3 Reasons To Use an App for Your Company Safety Programs

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In today’s digital age, it’s no surprise that many organizations leverage their intranets as a place to house emergency response plans, workplace safety protocol and other important documents. After all, every employee has access to the intranet, which must make it the ideal place to house business-critical planning materials, right? Not exactly.

Today, more than 50 percent of organizations use website announcements, including intranet postings, to communicate with employees during an emergency or crisis situation. However, using your intranet for business-critical communication presents several problems. One of the biggest is that this approach is much more time-intensive than other methods, especially mobile safety apps. And during any emergency—whether a worksite accident, severe weather, IT outage or anything in between—your organization needs to respond as quickly and effectively as possible.

Let’s examine some of the ways that using a mobile app, rather than a company intranet, provides time savings for your safety programs:

1. Mobile access to information.

One of the biggest perks of a mobile app is the fact that it provides anywhere, anytime access to information. Each user is able to download the app on his or her phone or tablet, and all relevant safety information is securely available at the touch of a button. Employees have access to the most up-to-date information regardless of whether they are in the field, at their desk or traveling around the globe.

This is a huge time savings benefit over intranet-based workplace safety materials. Consider how your employees typically access intranet documents: Most would have to log on to the site using their desktop computer, which isn’t practical for many who work remotely or in the field. And during certain emergencies, your building may be evacuated, severing your employees’ access to your intranet altogether. In some organizations, the intranet may be accessible via mobile phone or tablet. However, employees still must log-in every time they access the intranet on the device, which wastes valuable time.

By providing anywhere, anytime access to your safety information through a secure app, you ensure that employees can quickly access the contact lists, maps, flowcharts and other data they need, right at the moment they need it most.

2. Real-time updates and notifications.

Mobile safety apps enable administrators to push real-time updates and notifications to employees, when a situation begins, throughout its evolution and as it comes to an end. This means they can notify end users of emergencies, accidents and other events immediately, rather than losing time on less efficient methods of communication, such as manual call trees. The app will notify each user of the most recent update right on their phone, so they are much more likely to see it immediately.

Using the intranet, on the other hand, requires a much longer timeline. After all, your site doesn’t provide a way to proactively notify employees that the information on the intranet has been changed or updated; instead, you must rely on other means to first tell them that there has been a change, and then they must log in to view it. Meanwhile, the emergency situation is evolving and valuable time is being wasted.

3. Maximum uptime.

Most businesses have experienced intranet downtime at one time or another; in some organizations, it’s a regular occurrence. What happens to your employees when a workplace safety issue happens and the intranet is down? Probably lots of panicked phone calls and plenty of wasted time.

Mobile apps use WiFi, cellular networks or both to provide more reliable access to information. And best of all, vital safety information can be downloaded directly to a mobile device so that it is accessible at any time, even in the event of a network failure.

Where does your organization house its safety program information? Have you considered transitioning to a mobile app for better time savings?

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