What’s the first app you open in the morning? For many people—up to 270 million—it’s Teams. Microsoft Teams has revolutionized the modern workplace and presents an unparalleled opportunity for safety management.
Undoubtedly, the events of 2020 highlighted simultaneously the importance of health and safety, and the importance of technology.
At that time, Teams usage increased by 500%. If they didn’t see it already, organizations realized the immense value of Microsoft 365.
For a function that has traditionally struggled with engagement and disconnected IT, herein lies the opportunity. As put by industry analyst Verdantix:
“Not only are collaboration platforms widely adopted, they are also deeply ingrained in business workflows and often utilized as the primary enterprise app. Collaboration platforms’ high engagement rates present an opportunity to increase exposure to EHS [Environmental, Health & Safety].”
— Strategic Focus: Embedding Safety Into Collaboration Platforms, Verdantix
Here, we present three ways to use Microsoft Teams for safety management leveraging Pro-Sapien’s Teams integration.
Engaging employees in safety management
According to industry research, 63% of EHS professionals see frontline worker engagement as a priority over the next two years.
It’s no wonder why: a separate report from Gallup found that workplaces with engaged employees have 70% fewer incidents.
Achieving this takes a multi-faceted approach and technology is in no way a silver bullet. However, it’s one piece of the puzzle.
What organizations need is a solution that encourages all employees to buy into a strong, inclusive safety culture, empowering end-users to contribute and learn.
For this, Teams provides the perfect environment.
Nevertheless, as with SharePoint out of the box, Teams on its own lacks the depth of functionality to be an intuitive safety management system for enterprises.
In this case, firms can use Pro-Sapien to combine the power of traditional safety software with the accessibility of Teams.
Let’s dive in!
1. Report safety observations in Teams
Safety software buyers frequently ask us, “how many clicks does it take to do X?”
And quite rightly so. Considering the impact versus effort matrix, safety software should help you move many tasks out of the ‘thankless’ quarter into ‘quick wins’. In other words: low effort, high impact.
For example, this is especially true for hazard observations.
Therefore, one way to use Pro-Sapien in Teams is to provide a shortcut to the Observations form (low effort). Acting on observations and near misses helps to prevent incidents from materializing (high impact).
You can add Pro-Sapien forms like this to any channel, for quick access anywhere in Teams.
This way, employees can let management know about safety issues in a matter of minutes.
The same goes for all Pro-Sapien modules including Incident Management, Inspections, Permit to Work and more.
Further still, Pro-Sapien forms are mobile responsive to enable on-the-go reporting in Teams iOS and Android.
The fact Pro-Sapien is integrated into your Microsoft 365 means it really is as easy as that.
2. Get notified of safety tasks in Teams
It’s unlikely you’ll want everything in Teams, but some information is good to keep handy such as safety tasks.
Therefore, one of the most useful features of Pro-Sapien in Teams is task notification.
When a safety task is assigned in the Pro-Sapien Action Manager, a Microsoft Flow can send an alert to the user in Teams.
As well as receiving notifications, a My Actions tab helps employees keep track of their responsibilities.
Additionally, supervisors or managers may want to see all outstanding actions for their team. This is incredibly easy to achieve in just a few steps:
- Make sure you are a team owner
- On the team you own, click the + for ‘Add a tab’
- Select ‘SharePoint’
- Select your SharePoint site where Pro-Sapien is deployed
- Go to ‘Lists’ and select ‘Action Manager’
Voilà. With the right permissions, you can see progress on safety tasks and actions from across the business, right within Teams.
Now, managing your safety tasks is as easy as checking your Teams messages. This saves time and helps employees stay productive.
3. Share safety Power BI reports in Teams
Following on, wouldn’t it be fantastic to access safety reports with just as much ease?
Our motto is capturing data is only half the story—it’s what you do with it that makes the difference. So, we configure safety reports for our clients as part of our Business Intelligence core module. Often, we achieve this using Microsoft Power BI.
You can access these reports in Power BI itself, embed them in SharePoint, and now, add them to Teams.
Using the same process as above, it’s quick and easy to add a Power BI safety report to a team.
Subsequently, information is readily shared between colleagues, without anyone having to leave Teams—you can even chat about the report on the tab or click ‘Meet’ to instantly collaborate with team members.
Moreover, it’s possible to go one step further. Some innovative firms are use these Power BI reports to increase safety awareness far and wide.
For example, Pro-Sapien clients LBC Tank Terminals and SJI share safety performance with the entire organization—an innovative approach to increase the sense of ownership for all involved.
Collaboration on safety management has never been so straightforward.
Making the most of your investment in Microsoft 365
Unsurprisingly, disconnected IT systems prove time and time again to be one of the biggest barriers to EHS improvement.
If the pandemic has taught businesses anything, it’s that robust IT is not to be skimped on. That includes the Safety department.
Luckily, organizations invested in Microsoft 365 have a clear way to engage workers in safety management using Pro-Sapien in Teams.
The timing for technological advancement and change will never be better, and the need for it has never been greater.
So, while seizing the opportunity to upgrade your safety software (here’s how), add even more value by aligning it with the programs you rely on day in, day out.
Interested? Learn more today in our eBook, Why Pro-Sapien: Boosting EHS Engagement in Enterprises, or watch our Teams integration demo.
