Despite improvements in safety standards and equipment, the fatality rate among frontline team members in the oil and gas industry remains high when compared to other industries. A Dräger survey reveals that only one-third of safety managers rated their organization’s safety measures as “strong,” while nearly 62% rate the quality of safety-related training and education between “not satisfied’ to “somewhat satisfied".

Health, Safety and Environment or HSE professionals continue to rely on manual or paper-based processes to decipher how to keep their workforce safe and operational processes compliant with industry regulations. In recent years, the oil and gas industry have made strides in the digitization of health & safety programs that have improved its frontline team’s occupational safety levels.

Besides, there is consensus that the implementation of a comprehensive frontline workforce productivity platform can improve workforce safety practices and compliance control. Next, let us see how.

Improving Front Line Team Safety and Compliance

Here are six ways a technology-driven frontline workforce platform can improve both safety and compliance:

Ensuring best safety practices for operators

How do plant managers keep their essential operators safe while enabling them to perform their daily duties without compromising on quality? As a solution, a connected workforce platform can be the answer through step-by-step guided instructions detailing the best actions for safe practices.

Safety practices are also valuable for new or inexperienced operators as they proceed to work on any malfunctioning equipment and it helps them complete their assigned job.

Enabling a risk-free workplace over time

According to the Dräger survey, 66.7% of the safety managers reported that workplace hazards and risks reported only the occurrence of a "near-miss" incident. With manual practices, most of the safety-related observations remain undocumented and unreported, thus leading to incidents. Plus, 52% of the frontline workforce is never informed of these incidents thus, promoting a lack of learning.

A frontline workforce platform provides complete visibility into frontline operations, capturing and storing occupational hazards and incidents, and developing a risk-free workplace over time.

Resolving real-time hazards and compliance issues

As a continuation of the previous point, the frontline workforce productivity platform can escalate issues concerning occupational hazards in real-time. By approaching real-life incidents as a "learning opportunity," incident tracking can aid in improving workplace safety and reducing disruptions under the HSE safety standards.

Supporting frontline workforce training

Going by statistics, frontline workforce training can reduce safety incidents by up to 48% while improving first-time fix rates by 92%. Technology-based HSE solutions can be used to train new and existing employees and contractors to comply with standard operating procedures (SOPs).

The Dräger survey findings have highlighted the importance of continual workforce training and education for safe use of oil and gas equipment, as well as how to respond to any life-threatening incident.

Training new employees on HSE safety practices

New employee training and orientation programs can help in making them familiar with the company’s safety protocols and HSE safety practices. Hence, safety training must be a part of every new employee onboarding process.

By using augmented reality (AR) technology, work instructions can be imparted to help new employees develop the skills needed to succeed and stay safe.

Leveraging data analytics

Data collection and aggregation tools can be used to store all reported incidents and observations (across Oil & gas facilities) at a centralized location. Further, valuable insights can be derived from this collected data using analytics tools, which can facilitate proper decision-making and resolution of issues.

Conclusion

Safety-focused work culture can help your frontline workforce feel safer and get quality work done on time. Apart from wearing safety equipment, a frontline workforce platform can go a long way in improving workplace safety and compliance. Besides providing accurate analytics, this connected platform can improve real-time reporting of occupational hazards and issues.

Through its frontline workforce productivity platform, Atheer has been instrumental in making technology work towards resolving oil and gas industry pain points such as completing facility commissioning and equipment installation on time and training the next generation of oil and gas professionals. On its part, Atheer’s frontline workforce platform brings together a wide range of solutions including AR-based video assistance, work instructions, learning and training—all under one roof.