Bring Your Own Mobile WHS Systems

Smartphone ownership in Australia has more than doubled in the last four years with over three quarters of the population now owning a device.

And 57% of Australians consider their smartphone their number one device.

As a result businesses are taking note. An Aberdeen survey of a sample of medium sized enterprises pointed to evidence that the use of mobile apps designed specifically to help employees get their work done increased productivity by 45%.

At the same time operational efficiency increased when enterprise apps were made available.

This is not lost on businesses looking for the next source of competitive gain. The drive for mobility is part of the business technology agenda for most companies today.

BYOD

That strategy is being helped along by the emergence of the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy. Enlightened employers are recognising they do not have to supply employees with smartphones and tablets. Workers bring their own to work every day. And when given the choice, they would prefer to use their own device at work.

So IT departments that used to focus on managing licences and controlling hardware security, now wrestle with how best to integrate the needs of the mobile workforce and still maintain security of the corporate data.

Of course some data is just too critical to be distributed onto mobile devices that are walking out the door at five o’clock.

Use of Mobile WHS Systems

Mobile strategies work best when they not only allow staff to work away from the office, they facilitate and promote connections between staff, customers and systems. Productivity comes from using mobility to connect staff in real time with each other and enabling them to share business information around freely.

Fortunately, these features are also very attractive benefits of a good Safety Management System. No wonder that businesses are embracing the growing number of mobile apps on the market today designed specifically to allow users to report workplace incidents and hazards, conduct site inspections, report on non-compliance, manage risk and conduct field audits.

Currently there are mobile safety apps available that perform just about every user interface function of a full Safety Management System. Using these light weight mobile apps hosted on the worker’s own devices an organisation can build a complete safety management system with most of the functionality of an enterprise system but at a fraction of the cost. All that is left is to solve for a secure integration with the  company database.