Staying Safe Onsite with Mobile Toolbox Talks

Over the course of a labor intensive 8 to 12-hour shift on a construction jobsite site, safety procedures commonly go by the wayside. The reason for this lapse in safe judgment is more times than none caused by the lack of proper routine safety training. Luckily this is an issue that can be easily solved and is why more safety supervisors across many different industries require Toolbox Talks to be conducted on every job site.

Toolbox Talks are an amazing way for safety managers to re-engage with field workers who may not always be performing their daily duties in the safest possible manner. Toolbox Talks are an easy way to get everyone together on the project site to discuss a relevant job topic like ladder or harness safety, answer any questions they may have about the particular subject or task, and also have each employee sign-off/acknowledge that they were present for the meeting. This documentation process is not only important for possible liability in the case of a worker injury, but it also gives you a clear record of when and where these critical safety sessions are being conducted.

The Advantages of Paper-free Toolbox Talks

Today, many companies conduct Toolbox Talks very informally with a packet of paper and a pen. The issue is that it’s really easy to forget, misplace, or damage this important packet of paperwork since it’s being transported constantly between multiple job sites and the main office.

These issues often lead to inconsistencies in proper safety procedures and documentation. Paper-based Toolbox Talks are extremely hard to verify for completion on a daily basis unless you are physically there to witness the collection of signatures. With mobile Toolbox Talks, you’re able to instantly eliminate the need for manual data verification, transportation, and reporting.

Conducting Toolbox Talks with a platform like GoCanvas allows you to conveniently store all your daily, weekly, and monthly OHSA related safety curriculum right on your smart device. This means that no matter where you are, you have the power to conduct a thorough safety lesson to your field employees. You can also conveniently collect signatures of your crew members in attendance, along with digital time, date, and location stamps for further data validation. This makes not only collecting the information a breeze, but back-office reporting is now made effortless since all the data is now automatically stored in the cloud for real-time analysis and/or data export.

Going Paperless in 3 Steps with Canvas

Transitioning your process from paper to a mobile platform like GoCanvas is not as difficult as it seems. All it truly takes is a spreadsheet, a laptop, and a smart device!

The first step is to organize the weekly or monthly content of your Toolbox Talks into a .CSV file (Excel).  Your spreadsheet can be as simple as two columns named “Topic” and “Description”. This file will be used as Reference Data and connected to your GoCanvas account and mobile form. This file should contain the content that you wish to populate within your mobile Toolbox Talks form. You can source Toolbox Talks content from a variety of sources as well, including www.oshatraining.com that contains content for every month of the year!

The second step, after you have created and uploaded the Reference Data file, is to begin the creation of your own Toolbox Talks mobile form. The creation of this mobile form can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be by customizing it with the GoCanvas App Builder. We suggest including Signature, Time, Date, and GPS fields to assist with data reporting. But if you’d prefer to not create a mobile Toolbox Talks form from scratch, download pre-built templates from our template library and customize the fields to fit your company’s needs!

Once you’re finally happy with the layout of your mobile form, the final step is to make sure you connect your Reference Data file to it. This will ensure that the specific safety topic that you select to discuss with your crew populates within the mobile form automatically. And if you need any assistance in connecting your Reference Data file to your mobile form.

Now you are well on your way to a safer work site with GoCanvas!

Custom Data Workflows to Fit Your Daily Processes

Collecting data is an essential part of every business on the planet, but it’s only half of the equation.

Sharing data with the right people, at the right time, is often more important than just simply writing it down. But often when companies collect data with paper forms, it can take hours, days, and sometimes weeks for the information to reach its final destination! This isn’t even taking into account the other complexities that can make the paper-based data collection process even more difficult including multi-department approvals, out-of-state projects, and more!

Read below how mobile process improvement platforms like GoCanvas are changing the way that companies look at the collection and transmission of their data, and how a simple changes like using Workflow could help your business recover 100’s of hours in productivity every year. 

3 Ways to Automate Your Data Approval & Delivery Processes

The GoCanvas platform is not only a great way to combine all your paper forms into a single mobile app, but it’s also a means of controlling how and when your company’s data is collected.  Read below to learn about three popular use cases for the mobile Workflow feature of GoCanvas and what kind of impact it could have on your business.

Review & Approve Timesheets: Collecting employee daily or weekly timesheets is always a pain, but with GoCanvas it can almost become a pleasure. Instead of your crews having to fill out a piece of paper on every job site at the end of the day or week, they will instead simply log their time right on their phone. Once complete, those times will be sent automatically to their site supervisor who will receive a notification on his or her GoCanvas mobile device. The supervisor can then access and check each employee’s time, add comments, and reject if necessary. If everything looks good, the supervisor can sign off on the timesheet and send it to the company’s cloud database so that it can be digitally filed and processed by the office accounting team.

Safety Violation Tracking: For the Construction, Field Service and Manufacturing industries, employee safety is always a top priority. Due to the nature of work that is involved in these industries, having an efficient system for reporting and reviewing safety violations is essential.

By using Workflow with GoCanvas, a safety supervisor can now do his/her rounds at each project site, fill out the safety reports, and send the results to the office manager for review in real-time. The best part is that reports can be conditionally triggered to be sent for review if, such as, an item is marked as “Failed” or “Requires Correction”. This ensures that the office is only being sent notifications about the most critical reports, which allows them to focus on implementing real-time corrective actions to improve specific site safety situations.

Multi-step Construction Tasks: No matter what you are building or producing, it usually takes a group of people to get the job done. With paper forms, this involves each person who works on a particular task filling out a report. This usually leads to there being folders and upon folders worth of unorganized paper documentation.

With Workflow from GoCanvas, the data collected from start to finish of each task is kept neatly together in a single report. Once “John Doe” completes his part of the task, he can pass or “hand-off” the digital report to “Jane Johnson” so that she can complete her part of the report and continue this process in a dynamic chain of data collection until the report is complete! There will be no more swimming through filing cabinets to find that report from last year since now every completed report will be stored neatly in the cloud for you to easily search through using a simple keyword search. You can even track the status of “in-progress” reports to see why a certain report hasn’t be turned in yet!

And remember, each workflow can be easily setup and customized based on the different types of work processes being conducted, no matter the length. If you’d like to learn more, check out this amazing Workflow eBook on how real companies are making the switch from paper forms to GoCanvas!

The Impact of the Job Safety Analysis Process

When it comes to properly reporting and tracking safety data, there are many important processes that come into play.

One standard practice that is completed across thousands of worksites on a daily basis is a Job Safety Analysis. This procedure helps companies both large and small interconnect their health and safety principles to the tasks that their employees are completing. The JSA process, sometimes also known as a Job Hazard Analysis (JHA), is most often associated with tasks that involve the potential for injury or accident. JSAs are often modified and assigned to specific types of work processes, but ultimately the data being collected is focused on identifying and reviewing all the necessary steps to ensure safe work procedures are met before any job is performed.

The Pitfalls of Paper-Based JSAs

With the good that comes from the Job Safety Analysis process, also comes the bad. When a JSA is filled out on a piece of paper like it is done within many companies today, the data that is collected is only as good as how it was captured and when it was turned in.  But what does this really mean?

The basic premise of filling out a JSA is to capture the basic steps of a job or task, the potential risks of performing it, and the actions that can be taken to mitigate the potential danger as well as increase safety. The problem with filling out a JSA on a piece of paper is that the process begins to take on the negative attributes of paper data collection.

The functionality that is missing from a paper-based process and makes it so inefficient includes:

• No advanced data collection fields including Photos, GPS, Integrated Drop-Down Menus, Time Stamps, and more
• No automated review or approval workflow functionality
• No real-time data reporting or storage in your backend database systems
• No data field requirements to ensure fully completed JSA reports

As you can see from the list above, paper JSAs are likely only being half as effective as they should. With a mobile form platform like GoCanvas, you can transform your JSA or JHA process into something that runs in real-time and collects data that includes dynamic info like site photos and GPS stamps. The data that your field personnel collects with GoCanvas instantly becomes actionable data that you can use to make decisions, instead of having to wait hours or days to receive paper-based forms.

The ability to make proactive decisions about safety is often the difference between an accident being prevented versus it actually happening.

Getting Started with Mobile JSA Forms

The process of getting started with your own mobile JSAs for your various worksite projects is not difficult at all!

Our Application Store is a great resource to get started. With over 23,000+ pre-built mobile form templates including JSAs and JHAs, you’ll be sure to find something you can download into your account and start using right away! These templates can even be edited to fit better into your current process using the GoCanvas App Builder.

Another great option for you is to take a picture of the paper JSA or JHA that you use today and we will convert it into a mobile form for free! Simply click here to upload a photo or a copy of your JSA and we will have it converted within 24 – 48 hours! That means that you’ll be able to start seeing the benefits of a mobile JSA versus a paper form within just a day!