CCOHS Speeches
Xvth WORLD CONGRESS
SAO PAULO, BRAZIL
APRIL 12 - 16, 1999

Using Technology to Fulfil Health and Safety Information Needs of Workers

The ability to capture, convey and deliver information has evolved rapidly in the past two centuries. Innovations created during the 1800's and 1900's have added the capability of combining the display of information as written words, pictures, and symbols with the technological audio visual capabilities to transmit words as sounds, images as moving pictures. In corresponding developments, all these combinations of information are capable of broad distribution by an emerging worldwide telecommunications industry.

During most of the 20th century there have been significant barriers for access to low cost mass delivery telecommunications. These barriers are now being reduced by the use of computers, global communication satellites, fibre optics systems, the convergence of cable televison for mass communication and, of course, the availability of the World Wide Web. Massive investments are being made around the world to greatly expand capacity to provide access to a wide variety of telecommunication systems for personal and business use. We expect to see a much more economical telecommunications capability for world-wide use within the next few years.

In the realm of occupational health and safety, the use of technology for collecting, displaying and conveying information has progressed impressively during the past three decades. All these new technologies are being employed for Occupational Safety and Health information delivery.

We have seen that there already is an overwhelming amount of Occupational Safety and Health information available in print, on video and on the Internet.

With the explosion in the quantity of available information, the quality of the information, the source of the information and ultimately the usefulness of the information will need to be scrutinized even more rigorously before it is used. The skills of well educated, and experienced occupational health and safety personnel are vitally important for properly evaluating the vast amount of available information to select the information which best assists the effort to eliminate and prevent workplace injuries and illnesses.

Information by itself is not enough to prevent a workplace injury, illness or fatality. By the proper deployment of a complex mix of factors, such as personal attitudes, behaviours, actions, knowledge, skills and performance, combined with the workplace physical facilities and associated equipment, the environmental setting, the efforts of all employees of the workplace, and true management support and commitment, successful occupational health and safety performance may be realized.

Ultimately, successful safety programs depend upon providing people with the proper information, training, knowledge, skills development, tools, resources, conditions and ongoing support. It is equally important that all activities of an enterprise are planned, resourced and managed to prevent illness and injuries. Ideally, if everyone in a workplace performed their safety related activities and tasks properly, according to a well planned workplace health and safety program, it should be expected that no illnesses or injuries would occur.

The appropriate information that assists the workplace to achieve its occupational health and safety objectives is extremely valuable.

Information that is appropriate, interpreted, synthesized and reorganized to be made useful and is properly used to achieve the desired health and safety results is the most valuable information.

Provision of information is not the most important objective. Information is but one building block for the important process of creating knowledge, developing skills, and performing safety related activities and tasks in accordance with planned occupational health and safety objectives. Ideally, every person who is engaged in health and safety responsibilities or is affected by the health and safety activities needs to be provided with specific, accurate and relevant information and knowledge to assist him/her to learn and to accomplish his/her duties.

There is an overwhelming amount of useful information and knowledge that can be provided to every employee. It is vitally important to develop a strategic approach which effectively employs technological capabilities and reduces the volume of overwhelming information to a smaller focused collection of useful information.

Ultimately, relevant and appropriate occupational health and safety information is used by various occupations of employees, such as frontline workers, trades persons, supervisors, management, health and safety professionals, risk managers, and many others. One of the most worthwhile information delivery goals is to enable workers to focus their energies and resources on using the information to create learning opportunities and to engage in specified activities and tasks which result in the prevention of occupational illnesses and injuries.

Information is needed and used in both planned and informal manners. People learn at different speeds, at different levels of understanding, and use the new knowledge according to their own abilities. Provision of information, which not only meets basic learning objectives but enables the user of the information to progress further at their own speed, is worthwhile. This trend of enabling the end-user is known as the self-serve model of information delivery.

Our innate human senses enable us to receive stimuli and information in the form of sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste. Learning is thought to occur best from using combinations of these senses to support, reinforce and retain the information that is introduced. We all have preferred methods of employing these senses to acquire and process information. For the performance of physical tasks and the development of higher skill levels in task performance, the incorporation of sight, sound, touch and smell as information content and learning methodology results in more permanent skills retention when compared to providing printed instructions as the sole information media of instruction. Even for cognitive skill development, it has been demonstrated that a low stress, calm environment with low intensity background music supports and enhances long lasting learning.

The latest technologies provide us with the capabilities to incorporate all these different natures of information for use in the workplace to enhance provision of information, transfer of knowledge and development of good skills.

To effectively employ these new technologies, a strategic approach is required.

One such strategic approach to the use of new information technologies is summarized as:

1. Select and produce information that is appropriate to the health and safety objectives and learning capabilities of the user.
2. Customize the information to make it useful and usable by the intended audiences.
3. Create a self-serve process for information delivery and use.
4. Engage many of the human senses to support learning, development of knowledge, and development of skills.

Much of our technologically-based information systems used in the workplace are still focused on the written word and secondarily on voice transmission, since these two modes have traditionally been the most economical forms of technological-based mass communication. Now the cost to incorporate and deliver moving pictures combined with sound and the written language has been significantly reduced and is being lowered every day. Equally important, these technological tools are being used for education, consumer and personal use as well as for business purposes. Inexpensive resources such as digital cameras, digital camcorders, computer scanners, and teleconference equipment offer the potential to create and deliver very relevant and useful information directly to workers.

These new technologies, combined with the knowledge and skills of occupational health and safety workers, can revolutionize the nature and delivery of information to workers.

Information can be packaged to focus on specific occupational heath and safety hazards, hazard evaluations, risk analysis, task analysis, situational analysis, and contextual evaluations.

Economical, custom-made workplace specific learning modules can be easily made. The use of multimedia tools for scenario building and for safe trial and error task performance can be used by workers and workplaces before injuries and illnesses occur. Multi- media and virtual reality simulations for confined spaces entry training are examples of learning tools that are already used to reduce the potential for loss of life. As these technological tools and techniques become everyday resources and tools, workplaces will be able to easily and quickly build their own customized skills development resources for their employees and their workplace needs.

The challenge, therefore, is for occupational health and safety information consumers to demand that providers of products and services use and incorporate these new technological capabilities to create relevant and economical resources to enhance the transfer of practical information. Simplicity, ease of use and technological skills transfer are important considerations for the development and the acquisition of new products and services.

The challenge for occupational health and safety professionals is to learn about the capabilities of these resources and employ them effectively to prevent injuries and illnesses. When these new capabilities become useful and affordable, the next order of challenge is for occupational health and safety personnel to change their roles. They may need to find ways to reduce time spent as information seekers and information interpreters and to maximize time spent to assist workers and the workplace to incorporate useful occupational health and safety information and related tools for the development of workplace specific health and safety knowledge, skills development, and practical application of the skills and knowledge.

Task and activity modeling and testing, scenario building, audio/visual-based hazard and task analysis for development of safer work are three examples of these new capabilities and techniques that offer much greater potential for practical use of information for workers and workplace health and safety.

Lastly, the challenge for all occupational health and safety and related professions is to continue to learn about the health and safety needs of workers, understand the best ways to practically fulfill these needs, and determine a variety of new ways to help accomplish these objectives. Always, we need to maintain our focus on helping each and every worker to stay injury-free and healthy today and for the rest of his/her working life.

I trust that you will find new information and new information technologies during this World Safety Congress to assist your important work. I hope that you will take up the challenge to encourage and prod providers of products and services to focus on developing economical occupational health and safety tools that will assist workers and workplaces to eliminate occupational ill-health and injuries.

Most of all, I congratulate all of you for spending your valuable time to come to Sao Paulo to seek new knowledge, make new contacts, renew old friendships, most importantly, to share your knowledge.

My best wishes to you for a successful World Safety Congress.

S. Len Hong CCOHS, Sao Paulo, April 14, 1999 XV World Congress on Occupational Health and Safety