safety and efficiency - time to change Finnish business culture

More than 100 000 accidents occur in Finnish companies every year, resulting in huge costs in terms of sick leave. Many accidents could be prevented if only information about previous near misses and safety incidents reached the people responsible in the company in good time. However, in many companies, internal communication is seriously lacking.

Protect , a Finnish safety specialist, wants to be part of changing the culture of companies to be safer and more efficient. Quality, safety and environmental deviations cannot be the sole responsibility of senior managers or management, but must involve the whole company's staff in detecting, reporting and correcting them.

-For businesses to develop and grow, they need to learn from the mistakes they have made. Many Finnish companies know that they have problems in their production process or in handling customer feedback, for example, but they don't have the time or resources to fix the situation," says Miia Laakso, HSEQ Business Manager at Protect.

Companies are in an even better position if they do not even have to go through errors, but can anticipate them by assessing the risks identified.

To support the change in company culture, Protect has created a versatile PRO24 reporting application to involve all company staff in the detection and correction of quality, safety and environmental deviations.

Everyday life in business is surprising. An evening worker at a factory may have an incident that he or she doesn't tell anyone about because nothing serious has happened yet. A random, unexplained fault on a production line may occur and suddenly get worse, causing a costly all-day shutdown. A customer collecting goods from the factory may open up to the completely wrong person about their dissatisfaction with the previous delivery, and the customer feedback goes no further than that.

The PRO24 notification application is a multi-purpose tool born out of these needs and can be used for a variety of purposes. For example, it can be used for making and handling safety-related notifications, deviations and initiatives, but it can also be used for handling operational deviations and customer feedback, among others.

You don't even need to have an account to submit a feedback form, which makes it possible to involve non-company employees - much better than, for example, regular website feedback forms.

-The customer can leave feedback directly in the app or an external contractor working in the area can report a safety incident they have noticed themselves.

Companies can easily create their own declaration forms or use ready-made templates to meet their needs. Each type of notification can also have its own workflow and processing steps.

-The company's own notification form can be used, for example, to inform the maintenance manager at the central office about maintenance work carried out in another part of Finland. The application can also be used to conveniently inform the company's CEO of the number of products manufactured during the day, even if the company does not have an actual production control or production monitoring system, Laakso explains.

The app works in real time on mobile and PC, so it's easy to make a notification and it reaches the right person immediately. You can also attach a picture or video clip to illustrate the problem.

Having all company notifications in a single application makes it easier to roll out the development.

-When you learn how to make safety observations, you also learn how to take initiatives, for example. It is also easier to process the data when all the information is in one system. You can create lists and views for different audiences. For example, the management team can easily compile and send the previous year's complaint report.

The notification application allows companies to collect valuable data to inform their development efforts. For example, notifications can help to detect that a production workflow is interrupted three times a day due to the same recurring problem. An investment will correct the situation and the data collected by the app makes it easy to calculate the payback period for the purchase.

-This will lead to a situation where a company is no longer developed on the basis of a "gut feeling", but on the basis of real information, says Laakso.

Protect launched its app at the end of March. Already, the company has received positive feedback from users, particularly for the ease of use and versatility of the app.

-Our role is to help management take the bull by the horns in the company's development efforts and also to engage the whole staff in a culture of development.