Safety Walks with Digital Checklists

How often do you walk around with a checklist in hand? If you answered “a lot”, then you probably already know the benefits of using checklists to improve productivity. In fact, they are widely used across industries such as healthcare, manufacturing, construction, and even retail.

A checklist helps to reduce errors and increase efficiency. As a result, companies save time and money. This article explains why checklists are useful and, provides some examples of their implementation.

We will also describe what a safety walk is and its importance. An example of a checklist follows, with a detailed description of what is helpful to add to a checklist. We also describe how digital checklists can contribute to an improved process within the organization.

What Is a Safety Walk?

A safety walk is an excellent measure of how the company is doing with its safety culture. It is a visual inspection of your building, identifying and correcting unsafe or potentially unsafe situations. A safety walk is the easiest way for safety professionals to get first-hand information on employees’ safety practices in the workplace.

In order to develop and implement actionable safety practices for employees, it’s important to get input from the people following them.

Why Is a Safety Walk Important?

The most important thing about a safety walk is preventing workplace injuries, illnesses, and deaths, as well as the suffering and financial hardship these events can cause workers, their families, and employers. Employees operate much more efficiently when they know they can complete their job or task without affecting their health, resulting in a better-functioning organization. 

Using a Digital Checklist

Safety checklists are documents used during safety inspections for the identification of potential hazards. The checklist is very common across many different industries. A safety walk enables a company to walk through a workplace or site and tick off a number of known hazards. 

A good checklist is precise, efficient, and easy to use even in the most challenging situations. It can be helpful to identify possible workplace hazards and prevent work-related incidents, injuries, and illnesses. 

Unlike paper, which can only record numbers and letters, a digital checklist can also store photos and videos, which can be essential if visual documentation is needed. It’s also much easier to organize, sort, and access digital documents. By using digital checklists, signatures cannot be forged because everyone is assigned to their own account. It also has the advantage that automatic location determination can be done through GPS coordinates. 

In short, digital checklists make compliance easier and inspections faster than using paper methods.  

Example of a Digital Checklist

As an example, a quality manager does inspection rounds regarding the emergency exit. The inspection revolves around whether the emergency exit is blocked or not. The quality manager notes that after 10 inspections, there were seven times when the emergency exit was blocked. 

It is in the power of analytics that the quality manager can note that action needs to be taken regarding the emergency exit. By using a QHSE platform, analytics allows you to quickly and easily notice when action needs to be taken on a particular process within safety management.

What Makes a Checklist Effective?

There are numerous areas/issues that should be included on the checklist. However, the best checklist for your workplace is the one that has been developed for your specific needs. Whatever the format of the checklist, provide space for the inspectors’ signatures and the date. 

Using a Platform with Safety Walks

In order to develop and implement actionable safety practices for employees, it’s important to get input from the people following them. Qooling has all Quality, Safety & Security Management tools on one platform. By using the platform, your organization can improve its safety management. 

Benefits of a Platform Instead of a Paper Checklist

There are many benefits of using a QHSE management platform instead of a paper checklist. We have summed up a couple of these benefits and will highlight four. 

• Save photos and videos.
• Ability to take action quicker.
• Cost saving.
• Easier to organize.
• Instant access to information.
• Boost communication between employees.
• Transparency.
• Reduce paperwork and use of paper.
• Higher safety culture.

Save Photos and Videos

While it is not possible on a paper checklist, it is possible to save photos and videos on a digital checklist. One of the big benefits of having a digital checklist is being able to upload photos and videos. 

Ability to Take Action Quicker

Your ability to take action will be quicker. You will receive reports immediately after an inspection has been completed. This will give you visibility into your business’ performance. You can instantly access real-time data and instant reports via digital checklists to take corrective and preventive steps to fix any issues.

Cost Saving

A digital checklist costs less than a paper checklist. A digital checklist saves you money because you don’t have to call, email, or contact to know the task status. It is more efficient and thus saves time and money. 

Higher Safety Culture

Safety culture is an important aspect in a lot of companies. Applying effective safety checklists allows companies to measure the status of the safety culture. Leveraging the tools allows for making parts of the culture measurable.

Interested in Qooling quality & safety management platform? Schedule a guided demo here.