filling out)

Incident and hazard management is where safety software really comes to life. If you aren’t using a software system, then right now, if a worker notices a hazard they either have to stop everything they’re doing to notify you OR you’ll find out about it days later OR you’ll find out about it until someone gets hurt.

Let’s face it, nobody likes filling out paper incident and hazard reports; this means they often just don’t get done; and the worst thing is you won’t know if they don’t. They take a long time to do and a long time to submit: all time that could be spent just doing their job instead of paperwork.

Here’s what that looks like with a good cloud-based safety software: Worker sees hazard; worker pulls out their phone; worker takes a photo and taps a few buttons; worker puts their phone away and gets back to work. You or your safety team are notified instantly and can immediately take steps to rectify that hazard.

No matter how you look at it, that’s just a much, much better way of doing things.

4. Instant action allocation (instead of emails that will just get missed; you know they do)

Most safety software (not all) are action-driven. Incident/hazard reports, audits, etc all generate actions when they’re submitted and these actions are automatically assigned to the most appropriate person to handle them.

Take that hazard report from earlier. Once your worker submits it, you or those who handle safety issues in your business will receive a notification. You’ll assess the hazard and if corrective actions need to be taken, you can make a note on that file and assign the task to a worker on site. They’ll receive a notification of the job they need to undertake in order to correct the hazard and they’ll get straight to actioning it. And if they don’t, the software will follow them up automatically until they do.

All of that could take place in under a few minutes. Just think how long that would take to fix without a tool like this… I guarantee it would take longer than a few minutes.

5. Quick sign-ins and site inductions (instead of contractors signing forms and reading documents)

If you work with contractors then you know that time is money; and staying compliant takes time.

If you’re bringing contractors or site visitors on-site, then they’ll likely need to sign in, and agree to any site policies first. They may even need ID tags. You could do this on paper, OR you could use a contractor management solution that allows a single tap sign in with mandatory policy acknowledgment. The better safety software solutions will even check their qualifications on file for you to ensure that they and their company are compliant.

This allows your contractors to get on site quickly and easily so they can get to work. At the same time, it covers you and ensures that you’re easily compliant with all contractors.

And that’s just your front line workers. Everything done using a compliance software solution, instead of paper and spreadsheets, saves countless hours of administration. It spreads a lot of work between a lot of people and clears out pipeline blockages in your processes.

So, if you’re not yet using software to manage your safety and compliance and you’re ready to save hundreds of hours company-wide, then it’s really a no brainer: ditch that paper and use a software solution today.

And as always, Stay safe out there.

By Christopher Notley-Smith at


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