How Metric Displays Improve Safety For Manufacturers

Every year over the Fourth of July holiday weekend in the USA, safety is a concern as there are news reports of people injured or killed by unsafe use of fireworks. Most if not all of these incidents are avoidable, with proper education and some common sense.

The same is true of accidents in the workplace. While there is not much that can be done with teaching common sense, seeing that staff stays up to date on safety initiatives and procedures is critical. Safety metrics also play a vital role in helping individuals feel personally responsible for safety.

How Safety Metrics Help

For example, consider the typical ‘Days Accident Free’ metric. When this is displayed for all to see, it can be a sense of pride within the organization. In visiting various facilities, often this is pointed out as bragging rights. “Our organization has been accident free for 472 days, and we work hard to keep that number growing.”

Posting this information increases awareness of individual safety too. Employees are more likely to take the extra step to avoid dangerous situations as they do not want to be the one responsible for resetting the count to zero.
Safety metrics may include showing tasks that need performed on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, departmental safety audit results, cleaning assignments, LEAN methods, and work instructions. The most important thing is to make your safety messages and metrics available and accessible to everyone in your facility.

Audience Captivation

How can you make sure the safety announcements will be seen? This comes down to captivation, all the contributing factors that make the workers WANT to look at the screen.

Screen placement plays a huge factor in this regard. Find locations that get plenty of foot traffic and provides some dwell-time. This may be a lobby, break room, around the time clock or near the water cooler. Having the display in an area where workers congregate will give staff the time and place to view the messages and even discuss them in a group setting.

Incorporating news, traffic alerts and weather information also attract attention and adds to the effect of captivation when workers look at the information. Feeds of this nature provide fresh, interesting content, giving employees something new to look for as the display offers more than safety reminders. It satisfies the Whats In It For Me? (WIIFM).

The key in all of this is to keep it simple. You want the safety messages to be clear and concise. The metrics need to be easy to understand and must be beneficial to the workers.

By applying the suggestions in this article, you can use metric displays to improve the safety of your workers.

To learn more about metric displays for manufacturing, read our eBook “10 Advantages of Digital Signage in Manufacturing.”