Health and Safety Software for the Education Sector

When we think about the use of health and safety software, our minds will more often than not go to business sectors that involve dealing with a large level of risk, such as construction, heavy engineering, transport and logistics, warehouse operation using forklifts and automated conveyor systems etc.

But there are also many other sectors that carry elements of risk, albeit at much lower levels than industries that involve the use of heavy machinery, such as the education sector.

In higher education alone, the UK and Ireland employs more than 530,000 people. This is a very large workforce that will also need comprehensive and very efficient health and safety procedures in place.

Work-related illness and injury

Just like business sectors involved in heavy industry, educational workers are also exposed to workplace injury an illness risks that need properly assessing and addressing. According to figures compiled by the Health and Safety Executive, over 1.2 million people suffer from a work-related illness, with more than 600,000 reporting an injury that was sustained at work.

Surprisingly, the education sector ranks pretty high on the list of reported workplace incidents by industry. With such diverse working practices being carried out within educational establishments, you could say that there is an even greater need for an effective health and safety software solution to be implemented to manage risk.

Encouraging a zero-harm culture

Many educational establishments can be quite fragmented, so that means higher education providers can operate over different sites and campuses. This can prove to be a logistical nightmare for health and safety officers to manage, especially if they are still operating a paper-based reporting and recording system where paperwork needs to travel between different premises.

Slow reporting and sharing of incident details can lead to serious delays for responses and actions to be implemented, leaving a hazard exposed and at risk of being repeated. Instead, allowing access in real time to safety data across the whole organisation can save a lot of time and administration costs. Through the use of a coordinated health and safety software solution, educational safety officers can instantly report incidents and newly discovered hazards.

Using a centralised and shared health and safety software solution means that the response to an incident can be immediate and actions agreed and implemented as soon as possible to remedy the issue. This can not only save a lot of valuable time, but will also eliminate further risks, reduce insurance premiums and protect the educational provider from compensation charges and solicitor’s fees.

There are very flexible health and safety software packages that are very robust and fully scalable to meet the ever changing needs of a constantly evolving educational institution. These systems are designed to be very user-friendly and easy to access to gather reports and track trends and spot potential risks before they become a problem.

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