Safety Innovation
Digitizing Construction Safety Forms, A Primer
Construction companies are in the business of building but often face safety risks. With safety as the number one priority, it takes a hefty amount of paperwork that costs you time and money. Digitizing construction safety lets you produce, send, and maintain records of your forms without the headache, smoothing your workflow while saving you paper waste. A robust safety software system like Salus can keep your forms and paperwork centralized and regulation-compliant. In comparison to managing paper documents, you’ll find it a breeze!
When your construction company goes digital, you stand to save substantial sums. New technology allows for far faster and more secure documentation for safety records and other documents.
Paper is surprisingly expensive. On average, each worker uses approximately 10,000 sheets of paper per year! This totals up to over $120 billion each year on printed forms in the U.S. alone. And after documents become outdated, the paper remains. Think of the millions of filing cabinets filling up office space.
If you think that’s a lot of paperwork, you’re right, but that’s only the start. Businesses double their paperwork every 3.3 years. Soon we will face even larger mounds of paper, each sheet eating up valuable money and employee time.
Not only are there costs to producing and storing paper, but there are also hidden costs when things go wrong. A single misfiled document can cost over $100 in workers’ time while losing a document can tally up to $700. Consider how many documents go missing a day in some larger organizations!
While the loss of even one document is expensive enough, consider what happens when disaster strikes. Over 70% of companies would collapse within only a few weeks if a flood or fire destroyed their paper documents. Are you prepared to take that risk?
Decreasing your paperwork by digitizing your construction safety forms will increase your efficiency dramatically. You’ll spend less time looking for lost documents and handling new ones, and more time doing productive work.
Those who don’t want to deviate too much from their usual approach might find writable PDFs appealing, on the surface. These electronic documents allow employees to fill forms right on the computer. However, these PDFs have their own host of problems. For example, you can’t import or export the data with database systems. As such, these PDFs still require sizable manual processes.
Writable PDFs also constrain sharing and editing capabilities. These static files can only handle fixed fields. You can’t modify the forms as easily as you’d like, or attach rich media. Also, sending the documents around can become cumbersome, resulting in multiple different revisions of the same document, instead of a single source.
While they may work somewhat better than paper, as they increase speed and readability, writable PDFs fail to resolve all of the issues of paperwork. One still has to manage the complicated mess of files, and these PDFs lack the advantages of a smart database system. For worksite inspections and other safety-related needs, you’ll want to handle documents in a digital system that works better than writable PDFs. A system that easily incorporates data from different times and collates them into a well-organized structure.
A modern digital solution like Salus makes it a snap to set up and fill in construction safety forms. You can easily make checklists for personal protective and other equipment, project safety, COVID-19, or any other topic. Your employees will thank you for making the process so straightforward!
Ensuring that employees adhere to business processes is key for a safe workplace, but paper forms by nature come with the potential for loss and data fragmentation. With scanning, re-scanning, filing, and shuffling documents between the field and the home office, the potential for data loss is massive.
Digitization fixes this situation for your business. Construction technology takes the place of the clipboard and the scanner and removes the need to transport documents manually. The ability to transmit information instantaneously between the field and the office increases workplace transparency.
New software tools allow workers to access forms directly from phones, tablets, or any device. The service automatically maintains the latest version of each document and tracks modifications, making the most up-to-date information consistently available to those who need it.
With digitized checklists, employees can send you their construction safety forms instantaneously. No more waiting for someone to drop off or mail in the last bit of authentication they need. The tools give you flexibility, such as easily customizing safety lists for specific standards. You also gain the transparency of a simpler and more direct system. Without manually filling in and transporting documents, you’ll know exactly what information you have, and what information you need.
Using digital safety tools like Salus speeds up safety information processing. This can alert you to hazards, potentially preventing serious injuries. It also eliminates immense amounts of time and money spent dealing with paperwork.
Just add or edit a safety form, and your employees can access it instantly—they can fill it in, sign it, and send it back to you just as easily. No training necessary! It’s as easy as using a website or phone app. Plus, you can then organize and manage the database of completed forms as you need.
Salus creates data-transportation solutions. Why waste time and other resources printing out forms, cataloging them, and entering data by hand? Go the quick and easy way. Reach out and book a demo with Salus now!