The Impact of Workforce Wearables – Part 2, For Safety Leaders

This post is the second in a series highlighting the impact of MākuSafe® workforce wearables. Read the first post, The Impact of Workforce Wearables – Part 1, For Workers.

Real-time Actionable Data Made Easy

When you’re dealing with data, the most important feature is that it’s easy to understand. Data that has to be ‘decoded’ is both meaningless and frustrating to safety managers—and it actually makes their jobs harder. This is why MākuSafe® delivers the data through simple visual and interactive models, which are both easy to interpret and provide fast intelligence that is actionable. The information essentially provides direction to safety leaders’ actions, so there is no ambiguity in terms of what items require attention on any given day.

The data that MākuSafe® uses takes place in near-real time and is accessible on any device. This adds an extra level of convenience and means that even when a safety manager is in the field, he or she can keep an eye on the work environment and direct action, if necessary, to prevent an incident.

Finally, the MākuSafe® platform offers pre-filled automated forms to reduce paperwork and enable easy reporting of recordables to carrier and regulatory agencies. These sorts of administrative tasks can eat up a lot of time, so automating them not only streamlines processes, but also allows safety managers to spend more of their time where it really matters: taking action to keep employees safe.

Critical Insights for Effective Safety Leadership

The key to MākuSafe’s impact for safety leaders is the recommended action steps and prescribed remediation suggestions—which are based on insurer resources, specialist information and best practices—that are offered at the moment of need. These are critical for enabling managers to proactively address safety risks and hazardous conditions in the workplace, as well as enhancing leader effectiveness in building a true safety mindset and culture.

The simplified and streamlined structure for collecting near miss reports significantly reduces the time that managers have to spend on paperwork and ensures that this important administrative work gets done in a timely manner, and without feeling like a burden.

Of course, it’s important to note that not every organization has a dedicated, full-time safety manager. In smaller companies, these duties often fall to someone who wears the safety hat part time—the so-called ‘accidental safety pro.’ MākuSafe® enables this person to have an understanding and awareness of real-time conditions that people are experiencing and to know what to do about them.

Let’s use heat protocol as an example. If a thermometer indicates that everyone in a factory is working in an acceptable temperature, there’s no reason for a safety leader to implement extra steps like more breaks, water or fans, and employees who complain about the heat might be seen as ‘problem’ workers. The real-time data that MākuSafe® collects, however, might tell a different story. It might indicate that those ‘problem’ workers are actually working in closer proximity to a heat source and reacting to things in their environment that weren’t noticeable before. The MākuSafe® alert will allow the safety manager to recognize and immediately address this issue, protecting the workers from heat-related illness and making their work environment more comfortable.

So, while there’s a clear benefit here for workers, MākuSafe® is just as useful for safety leaders. From simplifying admin work and supporting the development of a safety culture to providing critical insights into the actual working conditions of every employee with a sensor, MākuSafe® plays a key role in increasing the effectiveness of those in charge of worker safety.

Tom West, SPHR, SHRM-SCP is strategic relationships manager at MakuSafe. Email him at tom@makusafe.com.