One of the biggest challenges for managers of field workers… especially if they are in a geographically out-of-the-way location with limited cell coverage… is simply knowing where they are at any given moment and what work they are performing. The ability to communicate and share information with your team members in real-time can literally be a matter of life and death.
This is true for all field workers whether they are:
- Tower workers servicing utility lines
- Telecom employees laying cable.
- Landmen engaging with property owners.
- Oilfield Services workers.
- Forestry crew members planting or harvesting trees.
- Or any other employee working in a far-flung area, whether as part of a team but especially if they are alone.
One of our founders experienced a life-threatening experience when employed as a land manager. A property owner pulled a gun on him and ordered him off his land. He was alone with nothing more than a cell phone in his back pocket. No one knew where he was or what project he was working on, and management had no means of tracking him had he “gone red.” Luckily, he got out of the situation unharmed.
But what if he had been equipped with a digital solution like Field Safe? It would have been a much safer situation.
- GPS coordinates display the location of all workers via a dashboard in real-time, so management would have known precisely where he was and what he was doing.
- He could have communicated instantly with head office staff that he needed assistance when the situation turned ugly.
- And, in the event he had missed a pre-determined check-in, emergency measures would have immediately been implemented, and help dispatched.
A digital safety solution would have drastically improved the safety of our founder that day.
But safety isn’t the only benefit a digital EHS solution provides. For your workers, especially if they are conducting multiple inspections or working on several projects a day, that can require a lot of paperwork that can affect invoicing and project management if not completed and submitted quickly.
Gone are the days of having to lug a briefcase or backpack full of papers around that would have to be completed and then dropped off at the office. Digital forms can now be completed on cell phones and tablets quickly and easily and then instantly submitted. Paperwork compliance rates skyrocket.
For administrators and management, they no longer must rekey data from paper into corporate systems. Instead, interactions with landowners and other individuals are tracked, facilitating everything from regulatory compliance to project status reporting for clients and even billing.
Remember the landowner with the gun? Well, he denied that he had interacted with our founder that day. With a solution like Field Safe, GPS tracking would have provided an auditable proof point of that interaction.
At the end of the day, digitizing your remote workers is the safest and most operationally effective means of helping you stay connected to your remote workers to help them perform their duties safely and efficiently and ensure they return home every night.
Learn more about the additional benefits investing in a digital EHS solution creates.