Blackline Safety Helping Organizations Take A Proactive Approach to Worker Safety

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You can’t improve what you can’t see. Through connected worker visibility, Blackline Safety helps organizations see more, respond faster, and continuously improve.

In many industries and professions, workers operate in hazardous environments, remote areas, and confined spaces where they are not directly visible to coworkers or supervisors. The risks to these lone workers or crews aren’t limited to exposure to noxious fumes or combustible gas but also include falls, losing consciousness, encounters with aggressive people or animals, becoming trapped, or having a medical emergency. 

Despite having established safety protocols and safety technology, many companies are unable to see or monitor these workers. Without appropriate monitoring capacity, companies have no way to ascertain whether their workers are safe, need help, or are following the safety protocols correctly. This is reflected in the number of reported incidents. In a recent study commissioned by Blackline Safety, a Calgary-based technology company specializing in connected safety, lost time incidents remain stubbornly high, with 64 per cent of the respondents saying they see a disconnect between safety protocols and real-world behaviours.

From reactive to proactive safety

Closing the gap between stated safety protocols and real-world behaviours requires a shift in organizational culture. In many organizations, the safety culture is still reactive, with safety and incident data used to respond after an incident has occurred. The real opportunities for improving worker safety, however, lie in transforming to a proactive safety culture. Instead of treating safety as a compliance function, leaders should view it as a holistic, enterprise operating system. 

There are two components to creating a proactive safety culture. One is having all the controls in place to protect against an incident or ensure it doesn’t escalate to a serious injury or fatality (SIF) and to be able to verify those controls will work when they need to. The other is the ability to look at all the historical field data to help identify trends before they become future problems that can lead to incidents, serious injuries, or fatalities.

One of the main challenges to creating this proactive safety culture is technology. While many companies invest heavily in safety training, technologies, and systems, these three pillars aren’t always talking to one another. With each pillar operating on its own, gaps can persist even when investment increases. When these pillars are connected, and communicating with one another, the safety culture improves. 

Mediaplanet spoke with Sean Stinson, President of Blackline Safety, to learn more about how his company’s connected solutions support a proactive safety culture.  

Why is it crucial for the three pillars of a safety culture to be connected in real time?

The main reason is they inform one another and having real-time connectivity can save a life. Blackline’s training, tools, and data visibility are all tied into one singular stream. This allows safety managers to see what the risks are in real time at a given location, have immediate awareness of safety incidents to enable quick response and reduce the risk of SIF, and then easily gather and analyze all the data so it can be turned into actionable insights for the next training cycle. 

How is Blackline Safety helping to move workplace safety from a compliance function to a holistic, enterprise-wide operating system?

For companies that already have a strong safety culture, Blackline helps to reinforce it by offering some of the most advanced and reliable tools on the market. For clients that are less far along on the maturity path, our tools give them tactical solutions to connect those critical safety pillars and rapidly transition the safety culture into that of a leading company.  

What are some of the tools that Blackline offers?

We have two main products — G8 and Blackline Live. The G8 is a wearable device that connects workers to realtime monitoring, provides instant alerts, and allows them to communicate with safety managers if they find themselves at risk. Blackline Live is the software product that accompanies G8. It’s a cloud-based software platform that allows safety managers to have real-time visibility of the wellbeing of their teams, get critical details during an incident, and interact with their connected safety fleet. It can be used from anywhere you have internet access.

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You can find more detailed information on the current state of worker safety and how to create a proactive safety culture in Blackline’s Keeping People Safe Report.