COVID 19 Construction Safety Improve Safety

| April 28, 2020

COVID-19 Construction Safety Improve Jobsite Safety

COVID 19 Construction Safety Improve Safety

COVID-19 and Construction Safety: 4 Ways To Improve Job Site Safety

By Jonathan Salas 

The sudden onset of COVID-19 has taken construction safety managers, business owners, and nations completely by surprise. Whole industries have been brought to their knees, while others have been forced to scramble while trying to remain agile. While our nation’s leaders try to find the best solutions to deal with this problem, businesses are forced to think on their feet and adapt. Thankfully, no one is in this alone, and WorkMax is here to not only make your job easier, but also protect you and the ones around you. But how exactly can a resource management app with live field data to collect and share time tracking and field reporting on mobile forms help keep you safe? Here are 4 ways WorkMax can help:

1. Prompt COVID-19 Symptom Screening on Clock IN/OUT- Not everyone is aware of the exact symptoms of COVID-19 including construction safety managers reading the latest news, and that can have a huge impact on your workforce. What an employee thinks is simply a symptom of a common cold could be an indication of something much worse. You need to ensure that anyone experiencing symptoms isn’t getting the rest of your workforce sick while getting the safety documentation you need without slowing down your field employees and interrupting their workflow.

WorkMax’s resource management platform improves safety by creating a workflow that fits construction businesses. The first thing employees do every day is clock in, and with WorkMax, you can have COVID-19 pre-screening questions provided by your construction safety managers that each employee is required to fill out with each initial punch for the day. If the employee answers that they don’t have any of the COVID-19 symptoms listed, they just go to work. If they answered yes, the employees can be prompted by a follow-up form to help your company determine if the employee needs to be sent for medical attention or if they are simply having seasonal allergies, allowing your projects to continue to run smoothly. The health screening questions can be prompted at the end of the shift to determine if the employee should show up the next shift. These forms can be automatically emailed to the employee’s supervisor and the health and safety managers for them to determine the safest next step if their employee has COVID-19 symptoms.

2. Facial Recognition without COVID-19 Transmission Risk- If you are using a single device for clocking in, then that creates a single point of contact that all of your employees are touching (remember, one of the ways COVID-19 spreads is by staying on surfaces like countertops). That’s a lot of contact, and too many chances for spreading infection. WorkMax allows each employee to clock time from their own device, meaning that there is no contact with shared devices during the clock in/out process. Face recognition is great because it eliminates buddy punching and time theft, but it’s even more critical that you know which employees are working on your job sites to identify any COVID-19 contact transmission risks. WorkMax’s face recognition compares a profile image with their clock in photo and clock out photo and returns a match percentage. Their supervisor and payroll admin are alerted when there’s a mismatch on their own individual devices or computers without coming into contact with a shared device. The supervisor can also approve their time on their own mobile device in the field without the risk of transmission from shared devices.

If your supervisors are clocking in their crews from a company-owned single mobile device, however, WorkMax can still be used to ensure the safety of your workforce and your company and know exactly who is working on your job site. We have added a new feature based on customer requests that allows you to utilize the rear-facing camera for facial recognition. A supervisor can have all his or her employees clock into the same device while still maintaining a safe six-foot distance and getting the facial recognition data that you need to ensure accuracy. A supervisor can hold the device, face it at the designated employee, and clock them in as simply and easily as they did before.

3. COVID-19 Form Collection and Sharing Improvements for Construction Safety Managers – Paperwork is always the worst part of the day, so we made WorkMax to take the paper and the work out of the equation. With standard paperwork, it must first get to the employee who will fill it out, and then (hopefully) turned back into the proper individual. That’s not only a headache of a process, but presents a lot of opportunities, again, for spreading infection.

WorkMax makes it all streamlined and simple, allowing you to prompt employees with questions when they clock in, allowing you to screen for symptoms. These answers are then sent directly and immediately to the safety manager, who can then make the decision whether to keep the employee on-site, or send for medical treatment. This allows your business to remain in working while also ensuring maximum safety and efficiency.

4. Deployment of COVID-19 Construction SafetyTraining Videos-  Many businesses have had to change their workflows during this time, and it’s likely that your company has had to do so as well. Sometimes, an email will suffice for new procedures, but that is not always the case. However, we can’t gather all the employees together for a COVID-19 Construction Safety training session, so how do we inform employees of these changes? WorkMax allows you to link a video onto a form, meaning that you can not only deploy training quickly but also get answers or feedback. You can also require that employees provide their signature (on their own devices, of course) verifying that they have seen the video and will follow the new procedures.

The future may be uncertain right now, but we are here to help you secure the safety of your job sites and keep your projects on schedule and on budget with healthy workers. WorkMax’s resource management platform dramatically improves safety on your projects with construction-centric workflows to prompt your employees to answer health screenings on clock out and to know who is on your job site to reduce any contact transmission risks as quickly as possible. WorkMax’s resource management platform allows you to quickly see which employees worked on similar tasks on the same project to know who may have come into contact with a COVID-19 positive worker and take the proper safety precautions to ensure the safety of all of your employees.

Give us a call, or click here to schedule your demo today, and find out how WorkMax can help you navigate this ever-changing landscape.