Next to safety inspection, the top mitigation and prevention technique to avoid hazards and incidents is clear and effective signage. This is a crucial part of ensuring that a workplace conforms to industrial standards whilst helping to ensure that employees can work in a safe manner. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has recently published an update for its standard referring to safety signage ISO 7010. It will help to further help to prevent accidents and injury across various industries.
ISO 7010 is based around the need to provide safety information that relies as little as possible on text to achieve comprehension. By bypassing the need to use words to achieve the message, it is often clearer and easier for employees and customers to understand what is trying to be communicated. A lack of this may encourage confusion and thereafter increase the risk of accidents. Whilst this does not replace work methods, ISO 7010 charges organisations with providing appropriate signage in workplaces or work areas, and labelling products, escape routes and safety guidance in a sufficient manner. ISO 7010 chiefly prescribes particular attention to Graphical symbols, Safety Colours, Safety Signs and Registered Safety Signs. Amongst these headings, the standard outlines ways in which safety signs can be used to prevent accidents, protect against fires, display health hazard information and evacuate during emergencies.
Using standards like ISO 7010 is made easier when combining and integrating them with mobile inspection solutions. They can be adeptly incorporated with a digital application as part of a safety audit procedure or integrated directly into a checklist. There are many benefits of incorporating such standards into an inspection solution such as what Mr Jan-Bernd Stell notes: “International standardization of safety signs means everyone speaks the same language when it comes to safety. This provides a simple solution for everyone”. As Mr Stell references, part of the reason that inspection solutions prove such a good partner to safety signage standards is that every employee will have access to safety guidance with top monitoring. By promoting information sharing, highlighting things that need attention through image capture and annotation and automated corrective actions, the occupational health and safety of a workplace can be drastically improved. This means that the signs available will likely have a greater effect as they will provide guidance over an area that is likewise being monitored by an inspection solution. Working together in this way, the inspection solution and signage can provide the best protection against incidents in any industry workplace.
