The Missing Piece of the Health and Safety Jigsaw Puzzle Part 3: Data and Information

The Health and Safety Jigsaw Puzzle is a combination of key pieces that can make a big difference in an organisation, especially when technology is added to the mix. In Part 1 and Part 2 of this blog series, we introduced the first two pieces on leadership and engagement. In this blog post, we’ll look at the third piece - data & information.

In our last blog, we explained how putting a jigsaw puzzle in a central location encourages people to engage in solving it. From that engagement, a jumble of jigsaw pieces flows into an ordered arrangement that will become a full picture.

In the Health and Safety Jigsaw Puzzle, employee engagement creates a flow of information you can transform into an accurate view of your organisation’s health and safety.

Health and safety data: Gathering the pieces

Health and safety data flows into your organisation at a volume and rate that is continually on the increase. Some of that data might still be in paper files or documents. Some of it might be generated from sensors installed on equipment. And some of it might be coming in from mobile devices.

Returning to our jigsaw puzzle analogy, the best way to start putting together the puzzle is to gather all the pieces and put them in groups or sections that guide how you will assemble them. However, in health and safety organisations, the process of gathering all the data they need is slow and time-consuming. Your staff are likely to spend at least 20 percent of their workweek preparing reports from your manual safety data.

Addressing environmental health and safety (EHS) data challenges

Fortunately, there are actions your organisation can take to overcome your EHS data pain points:

• Improve the flow, quality and consistency of data
  
   Give your employees the power to report unwanted events immediately—anywhere, anytime. As more consistent, higher quality workplace safety data flows in, better insights will flow out.
  
  
• Make interpreting data easy
  
  Raw data, messy papers, and thousands of rows in a spreadsheet have an adverse effect on interpreting data. You need flexible visualisations that pull in historical data and predicts future trends - enabling your employees easily view and understand safety progress.
  
  
• Use dashboards to tell your data story
  
  Dashboards are a powerful and simple method of sharing important data in a format that is easy to understand. They should also be made available to all stakeholders, either in real-time or via regular scheduled delivery to encourage engagement and improve understanding.
  
  
• Change the way health and safety is viewed
  
  At many organisations, health and safety is viewed as a chore. Add a feel-good factor to reporting and reward positive behaviour. By encouraging friendly competition between teams, such as who has reported the most safety observations in a week or month, you increase interest and participation in proactive health and safety practices. Everyone wins.
  
  

Using business intelligence technology to move to proactive safety management

The data piece of the Health and Safety Jigsaw Puzzle is about proactively analysing and trending the flow of data, driven by engagement, to gain insights and take actions that make a positive impact.

Health and safety management software that includes business intelligence tools can deliver the fluid, accurate insights needed to identify trends, track leading indicators and predict where preventative interventions will be most effective. Visual dashboards highlight what you and your organisation need to know and can easily be shared with others in the dashboards.

The right EHS software also enables local teams to create health and safety league tables from data, reports, and other information, increasing health and safety participation through positive practices, feedback to employees on their contribution and friendly competition.

Put the third piece in place

All the health and safety jigsaw puzzle pieces fit and build on the previous pieces. Leadership drives engagement, engagement drives data, data drives decisions, decision drives improvement, and improvement drives leadership. Join us next week as we discuss how the informed decisions piece fits into our Health and Safety Jigsaw Puzzle.

In the meantime, why not talk to us about how our health and safety management software solution provides the data, information flow, and insights needed to promote a proactive health and safety culture.