VPP Safety Summit Highlights the Pain of Still Using Paper
Companies are drowning in paper, and this is affecting their ability to be as safe as possible.
That was made clear to us at last week’s Voluntary Protection Program Participants’ Association (VPPPA) Safety Summit in Northern California — an event that brought together safety professionals from across California, Nevada and Arizona.
A part of the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA), the VPPPA works to establish cooperative relationships with facilities focusing on hazard prevention and control. The regional chapter of the VPPPA that hosted the event has been working since 2001 to improve worker safety at all types of worksites in California, Arizona, Hawaii, Nevada and Guam.
We had the opportunity to speak to a lot of companies at the conference, including one major energy company that stores all of its safety management records on paper.
“We had as many as 6,000 pieces of paper floating through the organization every year,” said one attendee, who added that many of these documents had to be scanned, faxed or hand delivered. “The system was slow, inefficient and often challenging. In some cases, it was difficult to find a specific piece of paperwork.”
The paperwork was piling up so much that the company had to hire someone to enter information about safety inspections, observations and audits into an Excel spreadsheet, a task that took a few hours each week.
The above scenario was a recurring story at a conference where attending companies were looking to replace paper processes with easy-to-implement digital workflows for safety reports.
Progressly’s platform allows you to digitize the data collection process so that remote field workers and inspectors can enter their data through smartphones, and so that all the data can be stored and accessed electronically. Also, executives can view the reports on a dashboard and drill into details when necessary, and managers can pull up information when an OSHA audit or inspection takes place.
Instead of taking two weeks or more to process, information is made available in real-time. Companies can also fix problems and address potential violations much faster, allowing them to avoid potential OSHA fines.
The cost benefit of eliminating manual data entry, paper and ink, is clear, and furthermore going paperless with Progressly is simple and requires no help or involvement from IT.
We learned a lot at the conference and thank the VPPPA for allowing us to participate in their event. No doubt, all employees have a role in improving safety at these organizations. Companies need to question the status quo and turn a new leaf into the digital world to become more efficient and competitive.
So… stop filling out paper forms and go digital. Here’s how.
