Workplace safety and compliance is a worldwide issue. When companies conduct unsafe and non-compliant practices, employees are the ones at risk. How can Environmental, Health and Safety and Sustainability (EHS&S) leaders enable compliance and keep workers safe? The answer: an effective internal inspections program.
By having a strategy for workplace inspections, companies can identify EHS&S hazards and address them. But, for large, global companies that manage safety and compliance across hundreds of sites and thousands of employees, conducting workplace inspections can be a big challenge.
Ingersoll Rand, a global, diversified industrial manufacturer, turned to Benchmark Gensuite® when they needed to improve and digitize their inspections process. At the time, Ingersoll Rand had more than 100 global service sites that needed to transition from paper and excel-based inspections to cloud-based inspections software.
Why should companies digitize their inspections program? According to a 2016 National Safety Council (NSC) report, 78 percent of safety professionals are still using outdated methods for managing safety tasks. Only 19 percent are being notified of safety hazards in real-time. That means that majority of safety professionals are putting their workers at risk. Safety leaders should have access to up-to-date EHS&S information at any given time—regardless of connectivity. By deploying inspections software, companies have a central system for inspections and eliminate any errors associated with transferring information.
Before choosing a vendor, it is important to identify your program goals and needs.
What should companies consider before choosing a vendor for mobile inspections? Will it need to integrate with any existing systems? How many employees will use the software and how many sites? Is the system intuitive for your employees to use?
Ingersoll Rand needed a tool that would enable them to:
- Create a central inspection checklist library for global sites
- Eliminate paper/excel methods and instead share information through an offline Mobile platform
- Track non-compliant findings & metrics to identify patterns and improvement opportunities across global sites
Prior to Benchmark Gensuite®, the company would spend long periods of time consolidating data from paper or excel-based findings, and had difficulty performing variable crossings to identify trends across sites. How did Benchmark Digital meet Ingersoll Rand’s needs? Benchmark Gensuite®‘s Inspection Tool allows users to conduct, assign and track EHS&S inspections using custom checklists for site assessments, including roll-up reporting and cloud-based, offline Mobile capabilities for real-time inspections.
Today, over 5,000 Ingersoll Rand employees use Inspection Tool for field service inspections, employee evaluations and tracking Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) compliance. And, since rolling out, many of Ingersoll Rand’s manufacturing sites have started using Benchmark Gensuite®‘s Inspection Tool as well.
What were the results of switching to digitized workplace inspections?
- More than 50,000 checklists initiated YTD, generating more than 8,500 findings
- 4,493 inspections automatically logged via auto-export feature
- 4,610 supervisors completed inspections for over 43,000 employees
- Post-implementation of auto-export, findings increased by 28%
“Benchmark Gensuite® allows us to put more structure to our inspections process. It allows our standard work teams to develop checklists, and team leaders to provide additional requirements as needed. The biggest benefit of using Benchmark Digital is that it operationalizes inspections by putting the right tools in the hands of our employees.” –Sarah Marshman, EHS Program Manager at Ingersoll Rand
Making the switch to a digital inspections program takes time, but it is worth it in the end. When it comes to managing multiple sites across global locations, a digitized inspections program is the only effective solution. It saves your team time and ultimately saves money in the long run. At the end of the day, using a central system like Benchmark Gensuite® Inspection Tool for workplace inspections creates a safer environment for your employees.
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