Health & Safety

Jan 12

Feeling safe is one of the fundamental needs at work. With safety, you don’t want to learn through trial and error because those mistakes can cost, in broken equipment, injury or even death. At Connex World, we see health and safety as creating practical systems that build trust, understanding and most importantly, form those behaviours that will keep people safe and healthy. We feel that too often, the good intention of making people safe ends up with lots of systems and paperwork that result in a difficult choice between safety via overbearing, confusing regulation and performance. Usually, workers are pushed, subtly or otherwise towards performance which makes workers question that the safety systems were ever really genuine or were, instead, a compliance tool.

The Challenge

TIL Freight sought our help when they discovered that their Health & Safety Induction process was consuming a large amount of an increasingly busy Safety Coordinator. When she was away, there was no clear standard of what to do and how to assess if a person had been properly inducted. To add complexity, the majority of those needing induction were contractors who could arrive out of office hours due to the transportation nature of the business. This could result in delays in deliveries or pickups with knock on effects to others operators. Sadly, the harried Safety Coordinator would lead the Inductee through the 25 to 30 minute walk around only to find out that the Inductee could hardly remember most of it, so much was the information being offered and so distracting the environment.

The Solution

Review We reviewed the current induction process and realised that it was ineffective for all parties. After discussion, we suggested that a video based induction could solve some of the existing problems. Upon assessing the site, its operations, risks, and users we realised that some critical information was being missed and that this would need to be covered to satisfy safety requirements.
Videoing Experienced users were involved in creating the video segments where they demonstrated specific hazards or risks. For example, many contractors arrived by truck so a “first person” perspective of their journey into the yard was made from the cab of a truck including an overlay of the risks and hazards highlighted on the video in real time. Additionally, a first person walk through of the yard, its offices and warehouses was included with a similar hazard/risk warning symbol and information overlay. Finally, to indicate management support, the branch manager was videoed highlighting his purpose in ensuring a safe and healthy work environment.
Extra Visuals To aid in the walk throughs, we created a map which highlighted the persons current position and what hazards or safety equipment were nearby. Exits were also highlighted. This allowed a near virtual walkthrough of the entire facility without requiring expensive equipment or development costs.
Feedback Once the videos were completed and audio added to enhance learning of specific priority features, the videos were reviewed by contractors and employers to gain feedback on their effectiveness. The response was very positive and very little needed to be changed. Staff and contractors expressed their appreciation to be part of creating the solutions that would help keep them safe.
Assessment To determine if those watching the videos obtained adequate knowledge, we created, in consultation with TIL Freight, a standardised assessment measure which asked a range of questions and automatically logged answers, giving feedback to the Assessee if an error was made.
Availability One issue highlighted early on was the difficulty in providing the induction to people from a wide range of businesses and at various times of the day and week. Additionally, there was no capacity on the TIL Freight website for inductions. Consequently, we created a Youtube channel with a hosted assessment process that provided automatic email outcomes to the Assessee, the Duty Manager, and the Safety Coordinator. This was found to be highly successful with all inductees being able to access at a time suitable to them and assessment results to all stakeholders in real time.