Safety app targets worker engagement

By Joseph James Whitworth

- Last updated on GMT

SafetyCulture at work
SafetyCulture at work

Related tags Food safety

Safety software has traditionally been developed for the employer and it can be a battle to get worker engagement, according to the creator of an app.  

SafetyCulture developed an app called iAuditor, used for inspections, audits and quality control. It has had more than 12 million audits conducted since 2012.

It created software that provides user experience for the worker and then the reporting and analytics around that.

The app houses 50,000 inspection checklist templates which are user built, uploaded and are free to use and share. The firm estimates 10% are food safety and quality management related.

Replacing paper based methods

Blake Pelling, marketing coordinator, said smartphone use has reached a critical mass after the initial question of whether business would trust them.

Luke safety culture
CEO Luke Anear

“It seems a ridiculous question now but it was not at the time. iAuditor gives workers a tool to do inspections their way without an IT department and helping break down the silos of information," ​he said. 

“Virgin use it in pre-flight safety checks and General Electric have it to inspect wind turbines. Food and hospitality clients can do anything they inspect now on iAuditor​.

“Speed is the obvious benefit, you are going from pen and paper to this so there is no writing of reports. It generally cuts the time in half on activities and offers real time visibility.”  

According to the Australian Food Safety Information Council, there are an estimated 5.4 million cases of foodborne illnesses each year and the estimated annual cost of food poisoning is $1.25bn.  

Food poisoning results in 120 deaths, 1.2 million visits to doctors, 300,000 prescriptions for antibiotics, and 2.1 million days of lost work each year.

Engaging the workforce

Food firms can do anything they inspect now on iAuditor, said Pelling.

“You can put items in a checklist, check if it is safe, unsafe or not applicable so you can have multiple choice questions, checkboxes, you can capture photos if you see food not stored properly and draw a circle around that to highlight it as a problem in the report.

“The people using it are more engaged as it is adopted from the ground up because of the reduced time, access to reports and visibility and then we get a call from the IT department or someone else in the organisation about how it works.”

SafetyCulture is a safety company founded in Townsville, Queensland in 2004.

Luke Anear, CEO, noticed the penetration of the smartphone in everyday life and from 2011 the firm started looking at safety in the workplace, based around a smartphone app platform.

This year SafetyCulture 1.0 was released and replaced SafetyCloud as iAuditor's cloud based management system.

SafetyCulture was initially funded by Blackbird Ventures with Scott Farquhar, co-founder of Atlassian, joining after a second funding round. 

Related topics Food Safety & Quality

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