You can do a lot with Excel, but it is not the best solution for developing occupational safety
According to the old wisdom of the office jungle, two very different groups of managers graze in the corridors of offices and in the recesses of space dividers. There are those who lead with PowerPoint and those who lead with Excel.
Both programs undoubtedly have their own advantages from the user’s point of view, but they also affect the possibilities that can be achieved.
So it’s no wonder that experts interested in precise results as well as diligent professionals are inclined to prefer the absolute number one name of spreadsheet programs in almost all their tasks aimed at business development.
Excel is a truly versatile solution that has fully earned its popularity. On the other hand, it is also the case that in the hands of a skilled professional, any tool is suitable for almost anything. Sometimes, however, it is worth asking what kind of effect it would be possible to achieve with solutions designed for the purpose. You can’t even do brain surgery with a combine harvester.
Occupational safety and its development concern every company and organization operating in today’s market. At best, it has significant positive effects on both the well-being of the personnel and the euros that fall below the line. Although Excel works like a charm for measuring the latter, it is not necessarily the right tool for developing occupational safety.
1. With Excel, you do not reduce the number or extent of work accidents
Occupational safety is a topic that can be talked about in many ways and in many tones. However, the goal is almost always the same, i.e. improving occupational safety. There are many ways to improve occupational safety. Others focus on individual phenomena or methods of operation, while others aim at developing the organization’s occupational safety culture and changing attitudes regarding occupational safety.
The number and scope of work accidents is one of the clearest and most unambiguous indicators of the level of occupational safety.
In the worst cases, an accident at work can lead to permanent disability or even death.
It is primarily the employer’s responsibility to take care of the prevention of workplace accidents.
Excel is a familiar tool to many, which may at first seem like a natural solution also for the needs of developing occupational safety. However, it is pointless to expect big changes in the number of accidents at work if they are only recorded, no matter how carefully the work is done.
Anticipation and prevention play a key role in combating work accidents. Without tools designed for the development of occupational safety, all development measures are reactive, and results can only be achieved by good luck. Sending an accident report directly to the insurance company is also not possible with Excel.
2. Excel cannot be used to manage developing occupational safety
In the modern business environment, the demands placed on management are more multidimensional than ever before. This brings with it its own challenges for the development of occupational safety and a safe company culture.
Accurate and up-to-date information plays a key role when looking for development targets for occupational safety, planning measures to target them and allocating resources to improve them.
In a spreadsheet tool like Excel, it is possible to create endlessly more columns and rows and add incredibly sophisticated formulas to them, but ultimately updating data is pure manual work. In this way, an up-to-date picture of the situation is created, but only of a very fleeting moment, which is already past history at the reporting stage.
A diligent and conscientious occupational health and safety manager or personnel director may achieve moderate occupational safety results also with the help of a spreadsheet program. This is possible if the target of development is a small organization operating in a narrow sector, but in an organization engaged in wider business, combining different data sources eats up most of the time. And in a world of limited resources, it’s all out of results.
With the help of digital services designed for the development of occupational safety, all the information needed for occupational safety management can be collected in one place easily and simply. Excel also does not offer the possibility of monitoring change or historical data or support the development of common occupational safety.
3. Excel does not help employees participate in the development of occupational safety
Employees are definitely the most important resource of every organization and company from the perspective of developing occupational safety. Every self-respecting employee also has a personal interest in developing occupational safety at their workplace, so it is very natural to assume that occupational safety would be a topic of interest to everyone.
However, this is not the case in other than very progressive organizations whose culture has been consciously developed in a direction favorable to occupational safety.
A spreadsheet program like Excel doesn’t really offer any tools to solve this kind of challenge. Files buried in the recesses of office computers do not open naturally where the majority of employees work, even if their use is actively encouraged by management.
When the entire organization, from the person in Tet to the CFO, is harnessed to develop occupational safety with the help of a service designed for it, the results are also in a completely different category.
4. With the help of Excel, it is not possible to assess work risks and take responsibility for remedial measures in a controlled manner, nor in a coordinated manner
As in other areas of business, also in the development of occupational safety, the best results are achieved with continuous and systematic work, which finds its way into concrete measures on a practical level as deep as possible.
From the point of view of evaluating work hazards and risks, Excel, which is otherwise so versatile and modern, meets the same need as a standard notebook.
Nothing prevents a vigilant and dutiful occupational safety manager from recording the remedy that matches the cells of the spreadsheet program and the person responsible for the remedy, but if this information does not reach him, then the results are understandably random and nominal.
In most cases, the people responsible for corrective measures also have many other important tasks on their plate, so it is not at all unusual that tasks jammed on the hard drive are completely forgotten until they are separately reminded of them. Excel is not capable of that, and it is not an efficient use of time that a person is needed to remind about the promotion of measures, when suitable information systems do it automatically.
The ultimate truth
Finally, it is worth reminding that occupational safety can be developed with many different methods, which are affected by the organization’s goals, state of will and level of maturity. In principle, it is better to systematically develop occupational safety, even with the help of Excel, than to develop it at all.