 Keeping frontline workers engaged with safety is a tricky business.
Tech can be effective, but there has long been a digital divide in the workplace. Software solutions have been deployed on a large scale for administrative and office workers, with similar support for "deskless" workers lagging behind. According to a recent survey, in fact, 60% of frontline workers considered the tech provided by their employers to be inadequate, and 56% supplemented that tech with their own personal devices. There's a challenge facing every industrial application worksite - a challenge no one wants to talk about. This challenge is faced across all Construction and Manufacturing sectors, across all disciplines from Safety and Quality to Human Resources and Operations. The challenge can't be answered with a piece of PPE, or a sensor, or an employee survey. The risks of not meeting this challenge range from increased frequency and severity of safety incidents, to reduced efficiency and productivity.
The biggest challenge facing industry today is: Given the wide range of experience levels, temperaments, and personalities that exist in the industrial workforce of today, how can companies engage with and retain ALL of their workers regularly, efficiently and effectively? The benefits of direct transparent engagement with workers are significant. A Gallup study determined that compared with business units in the bottom quartile of engagement, those in the top quartile realize improvements in the following areas:
The good news is that modern technology and communication tools have made engagement more attainable than ever before. If you are interested to learn more about the impact that the Corvex Connected Worker platform can have on engagement, retention and other facets of an organization, check out our new customer case study.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves on this “Smart PPE” hype. While the technology is racing forward and there have been some interesting developments today’s frontline workers would benefit greatly by having the data they need when they need it. There has been a lot of excitement around “Smart PPE”, Industry 4.0, and a bunch of other acronyms that the technology community thinks the frontline worker is chomping at the bit to get in their hands or in a lot of cases on their body.
Wanted: Front Line Worker
Job Description
 When anyone here’s the word Audit they immediately cringe and feel they did something wrong. Imagine working on the frontline and doing your job to the best of your ability based on the way you were trained. One day your supervisor pulls you in and says “Based on a recent audit you have been doing a number of things wrong and need to change immediately”. In most cases that supervisor had no idea that things were complying with what the audit showed. What are the ramifications around this approach?
Real ACTION
Are Your Audits and Inspections Leading to Any Real Action Today? What does your company make or process? Natural resources, automobiles, commercial buildings, complex machinery, something else? You have compliance responsibilities to manage and a vast host of audits and inspections for your workers on the frontline. New hires understand this if they have any experience in your industry. It’s part of the job. Part of the territory. Nothing to see here, move along.
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