Since working with Workplace Wellness companies we have sorted out all those little office based aches and pains and bad postures that used to be part of our lives. It has been a great learning curve for us as we automated wellness, job demand, ergonomic and workplace assessments. The knock on effects for these practitioners was a surprise...

Preamble

With the focus in New Zealand on the change in Health and Safety legislation it is a good time to talk about what we have been doing in this area.

We have been working closely with Workplace Wellness consultants to help them automate their assessments and reporting. Part of this was our own research to find out how they worked and what worked in terms of using mobile devices to gather field data. 

Each type of business we have engaged with gathers data differently and has different data needs. The range of organisations we interviewed at the start covered Rehabilitation, Ergonomic, Job Assessment, Work Categorisation, Early Intervention and Physical Issues Services.

What worked and why ...

There are some scenarios where electronic devices are not a step forward. If you have to interview someone about how they are feeling then eye contact is essential. We can all write without looking, but using a keyboard on a tablet is disruptive to the flow of an interview as you have to keep looking down to where you are typing.

It is possible to use the handwriting on the tablet, but you need to take care that the recognition has worked, so once again you are looking at your hand, not the client.

The services that benefited most were third person observational - Occupational Therapists, Job Demand Assessments, Ergonomics et al. 

Initially there were worries from the Assessors about their speed of operation in the field. This was generally due to a lack of experience with tablet use. However as time went by they actually became faster in the field than they had been previously with pencil and paper! 

The benefits for the Assessors

There were two areas of benefits, and also a surprise hidden benefit!

The initial benefit was the efficiency in the field. This improvement in operation in the field came down to working closely with the staff during the trial design stage to ensure that the Assessments had an appropriate level of pre-set text and choices to select from. They shaved around 20% off the time to complete a workstation assessment in the field.

The second benefit comes when it is time to report. There was nothing to do, except review the output from the Clarinspect report software! No more downloading of photos, adding them into reports, and formatting them. No more transcribing handwritten notes into a Word document. The report even put the dimensions in place for desks and postures!

One client wanted WorkSTEPS compliant output for their case management system. This was not a problem, because the Clarinspect reporting system is flexible enough to encompass a huge range of formats, and essentially you are in charge of it!

An OT for another Clarinspect client undertook a site visit and came away with 38 workstation assessments. These were synchronised to the hub and reported out in under an hour, including photos! If you do this type of work then you will know how much drudgery this removed from their lives!

This leads to the second benefit - one very dear to the Workplace Wellness area: OOS. The amount of typing done by the Assessors dropped off remarkably. Clarinspect was producing the reports for them so there was no typing to do. Less typing is always a good thing! 

There is also a reduction in stress. Consider the case of the OT doing a site visit and having to produce 38 reports. They can come back from site, and send the reports to be on their client's H&S director's desk the next working day - with reduced pressure as all the grunt work is done by the system.

The benefits for the Clients

Our focus at Clarinspect extends not just to our customers, but to their clients. What benefit can they accrue? 

The immediate gain for the end client is in a very rapid turnaround from visit to reports. If you are looking at Early Intervention type work then it is essential to get details as soon as possible. 

Post-amble

Our journey with Health and Safety as well as Workplace Wellness is far from over - we learn more subtle angles to this business with every client we work with. 

There are challenges in this area, and you need to be cognisant of how you interact with the person being assessed, what data you are capturing and how you want it to be reported out. 

Getting the right technology approach to automating Workplace Wellness, and Health and Safety, can be an off-the shelf choice. However a little thinking can really deliver some amazing improvements in time and effort savings. 

We are interested in hearing from Consultants and Specialists in this area who would like to trial our technology - there are a few miles left in this journey and we want to walk them with some trusted partners!

If this is you, then consider getting in touch on the Clarinspect website

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