Stopping Workplace Injuries With Advanced Prediction Systems

by Rae Steinbach

It’s important for organizations to leverage all available tools and resources when developing and improving upon workplace safety programs. In the United States alone, someone is injured on the job every seven seconds. While it’s certainly possible to argue that workplace safety in general has improved over the years, it’s also clear that more must be done to further protect workers.

That’s why organizations should use analytics and key indicators to enhance their safety programs. Tracking this kind of data makes it easier to predict hazards and injuries before they occur. This boosts overall employee morale and helps companies avoid the financial consequences of accidents in the workplace.

If your company chooses not to focus on improving workplace safety, you could negatively impact your bottom line. As one workers compensation attorney in Philadelphia explains, businesses can pay up to 500 weeks of compensation to injured parties. In addition, your company can suffer from decreased productivity and retention rates. That’s all part of the reason why incorporating analytics will let your business thrive.

How Analytics and Key Indicators Can Promote a Safer Working Environment

The first step in using analytics to prevent workplace injuries is to ensure that all risks, hazards, and accidents, no matter how minor, are reported and recorded. Keeping track of this data over time gives your organization a chance to review it and generate actionable insights regarding the safety of your workplace.

Employee Reporting

That said, it’s no secret that sometimes unsafe conditions at a work site result from employee negligence. Workers may be hesitant to report such occasions for fear of disciplinary action. Some may worry they could even lose their jobs if they admitted to creating or contributing to a dangerous situation.

Management should therefore develop systems that allow employees to report such information anonymously. This may not be feasible as some dangerous conditions may be easily attributable to a specific employee even if they were reported anonymously. If this is the case, management should be proactive about rewarding employees and teams that report this information.

Preventative Information

A safety management system that catalogs and stores all reported data can be used to assess workplace safety before accidents occur. For example, perhaps a contractor is preparing for a project at a new job site. They can enter key information about the plan, like what kind of work is being performed, potential hazards that may be present at the site, the types of safety procedures the team will follow, and more.

The safety management program’s predictive analytics feature will generate a report identifying any potential high-risk factors or activities at the site. This can help the contractor forsee the types of injuries that may be more likely to occur. As a result, they can take steps to mitigate the risk.

It’s worth noting that these types of programs can be very effective. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University studied these systems and were able to develop models that predicted workplace injuries with accuracy levels of up to 97%.

Organizations that implement proper workplace safety programs reduce injury rates by as much as 40%, saving significant amounts of money as a result. Using predictive analytics to further reduce injury rates may yield even stronger outcomes when integrated with your employee performance management system. When employees feel safe, they can perform at their best while remaining engaged and motivated.

Additionally, employees will be more likely to feel comfortable at work. When they know the organization is taking a proactive approach to their safety, their engagement and productivity levels can improve. This is one more reason to ensure every member of the company understands the value of reporting safety data. When they know that doing so boosts their own safety, everybody benefits.

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