As everyone knows: There is no shortage of opinions or risks in the workplace. Some risks are common, others are infrequent and some are such outliers that you might see Halley’s Comet more often.
Regardless, in the risk mitigation business, you never say never—you say never be unprepared.
That’s why using software solutions to track incidents is so important to help keep organizations in compliance with environmental and safety regulations and, most importantly, to keep workers safe.
But having separate tools within your organization isn’t enough for global companies with multiple locations to keep track of any environmental health safety issues; the solutions must be integrated into one tool to achieve true predictive analytics.
Riveting Information
For example, say you have a facility that has a history of riveting-related ergonomic injuries. If you track the problem with a common spreadsheet program, you can learn more about what could be causing the problem—whether it’s a certain piece of equipment, user error, etc. This is critical information for your division to track, but what if other parts of the organization use the same or similar equipment, shouldn’t they get the same heads up to be able to monitor the situation and prepare for similar occurrences at their location?
Another example would be a leaky valve. Perhaps there’s a potential health consequence involved if there’s a contaminant dripping out. Again, you’d want to be able to track the situation to make sure your company is in compliance. You’d also want to be able to convey that message to other parts or divisions of the company to explain the problem and the solution. That way, if a similar problem occurred, another division would be able to diagnose the problem quickly and fix it in the most efficient and cost-effective way possible.
By having visibility into the data, being able to aggregate it and do analytics trend analysis, you can pinpoint areas to focus your limited time and resources to get the biggest bang for your buck.
It’s a common problem for companies to keep data siloed, but doing so hinders the aggregation of information. And even if a company asked different divisions to send their spreadsheets to compare the analytics, someone may use a different term or find something differently. And therefore, it doesn’t make sense compared to everything else.
Integrating the analytics helps companies move from a “reactive” to a “proactive” mode, and an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Moreover, an integrated system from Sphera will give customers the analytics they need to help reduce risk through dashboards, score cards and other business management tools located in a single platform with common nomenclature, formatting, processes and technology.
To learn more about how Sphera can help integrate your risk assessment software into one platform and offer expert advice on best practices for using the software to its full potential, contact me at mdillon@spherasolutions.com.