How to Get Employee Buy-In on Work Safety Technology

People hate change. Whenever you introduce anything new, people work hard to avoid whatever is new, hoping it'll go away. This is especially true of new technology (which most people usually grow accustomed to and soon cannot live without it!) 

At Healthy Roster, we provide a remote injury prevention platform and when customers sign on with us to help with incident triage, ergonomic evaluations, and safety and wellness programs, we are always asked how we help get "buy in" from the workers. 

How To Get Employee Buy-in

The best way to ensure your employees buy into any new technology is to show them positive results. 

When workers can see the benefits of taking advantage of a new technology they are more apt to come back with additional questions or issues that need to be solved and use that tech again. 

But, simply throwing the new product, service, or system out there and hoping for the best rarely works well. 

When we start with a new Virtual Injury Prevention customer, we start at the top by involving the leadership. We let them know what the platform can do for all their workers - how it helps prevent incidents, improves employee morale, reduces errant OSHA recordables, improves productivity, and saves money. You always need buy-in at the top and once they understand the benefits of the solution, enthusiasm travels down the chain of command. 

Next, we introduce the work safety platform to all the staff. We show them how the program works and let them build a rapport with the injury prevention specialists. We get the employees to download the app and show them how easy it is to operate. We have engagement campaigns that provide educational initiatives with goals. And we conduct engagement touchpoints every quarter, with employees and site managers, and we share success stories.  

A Customer Success Story

One of our customers, an industrial packaging product supplier, came to us to help their plant workers in Phoenix reduce pain in their feet, backs, and knees. The workers also needed to be able to do certain physical activities on the floor but stress, strain and pain kept them from completing those tasks. 

On their own, the company tried out commercial floor mats to help the employees—spending quite a bit of money—but did not get the results they were after. 

Our injury prevention specialists conducted evaluations and developed an initiative that started with a small trial before being shared with the rest of the facility. 

The Results

A trial, involving 68% of their workforce, participated in the evaluation where it was discovered the workers needed to wear "support insoles" inside the employees' shoes. Insoles are pieces of material that are placed in shoes or boots for comfort, warmth and a better fit. The primary purpose of insoles is to make shoes more comfortable to wear.

1. They had a 43% response rate at 30 days into the trial.
2. 83% of the employees reported positive changes.
3. Over 50% saw an improvement of pre-existing pain on an index average of 4.7 out of 10 on a pain scale.
4. The workers in the trial found they were able to tackle new tasks at the facility they could not do before because they were limited by pain.

Building Trust

The packaging product company can now use this information—and the successful trial—to jumpstart a new shoe insole program for the rest of the employees, showing the benefits of the evaluations and the overall positive results. 

People hate change... but when you get "buy-in" from the top down and take the time to show workers the benefits, soon they won't want to go back to the way it was before!

With the approach of showing positive benefits, trust was built in the new program and everyone climbed on board ready for more.

Interested in learning more about our Virtual Injury Prevention platform?