Enhancing workplace safety through transformative technologies 

Singapore has made significant strides in improving workplace health and safety over the past few years. According to a Ministry of Manpower (MOM) report, the average rate over a rolling three-year period was an all-time low of one death per 100,000 workers. However, there has been an alarming spate of workplace-related accidents and deaths this year. 

Just in August, five lives were lost, bringing 2022’s fatality number to 36.
 
The recent events have raised questions about what needs to be done with industrial organisations thrust in the spotlight once again for the lack of safety standards and unacceptable conditions of their work sites. 

Under scrutiny are the construction and manufacturing sectors, which remain the main industries incurring the highest number of fatalities and major injuries. 

In response, the MOM has introduced a slate of new measures to strengthen workplace safety and health. This includes a revised demerit point system, mandating all companies to review their safety procedures and establishing a Multi-Sectoral Workplace Safety Taskforce to strengthen safety practices and outcomes. 

As government regulations tighten and the associated penalty of non-compliance stiffens, employers can no longer afford to place workplace safety in the backseat. 

Additionally, workplace safety can never be seen as a trade-off for lowering operating costs and delivering projects within squeezed timelines. As many industrial companies look to innovation and digitally transform to operate more efficiently and productively, perhaps they can also look to technology to address workplace safety challenges. 

Introduce Real-Time Visibility to Reduce Operational Hazards Dynamic and high-risk environments, such as construction, oil and gas and petrochemicals often encounter industry-specific operational hazards that can affect worker safety. 

Although some operational risks are unavoidable, the safety of workers and the environment is ultimately dependent on an organisation’s ability to recognise and manage these risks in real time. 

Oftentimes, the lack of a continuous flow of reliable, real-time data is a huge hindrance in dynamic work conditions. Workers may not know who is doing which tasks at any given moment, what is happening in the field, or have access to critical updates. This impacts one’s ability to make data-driven decisions to optimise productivity, reduce operational risks and ensure safety. 

Interoperability — the ability to connect and synchronise tools and services — provides a single source approach that overcomes information barriers and provides workers access to real-time information. Workers are given visibility of who is doing which tasks at any given moment and an overview of all planned and in-progress work on a facility. 

Best practices also eliminate information gaps and operational risks, streamline critical updates, and keep everyone in the loop at all times. This ultimately minimises the tendency of reactive responses by workers and the odds of accidents. 

Improve asset reliability through performance management technology 

Maintenance is essential in asset-intensive industries. Every day, operators are out inspecting assets to preserve the value and function of a machine for as long as possible, as the risk of overlooking even one small item can cause costly downtime. 

At the same time, assets that are properly maintained, operated and installed are far less likely to create a situation that could result in workplace injury or death. Instead of relying heavily on visual inspections, organisations can look to leveraging asset performance management solutions such as predictive analytics to identify, diagnose and prioritise impending equipment problems continuously and in real-time. 

Early warning detection of equipment issues can be provided ahead of existing operational alarms, allowing workers to address issues before they become problems that can lead to accidents or injuries. 

Additionally, field workers can be brought into the automation loop through a combination of workforce management software and mobile handhelds or commercially available off-the-shelf mobile devices. 

Details such as maintenance procedures, equipment diagrams, and operating history can be pushed to mobile devices that workers carry with them into the field, allowing them to uncover process or equipment problems and identify and address developing issues in real time. This helps decrease unscheduled downtime, improve plant productivity, increase safety and situational awareness and improve the visibility of regulatory compliance. 

Inculcate a world-class safety culture in every industrial organisation 

While technology adoption and implementation can help improve safety levels, organisations may sometimes find that safety performance tends to plateau after some time. 

Business leaders may also find that developing more rules and processes or deploying more solutions may end up bringing minimal impactful change. 

Rather than focusing on ticking all the right boxes when it comes to establishing a strong foundation for workplace safety, leaders must understand that compliance does not equate to culture. This is especially so when risk management practices put in place are not personal to the worker, leading to complacency and workers following rules just for the sake of keeping their jobs. 

To address this, organisations can look at creating simulated environments that accurately replicate workspaces and typical risk challenges. Such immersive learning can be done via Virtual Reality (VR), offering a truly immersive, collaborative and practical space to get hands-on experience undertaking tasks. 

With VR technology, workers can perfect their skills while managing risk conditions and dangerous environments, without being exposed to real-world dangers. 

Performance metrics can also be developed to evaluate and monitor one’s ability and knowledge throughout the process. Making inherently dangerous operation environments safer is not a straightforward task. 

Nevertheless, given the state of increasing regulations and workplace accidents, organisations can no longer afford to rely on or survive on a reactive approach. Instead, safeguarding the health and safety of workers must remain a focus for every task, every day. 

Organisations need to also leverage transformative technologies to prevent the frequency and severity of injury to workers. Only when a strong safety culture is established can organisations truly reap the benefits of a productive and process-efficient workforce.