From a distance: Engaging the ‘distributed’ workforce

Although all workers are expected to operate safely, what happens when they’re spread out across different sites – and don’t necessarily check in at the office every day?

Engaging with these workers can be a challenge, especially when supervisors aren’t present. Are job tasks being done safely? If an incident occurs, how did it happen?

“If we’re not out there and can’t see that they’re doing it right or wrong, we don’t know if they missed a training piece or we didn’t train properly – or if they’re blatantly ignoring the rule,” said David Hunyar, corporate safety manager for St. Louis, MO-based Central States Water Resources. “It’s hard to identify root causes to anything.”

Hunyar and other experts say safety pros can take steps to help maintain engagement and manage the safety issues that come with a so-called “distributed workforce.”

Keep in touch

Communication is key, Hunyar said. “If we have no way of communicating with people, then they won’t know the rules and we have no way of helping them.”

Paul Danos is CEO of Danos, a Gray, LA-based provider of energy services. He estimates that only 10% of Danos’ field workforce is based in environments in which the company oversees the balance of work.

To maintain engagement, each worker is assigned an account manager, personnel coordinator and project manager. Communication types may differ, but they remain in motion.

“It’s having that personal connection,” Danos said. “They’re on the phone with them, they’re out in the field, they’re at heliports. They’re out meeting face to face with those people and delivering the messages.”

Training tips

Providing safety training that accommodates different learning styles is important for employers, no matter where workers are based.

However, a distributed workforce presents an added wrinkle: gauging when – and how – to bring teams together for training or talks.

Danos recommends developing a strategy to discuss and determine which safety training or messaging should be delivered in person and which might be done using technology.

“We always think that an in-person, face-to-face communication around safety is better,” he said, “but it’s just not practical to get to everybody all the time. So, it’s just finding the right balance.”

Scott Johnson, senior vice president of safety and quality at Schindler Elevator, uses a wiki (a website that allows collaborative editing of its content and structure by its users) to distribute short videos related to work procedures to technicians’ cellphones. Workers must respond correctly to questions and prompts to ensure they understand the information shared in the videos.

Additionally, fellow workers narrate content – a strategy the company believes makes information more relatable.

“So, it’s a technician telling a technician this is something that you should really pay attention to,” Johnson said. “As opposed to, ‘I’m Scott Johnson, I’m the head of safety for Schindler Elevator. You should pay attention to this because I’m the head of safety.’”

At Schindler, workers must complete hands-on training for more complex concepts, such as equipment operation, control of hazardous energy (lockout/tagout) and fall protection.

“There’s this practical piece of it that you have to make sure they’re proficient at the task,” Johnson said.

Regardless of the method or interval, Hunyar said, ensure workers know that the goal of training is to “keep safety at the forefront of people’s minds.” And employers should make sure that workers know they can always reach out to ask questions.

Technology’s role

In addition to providing safety information to distributed workers, technology can play multiple roles in safety efforts.

Platforms such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams can be used to create group chats that help supervisors, workers and even different worksites feel connected.

“Even when they’re not meeting in an official capacity with us,” Hunyar said, “they’re communicating with each other just because they’re buddies and doing similar jobs.”

Other technology is more formal and structured. Danos’ near-miss reporting system is managed electronically, via an app.

Platforms such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams can be used to create group chats that help supervisors, workers and even different worksites feel connected.

“When somebody enters a near miss, it’s real time, automatic,” Danos said. “It goes to our safety department and our leadership, and they see that.”

The data provided also allows the company to observe reporting tendencies.

“Sometimes, we’ve got a work group that’s really on top of reporting things,” Danos said. “And then sometimes, we’ve got a work group that we’re not hearing anything from, and we start getting nervous about that – as opposed to getting too quick to celebrate: ‘Hey, we haven’t had an incident on this location.’ We know there’s a lot going on. If we’re not hearing anything, we might have reporting issues. So, let’s go look at that group. Make sure that we get the culture right.”

Other technological interventions that experts mentioned: using wearable monitoring systems and communicating through GPS-enabled devices in areas where internet connectivity may be an issue.

NSC’s efforts

The National Safety Council’s Executive Business Issues Forum has an ongoing research initiative aimed at examining the challenges faced by managers of distributed workforces.

Members of the forum, including Johnson, have led sessions with employers across North America with the intent of identifying the challenges, as well as employer solutions.

The sessions have included discussions on:

• Evaluating the reality of work
• Driving risk assessment
• Assessing the factors that drive deviations in the workplace
• Recommendations for engaging with and learning from the workforce
• Monitoring a distributed workforce via best practices

Johnson said initial participant feedback challenged the group’s expectations that conversations would center around construction and service industries. The group learned that organizations with large sales forces that mostly work remotely also presented concerns.

Additionally, one participant highlighted the need to address safe work among crews that complete jobs on nights or weekends, when supervisors typically don’t show up in the field.

“People were genuinely interested in what are some of the things that we can do, or their eyes opened up and they said, ‘Gosh, I don’t know if we are really thinking enough about this, so we can take the actions or communications to really address and engage this workforce,’” Johnson said. “That sort of solidified the fact that we were on to something.”

Johnson said the aim is to form a subcommittee within the EBIF Network to begin developing employer resources.

“The endgame,” Johnson said, “would be to come up with best practices in communication to distributed workers, as well as training, how we increase risk visibility to workers that we may not have those interactions with, and, most importantly, how we keep that worker engaged and help them make the right decisions when they have little or no oversight.”