In this blog post, I will try to uncover the trends that I see playing a major role in the future of OHS.
It’s important to note that the future is challenging to predict inside of OHS. OHS is ever-changing, and new demands for worker safety improvements are occurring every year. Still, when reading the news, I come across articles that detail OHS violations, and these articles are backed by statistics.
Official statistics from ISO state that an estimated 2.3 million people get injured at work every year. These injuries are either caused by accidents or environmentally provoked diseases. These injuries can be prevented in the future. This information provides a glimpse at what companies can expect in the coming years.
In fact, the future can be segmented into 3 areas:
1) OHS training and education
2) New technologies
3) Monitoring of OHS
You might know the OHS legislations, policies, and regulations, but do your employees? Do your project managers know?
Studies show that knowledge of the OHS policies increase worker safety, so if you cannot answer the question, “Does everyone in your company know the OHS policies?” it’s time to plan a training day. This simple step can keep your employees safe and keep your company out of the news for OHS violations.
Once you have performed training for everyone in your organisation, it is time to implement checklists to ensure that policies are kept. Walking around and noting everything on a piece of paper isn’t foolproof, which is why new technologies are so important. Technologies such as CCTV, mobile phones, and tablets will help you stay on top of your checklists. Digitalisation is growing at an aggressive rate and new ways to digitise and robotise are constantly under development. Therefore, to help you work with the growth, it is advised that you consider implementing new technologies in your inspection work immediately. In my company, we refer to this as Check Tech.
Your new Check Tech will help you closely monitor OHS inspections. You can get updates straight to your email with reports of incidents and deviations. It will help you stay on top of your work, and it will help your employees feel safer at work. In fact, we can document that worker environments have become better and safer after the implementation of Check Tech.
The future of OHS is digital. OHS will become safer as IoT and Big Data protect the OHS policies and take over the management of worker environments.
Don’t fear the future; welcome it.
To be ahead on the development of OHS and how to improve plans and strategies, implement VUCA.
Check Tech is one of the core competencies of our company. Don't hesitate contacting us for more details - we're here for you.
To see how Check Tech was implemented in a company, read the Itis case study.
We are building the world's first operational involvement platform. Our mission is to make the process of finding, sharing, fixing and learning from issues and observations as easy as thinking about them and as rewarding as being remembered for them.
By doing this, we are making work more meaningful for all parties involved.
More information at falcony.io.