Organizations and workers in energy, mining, utilities, construction, and manufacturing deal with specialized, complex, and potentially dangerous equipment and materials that require vigilance, adherence to standard operating procedures, and proper training to ensure the safety of themselves and others.

The nature of these industries makes them inherently perilous and compliance-centric for workers, and competitive organizations know how critical it is to enable, document, and operate a safe workplace.

Digital transformation unlocks the opportunity for organizations in heavy industries to strengthen worker safety and compliance by reducing human error, enhancing safety protocols, and automating responses to incidents. Collaboration tools connect teams, but they also reinforce safe work practices, help in incident response, and ensure greater compliance to safety protocols and regulatory guidelines from organizations like OSHA, MSHA, EPA, NFPA, and more.

Ultimately, digital tools offer the potential to transform how health, safety, and environment (HSE) leaders keep their workers safe. Here are three ways companies can reinforce safety and compliance protocols with voice-first, multimodal collaboration solutions.

#1 Automated, Voice-First Standard Operating Procedures

Accidents, falls, injuries, safety hazards, dangerous chemicals, and heavy machinery all create risks for the heavy industry workforce. Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are key to building a safe workplace in the face of these challenges.

Today, SOPs most often take the form of repetitive, paper-based checklists and forms that employees need to complete daily, often multiple times a day. These paper checklists form the backbone of safety and regulatory compliance documentation. However, workers can suffer from complacency and repetition fatigue when filling out the same paper forms every day.

Further issues with paper checklists include illegible or incomplete answers. The paper checklist can be lost or marred by weather or various materials with spills before filing. And many paper checklists are often simply filed away in a 3-ring binder, stacked away in cabinets never to be addressed again. This makes them inaccessible and near impossible to search or review.

Orion’s voice-first, multimodal collaboration platform offers a modern alternative to this old-fashioned paper system. Intelligent features keep the workforce safe by automating processes like safety check-ins, monitoring for incapacitation (e.g. vigilance control), or allowing workers to call for help in emergencies while starting emergency workflows. SOPs can ensure authorization has been given to perform a certain function or enter a restricted area. Workers entering particularly hazardous areas or confined spaces can be prompted at regular intervals to provide a status update, enabling managers to send immediate assistance if required.

Voice-first SOPs also confirm things like employee readiness to perform a certain task, such as having received proper training and wearing proper personal protective equipment (PPE). They can also be used to confirm surroundings have been reviewed and acknowledged as being safe or offer a step-by-step process that has to be followed before operating specific equipment.

#2 Greater Visibility, Compliance, and Team Improvements for Managers

Heavy industry managers that oversee deskless workforces have traditionally lacked access to technology that supports the visibility and accountability of their workers, their reporting and compliance responsibilities, and team enhancements.

Operational Command and Control
Visibility is crucial for a safe work environment for heavy industry organizations. Managers need greater visibility into where and what workers are doing at any given moment, especially in a crisis or urgent situation.

Managers can also communicate with distributed teams and handle dispatch with web-based PTT via a browser. This ability creates control at centralized, regionalized, and localized levels for team empowerment and accountability.

Always-Available Technology
With intelligent collaboration tools, managers can stay connected to workers while off-duty or offsite and communicate directly on any device, on any network, at any distance (unlike radios). In the event of a safety emergency, managers can receive alerts and review logged messages no matter where they are.

Advanced Location Services
Geolocation and geofences are also a critical component of responding to emergency situations. Orion’s indoor location management eliminates blind spots pinpointing the exact location of workers.

Organizations operating in hazardous circumstances can pinpoint where workers are — through floors, stairwells, concrete walls, or in underground mining sites. Eliminating blind spots is essential for increasing visibility and preparing to respond to any emergency.

Archiving and Compliance
Digitizing records in real-time helps managers know exactly who is in a particular environment and where they are. Accurately and efficiently reporting compliance to regulatory bodies is a critical component for organizations that deal with potential exposure of employees to harmful situations or toxic substances.

Unlike standard two-way radios, multimodal collaboration tools have the ability to automate the archiving requirement of compliance reporting. Recorded communication is archived for future auditing requirements. The recording can take the form of actual audio recordings as well as transcriptions that can be captured and emailed or transferred to relevant databases.

Data Analysis
Managers can use the data to evaluate how to prevent incidents from recurring with pattern analysis, traffic analysis and other insights gained from data captured by the platform. The organization achieves the ability to optimize performance for all elements of deskless work to maximize overall performance.

#3 Urgent Situation Management

Together, automated, voice-first SOPs and greater visibility, compliance, and team improvements for managers support the ability to respond quickly, efficiently, and safely in the case of an urgent situation.

The ability to respond quickly in an urgent situation is often a matter of life and death in heavy industries. A lone worker could find themselves pinned by a heavy piece of machinery. The worker can immediately trigger a safety workflow with the words “help-help,” or sentiment analysis can also trigger safety workflows if a worker’s voice sounds distressed. These workflows alert managers and team members to the worker’s exact location, deploying immediate assistance, and recording all subsequent activity to ensure the response follows the highest standards of safety.

Orion’s multimodal collaboration solution offers automated safety procedures that are key to increasing employee safety in urgent situations. Each of these SOPs is designed to automate emergency responses and workflows to summon necessary responders. Managers can be assured that safety procedures will begin as soon as emergencies are detected.

Unlimited ad hoc groups are also critical in response time. Collaboration tools that aren’t limited to two-way hardware like radios allow groups to connect with each other in evolving and dynamic situations. During emergencies, managers can create unlimited groups to connect with the right people — even on a global scale if needed.

Real-time advanced location information offers valuable information during a crisis as well. Managers need real-time visibility to know exactly where their team members are — whether to ensure their safety or to assign them emergency response tasks based on proximity.

Unlocking the Potential of Voice-First, Multimodal Collaboration with Orion

OSHA estimates implementing effective injury and illness prevention programs reduces injuries by 15 to 35%. By increasing safety through voice-first collaboration tools, companies can see the reduction of insurance premiums which are based on the risk of your business activities and on your company’s health and safety record, among other factors.

Orion’s collaboration platform provides so much more than typical two-way radios often used in heavy industries for communications. Orion enables organizations to unlock greater potential through automated voice-first SOPs, greater visibility for managers, and urgent situation management.

Learn more about Orion solutions for Construction, Facilities Management, Energy & Mining, Manufacturing, Security, and Transportation & Logistics.

You might also like:

• Read Part One of this series: Three Ways a Voice-First Multimodal Collaboration Platform Improves Team Operations, Performance, and Communications for Heavy Industries
• Safe Return to Work: Empowering Deskless Workers with Orion and IBM Watson
• Voice in the Workplace Report
• MBTA and Transdev Partner with Orion Labs for Advanced Communication, Dispatch, & Auditing
• Energy and Mining Case Study: Global Energy & Mining Corporation Streamlined Communication and Automated Safety Processes
• Orion solutions for Industrial Operations

Intelligent Voice-First Platforms Automate Return to Work Protocols and Improve Employee Safety

There are standard safety protocols that we’ve come to rely on in the workplace. Emergency stairs, fire extinguishers, fire alarms, and medical kits — these are standard measures we know we’ll have access to when we need them.

As companies plan safe Return to Work procedures, they will determine how to implement new protocols that reinforce safety measures like staying six feet apart or wearing a mask and personal protective equipment (PPE). Unfortunately, some of these new protocols may not come naturally — or at least not as naturally as knowing where to locate the fire exits.

However, this familiarity is what employers need to keep their employees safe during Return to Work. They need these new procedures and protocols to become as second nature as knowing how to find the emergency medical kit.

Recognizing the Unfamiliar in Return to Work Processes

Implementing and following new safety procedures in the new COVID-19 reality is a business-critical priority for both employers and their employees. For many workplaces, this will include self-certifications or screening questionnaires that follow CDC guidelines. Examples of these questions include “Do you have a fever?”, “Have you been in contact with someone who may have COVID-19?”, or “Are you wearing your mask or PPE?”.

But how should companies implement this new protocol? High-touch common areas are now a contamination concern. New signage and directional floor tape can help, but humans become desensitized to these measures over time.

Employers need to consider new tools that go beyond manual processes in order to eliminate contamination (or complacency). They also need tools to ensure compliance, allow personnel to act or respond in real-time, and support the analysis of employee responses and behaviors.

The good news is that solutions to these problems do exist. Through Orion’s intelligent, voice-first communications platform that incorporates the power of IBM Watson, Return to Work bots or workflows help companies automate these new safety procedures that are becoming standard for Return to Work in the era of coronavirus.

Intelligent Solutions and Process Automation Prepare Workers for Safe Return to Work

Employers need modern tools that remind workers of the new protocols when implementing procedures for reopening facilities. With Watson’s advanced text analytics, Orion’s voice technology reinforces these new habits in real-time, all the time — avoiding the downfalls that come with fatigue or complacency.

There are several ways Orion and Watson achieve better Return to Work protocols:

Automated workflows for safety and compliance: Instead of requiring employees to fill out high-touch paper checklists, voice-first workflows trigger as workers enter a specific geofenced-area such as a worksite or office building. Voice workflows walk employees through health and safety questions and any additional safety protocols set by an HSE manager. New habits like continual use of PPE may not be second nature yet, but voice-first checklist capabilities serve as reminders so that these new habits become automatic — and less something people have to remember on their own.

Automated data storage: By adopting cloud-based technology with automated workflows and voice-first checklists, companies gain the ability to automatically transfer responses into the appropriate systems. This instantaneous, digital data transfer eliminates the need for manual information input.  It also allows for real-time, complex analysis and response to the data collected — all with the assured benefit of end-to-end encryption that protects employee health information.

Native language and translation capabilities: Adding Watson to Orion’s instantaneous voice-first communications tool means a seamless flow of information for employees in any language at any time. In Return to Work instances, Watson’s native language and translation capabilities ensure employees understand and accurately interact with voice-first checklists and protocols in their native languages, eliminating language-based miscommunications.

Social distancing reminders: Social distancing often feels unnatural. By deploying Orion’s always-on, intelligent platform, workers receive reminders triggered by heat mapping to social distance anytime they encounter another worker less than six feet away. This data can even be stored and used for analysis and contact tracing protocols if required.

Intelligent, voice-first platforms streamline and automate new Return to Work protocols with real-time, gentle reminders.

Business Intelligence Can Better Equip Companies for Return to Work

Orion and Watson reinforce and encourage compliance while also providing organizations with a wealth of new data from the tools outlined above.

Employees often fill out the same checklists every day, but unless HSE managers regularly enter that data into a computer, the data is not meeting its full potential to provide management with actionable information. This gap means companies are leaving opportunities for operational efficiency on the table. However, cloud-native Orion and Watson natural language understanding and text analysis services provide access to actionable data and can identify patterns that will keep employees safer.

In the case of Return to Work, companies that rely on intelligent platforms also have access to data around clustering and heat mapping. Organizations can identify high-traffic areas and set up new protocols to keep track of when there are too many people in one place or even ensure cleaning crews have covered an area before employees enter.

Quantifiable data from intelligent tools like Orion will ultimately empower organizations to keep their workers safe with insights into task-related habits and compliance with safety measures.

Voice-First, Business Process Automation Solutions Save Time, Reduce Errors, and Keep Employees Safe

Orion and Watson offer the real-time, ever-present communications and process workflows needed as companies plan for Return to Work.

Intelligent, voice-first workflows save time, reinforce new habits, and reduce errors inherent in manual processes. The added business intelligence also helps employers manage new protocols, trace exposure, and monitor employee density.

By creating workflows that remove the burden of remembering protocols from the employee, new intelligent processes automate compliance procedures and allow workers to focus on the job at hand. Together, Orion and Watson can make deskless workers safer and more productive at their jobs by giving them access to the real-time communications and information they need.

Learn More

Learn how Orion’s voice-first, intelligent platform can help your workers Return to Work safely here.

Learn more about IBM’s Watson Works here.

Greg Albrecht is Co-Founder and CTO at Orion Labs. John Walicki is CTO, Global Technology Advocacy, IoT Advocacy at IBM.

Transdev is using Orion’s Communication, Dispatch, and Automation Platform to keep Paratransit Services moving for its Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority service across 58 cities and towns during the COVID-19 Response

SAN FRANCISCO – April 21, 2020 – Orion Labs, the leading communication and automation platform for frontline workers, today announced that Transdev will be implementing Orion to deliver their critical transport services as part of the response to the COVID-19 public health crisis in service to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) contract, one of the largest public transit agencies in the United States.

Request more information about Orion solutions for Transportation

Transdev is the operating partner for MBTA’s door-to-door paratransit service, The RIDE, an essential transportation “safety net” for seniors and the disabled to access essential services. Orion’s platform enables dispatchers to communicate with and manage hundreds of buses and vehicles while their dispatch teams are able to work from home. Transdev is using multiple Orion services including the Orion Dispatch Console, location services, and Orion’s advanced automation and workflow tools. Transdev is also automating their regulatory compliance by utilizing Orion message recording, archiving, and retrieval features.

“Greater Boston Area residents depend on The RIDE to access essential services,” said Jim Nihan, Manager of Paratransit Operations at MBTA. “Transdev chose Orion’s dispatch and cloud communication platform to ensure reliable public transportation and to protect the health of our customers and our contractor’s employees.”

“The MBTA RIDE service requires a modern, voice-first communication platform for their essential work,” said Gregory Taylor, CEO of Orion. “Orion’s real-time voice communication, context, and automation enables Transdev and MBTA to support a greatly increased level of service with improved efficiency and flexibility. Orion’s solution solves an urgent need for companies like Transdev when serving workers on the frontline. We are honored to be part of this important work to keep dispatchers, drivers, and customers safe and connected to critical services.”

About Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, more commonly known as the T, is one of the oldest public transit systems in the United States. It’s also the largest transit system in Massachusetts. As a division of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT), the MBTA provides subway, bus, Commuter Rail, ferry, and paratransit service to eastern Massachusetts and parts of Rhode Island. To learn more, visit mbta.com.

About Transdev

Based near Chicago, Transdev is the largest private-sector operator of multiple modes of transit in North America, including bus, rail, streetcar, paratransit, and shuttle services. Transdev is committed to being the trusted partner of cities and transit authorities through quality execution and innovations in mobility. Its parent company, Transdev Group, is a leading global operator and integrator of mobility solutions in 17 countries and provides passengers every day the freedom to connect to what they care about in their cities. www.transdevna.com

About Orion

Orion Labs Inc. is the enterprise voice-first platform to connect frontline workers. Our customers transform their workforce productivity and safety with instant communication, AI Workflows, advanced location services, and software integrations. Orion was recently named an IDC Innovator and won a 2019 Edison Award for Materials Science & Engineering. Orion is headquartered in San Francisco and backed by leading investors. For more information, visit www.orionlabs.io.

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Media contact:

Vanessa Naylon
Orion Labs, Inc.
415-800-5467
press@orionlabs.io