Increase Employee Engagement by Putting Safety in the Palm of Your Hand
In 2014, Gallup Inc. released a study which found that only 31.5% of U.S. employees were actively engaged in their jobs. That’s even an improvement from 2013 when it was found that only 29.6% were engaged. Needless to say, employee engagement is a problem that needs addressing in most organizations. Gallup Inc. published an earlier study in 2009 which concluded that companies who tested in the top percentiles in employee engagement experienced 16% higher profitability, 18% higher productivity, 49% less in employee turnover and 49% less safety incidents. (Harter, 2009)
Employee engagement is vital for success in all parts of an organization. It is especially critical when it comes to workplace safety. Employees are interacting with the workplace every day and if they aren’t actively looking for ways to better their surroundings and make work safer, then no changes will ever be made. Moreover, employees will not feel connected to the environment and therefore be less committed to their workplace.
Unfortunately, safety can be one of the most difficult places to promote employee engagement. For an employee, filing an incident report can often be a tedious and time consuming, paperwork-heavy process that can require supervisor involvement, an OSHA report to be filed, records to be created and possibly a safety committee to be appointed – a process that can take hours, if not days to complete. All while consuming company time and resources. Outdated procedures like this lower employee engagement, especially when an employee might deem the report as “not worth the time” if an incident wasn’t particularly major, or just a near miss.
As we move further into the digital era, people are spending less time on conventional ways of doing things. Today, people want things instantly. Rather than read a cookbook, modern people would prefer to watch a 15 second how-to video on YouTube. The New York Times found that if a web browser load time was longer than 10 seconds, most users lost interest and were likely to give up.
If people aren’t willing to read a recipe, it’s inevitable that employees may be less willing to spend the time required to manually fill out accurate safety reports. This is why many employees are unengaged but technology can change that. Sospes’ cloud-based software allows employees to report incidents in real-time with better accuracy than ever before. Reporting an incident can take minutes while still providing precise information. The mobile app utilizes any employee’s mobile device’s GPS, camera, voice-recording, and keyboard to record the events. When a user finishes creating a report, it is instantaneously saved in real-time and sent to a supervisor. The supervisor can then assess the case, assign a risk level, and have the software automatically fill out an OSHA report. All of this could be accomplished before you could even print out an incident report form.
Sospes improves employee engagement by putting instant safety reporting in the palm of their hand. Which in turn increases profitability and productivity while creating a better work environment for everyone.
Harter, James K., Frank L. Schmidt, Emily A. Killham, and Sangeeta Agrawal. “The Relationship Between Engagement at Work and Organizational Outcomes.” August 2009. Gallup Inc.http://www.stress-lavoro.com/140_stress/MetaAnalysis_Q12_WhitePaper_2009.pdf
2014 & 2013 Engagement Rates:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/181289/majority-employees-not-engaged-despite-gains-2014.aspx
