As safety leaders, it would be great if we all had the time to make our vision for a safer workplace a reality. Safety leaders are continually searching for, and creating, proactive process activities that can prevent harm, lower injury rates, and reduce loss for their organizations. Responding to changes in regulations and standards, knowledge and training management, limited budgets, and company initiatives can sometimes be distractions that eat away at the time we have. They can cause us to focus more on maintaining rather than improving the safety landscape for our people. What options are open to us in this situation? How do we distribute the burden of responsibility and claw back that time we need to get us back to leadership in safety?
Rarely do health and safety teams have access to the budget, and unlimited resources needed to realize their goal of zero loss across their organization. Safety is a team effort that requires buy-in from everyone. Fostering a safety culture based on shared responsibility creates that team-based approach that results in superior performance. Delegating ownership over certain items is one method for gaining back time for other initiatives. It has long been accepted that effective safety programs leverage the power of many by delegating responsibility for safety throughout the organization.
In most cases, this means that supervisors and staff must accept some personal responsibility to keep from overburdening an often already stretched Health and Safety team. An area of real importance that consumes more time and resources than most expect is in tracking, updating, and verifying safety training and certifications. Workplace safety begins with an informed and well-trained workforce. It is critically important to stay current on training whether due to changing conditions of the job or new regulations and standards set by the industry.
In the absence of an expensive Learning Management System this tends to be what gets put on the back burner simply due to lack of resources to follow-up. Expired certifications, out of date training and increased risk of loss or work-related injuries are a direct result of this. One way to prevent this is by implementing and using tools that distribute responsibility and reduce the time and effort required to track and update these certifications. The cost to implement these tools is likely to be offset if they produce improvements in measurable outcomes, especially in the realm of workplace safety. Being able to verify safety credentials at source without manual intervention saves time and allows safety managers to focus on improving rather than maintaining safety programs. This focus on improvement increases brand reputation through a quantifiable reduction in accidents and shared loss prevention responsibility.
Credivera is a workforce identity solution that verifies a worker's ability to perform their job. These verifications include background checks, education, training, certifications and memberships. What is unique to Credivera is that all those checks are live and able to provide a status in real time. Credivera digital credentials are for high-risk workers, across construction, manufacturing, energy and transportation.
About the author: Shawn spent 10 years in Oil and Gas exploration on oil rigs in Northern Alberta. He maintained a zero lost time accident record for himself and his crew in that span. Since leaving the field he has given safety lectures at multiple organizations and developed safety programs for non-field staff visiting potentially dangerous company locations.
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