Blake Peling is a Project Lead at Safety Culture. This is the company that has brought us iAuditor (user-friendly online inspection tool) and Spotlight (intuitive online incident reporting app). Their mission has been to help companies achieve safer and higher quality workplaces all around the world through innovative, low-cost mobile products. In New Zealand, their online HSE tools are being used by companies like KiwiRail, Cathay Pacific and GoldCorp.
The following is a potted summary of his presentation as the Health and Safety Professionals of NZ Conference.
What is a better working human?
A more secure worker, who is secure physically, mentally and emotionally. They have the information they need to do their job well.
SafetyCulture: Explosive Growth Timeline:
- 2004 CEO, Luke Anear launched the company from his garage in Townsville as an online safety document provider.
- 2007 Mobile devices become ‘normal’ on worksites
- 2012 SafetyCulture iAuditor was born. National Safety Awards of Excellence: Rio Tinto Best Solution of an OHS Workplace Risk Award (small business) – Finalist
- 2014 Funding gained from Atlassian Co-Founder, Scott Farquhar and Blackbird Ventures. Tabby Award for Best Business App
- 2015 Sydney office opened. StartupSmart Awards: Best Regional Startup – Winner
- 2016 Offices opened in San Francisco, Kansas City and Manchester
- 2019 Have raised over 8 million dollars in funding.
- – 30+ Million inspections have been conducted using the iAuditor app.
- – 70,000+ User submitted industry checklist templates in our public library
Why are online audits and checklists useful?
As Blake pointed out, the first question is always ‘are we encouraging people to have conversations or indulge in ass-covering?’ Organisations have been using checklist since the early 1900’s, when the aviation community decided that leaving things to chance is not ok, and suddenly there were checklists for refuelling, pre-start checks and lots of other things.
According to Blake ‘today, anyone with a fat finger and a smart device’ can enter data and create instant analytics. It’s a real-time, internet of things, let’s make it happen world of work. To me the fascinating thing is that the app was originally built for workplace inspectors; however, the companies that have had the most success (read best ‘Return on Investment’) are the ones that have got their workers to do the audits.
How Does it work in the Real World?
Blake used an example of a fertiliser company that found the phosphate in their product had corrosive effects on their plant and surrounding structures. A 19-year-old worker died when a walkway collapsed because it was so badly corroded.
An engineer was brought in to using workers to do inspections and create massive amounts of paperwork. However, with iAuditor they were able to turn workers into custodians of their workplace and they created site-specific audits that could be feedback to the engineer week on week, instead of taking three months to travel around the country write reports.
There was a similar story to tell around incident reporting and spotlight, where companies found an exponential improvement in the recording of all incidents (including near misses) when the app was introduced.
What do I think about online HSE tools?
All the usual questions and contentious issues came to mind. iAuditor is a tool and it is the company’s safety culture that gives it life and meaning. Yes, it could be just another tick and flick exercise; or it could be a valuable tool used as part of a ‘how can we be even better’ safety culture.
From a ‘curiosity is best’ standpoint, I suspect that optimal results occur when an experienced worker is paired with a ‘newbie’ and the ’wise head meets a fresh set of eyes phenomenon’. However, the real magic happens when supervisors and managers are seen to be reacting in real time and ‘doing’ something about what is reported on, whether it be an audit or an incident report.
Stop Press: New Training Platform in the Pipeline
The SafetyCulture team is developing a training platform that allows training managers and ANYONE in an organisation to create one-minute training videos.
Think ‘Snackasods’ from in-house experts that can be used in everything from inductions, to on the job training or toolbox meetings. This I am excited about and I can’t wait to see what happens when it gets to market. #WatchThisSpace the world of online HSE tools is about to get even more interesting.