Safety management is anything but a staid field. Major events, like the pandemic, have had the effect of increasing innovation in health and safety management software and safety risk management software.
How so? In the following, we dig into the major trends that have emerged in software for safety management, answering what the future of safety management will look like and explaining how you can leverage safety management system software for better results in your safety program.
Safety management software gains ground thanks to the pandemic
So, what’s been going on in the space? As noted, the pandemic proved a watershed moment for safety management technology.
Covid itself was a work health and safety crisis. And many of the challenges that it posed – from contact tracing to ensuring safe site access to spinning up remote staff operations – had to be solved by digital software means.
Safety management software providers, for their part, responded admirably. Most Safety teams will acknowledge, despite the turmoil, a drastic uptick in efficiency gained from the safety management software solutions they procured at the time.
And though the pandemic was a huge catalyst for change, digitization in safety management has continued apace since then, as well.
The mental health crisis spurs on innovation in safety management software
What’s more, the public health crisis that was the pandemic also intersected with pre-existing public health crises, exacerbating their effects and creating even more space for software innovation.
In the world of geopolitics, some analysts speak of poly-crisis, or multiple, major, interconnected crises happening all at once. This was also the case in the public health world at the time of the pandemic.
For instance, the mental health and wellbeing crisis predates Covid-19.
Journalist Judith Warner, for one, has discussed how the warning signs of a mental health crisis in children were there to be seen well before the pandemic.
As reported in NPR, a staggering one in six young people reported creating a suicide plan, a 44% increase since 2009, according to a 2019 report from the Centers for Disease Control.
Of course, this mental health and wellbeing crisis didn’t only impact children. Working people of all ages also reported higher levels of stress, anxiety, and depression.
Nearly one in five adults in the U.S. live with a mental illness, according to 2022 data from the National Institute of Mental Health. Meanwhile, almost 3 million Australians have a mental illness, according to Productivity Commission findings in 2020.
Productivity loss from absenteeism and presenteeism have followed as a result. Employees with unresolved depression in the U.S. experience a 35% reduction in their productivity, according to the American Psychiatric Association.
In Australia, the Productivity Commission estimates that employees with mental illness take an annual average of 10 to 12 days off due to psychological distress, with total costs from lost productivity ranging from A$12 billion to A$39 billion.
The latest trends in safety management systems software
Given the monetary impacts of the mental health and wellbeing crisis, there was much demand in the market even before Covid for safety management systems software to better support the mental health and wellbeing needs of employees. That demand, during the pandemic, yielded an incredible increase in dedicated wellbeing solutions.
Of course, that demand hasn’t tapered off since, making ongoing innovation in wellbeing management software one of the latest trends in safety management software. Here’s the complete list:
1. Integrated wellbeing management
Beyond standalone wellbeing management solutions, we’ve seen a trend toward integrating wellbeing management within the broader safety management product. The resultant products, in addition to streamlining compliance and boosting organizational efficiency with robust automation, now provide a central hub for health and safety, contractor management, and wellbeing, offering real-time analytics for better decision making.
2. Integrated resilience
Wellbeing management isn’t the only capability being integrated into safety management software. We’ve also seen a trend toward safety solutions themselves becoming increasingly integrated into platforms that offer a more holistic approach to resilience, one that facilitates crucial collaboration and coordination, unlocks critical insights, keeps stakeholders informed, and streamlines essential workflows for planning and response.
3. Robust reporting
Coming out of Covid, growing compliance agendas have made safety performance key factors in procurement, as well. In consequence, the need for ever more granular health and safety data has skyrocketed. Many providers have responded, delivering a trend toward building functionality to consolidate data to gain valuable insights and visualize data points through interactive dashboards, charts, and maps in real time, as well as create custom reports as PDF or Word documents.
4. Location intelligence
Similarly, the demand to know where workers are, particularly lone workers and other at-risk employees, has increased since the pandemic. Providers have responded with a trend toward adding location intelligence, insights gained from visualizing and/or analyzing location data, to their safety products.
5. Best practice out of the box
Covid also pointed up the need for constantly updated expert guidance. Certain providers have responded, kicking off a trend toward incorporating a comprehensive library of solution templates, based on ISO standards and aligned with best practices, within safety management software itself.
Safety software that’s at the cutting edge
So, which solutions on the market are actively shaping the future of workplace safety? Integrated resilience platforms like Noggin are delivering with safety management software solutions that deliver on the key trends above.
These solutions give organizations who value technology innovation the ability to customize dashboards, notifications, workflows, and analytics to not only stay agile but also adapt to emerging challenges – and we know there’ll be plenty in 2025 and beyond.
Some more of their cutting-edge capabilities include:
Incident management
The ability to elevate hazard and incident reporting with seamless reporting from any device, to instantly notify personnel and assign actions using prebuilt plans, oversee injury and return-to-work processes, leverage industry templates for investigations, and manage tasks to prevent reoccurrence.
Engagement
The ability to engage with employees and contractors though planned safety meetings, scheduled behavior-based observations, and strategic change management consultations, then easily share lessons learned by generating safety alerts that can be easily shared via email, SMS, and voice message.
Risk management
The ability to manage risk more effectively using multiple approaches, e.g., tactical Take 5’s, Job Safety Analysis, and Method Statements, to align teams, Permit to Work and Lock Out Tag Out for higher risk operations, or use the operational risk register to manage risks at a strategic level.
Monitoring
The ability to monitor the health of personnel using occupational health, hygiene, and drug and alcohol screening, oversee the safe use of hazardous chemical substances, and keep track of competencies and certifications to ensure personnel have the skills and knowledge to undertake their job safely.
Finally, Covid was a watershed moment for safety management software, spurring great technological innovation amid turmoil. And with robust automation to liberate teams from administrative tasks, safety solutions like Noggin are capitalizing on those trends and leading the pack in product development.
Not convinced yet? Request a demonstration to learn how else you can leverage Noggin’s safety management software to generate better results in your safety program.
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