OSEA Safety Blog

Apps, short for applications, are the new way of the world. You visit with your doctors through apps, check your children's grades in school, do banking, and even read the newspaper. The industries of construction and even furthermore, safety, are very under served in the world of technology and apps. Having worked in tech space in New York City with a firm called FieldLens, I had a new found passion and drive. Bringing those experiences back to our family business, OSEA,Inc., we quickly hit the white board trying to find a solution that would leverage mobile technology, but focused on our world of health and safety.

Countless days huddled around notes and laptops we had several ideas but none that really made everyone’s eyes light up. It wasn’t until we put the pencils down, and cleared our minds with a family camping trip that we landed on the concept of Safety Badger. The name and logo quickly catch everyone’s attention; how can it not with a badger wearing a hard hat?

We were discussing typical safety manager roles in the field and that of a trades person, and why everyone on a project wasn’t a safety champion. The answer was very simple, education and knowledge. People on job sites will walk by an unsafe act simply because they are unsure if it’s in the regulation as being “unsafe”. We wanted to empower everyone on a job site to help prevent the next accident from happening, which is exactly what our application does. Users simply snap a photo or add text into an item within our application which is then reviewed by a live, human, safety expert who will render their thoughts, opinion and regulatory guidance within minutes.

Some typical questions we hear are: we have a safety person, so we wouldn’t need it, right? Is it really worth it? First, we are bullish to say our app costs less than a cup of coffee a day, and compared to the average workers compensation cost of an estimated $70k I would say it’s very much worth it. So your company has a safety manager, maybe several therefore you don’t need the app right? We have found that the ratio of employees to safety managers is around 150 employees per 1 manager. Safety managers within construction companies spend their days bouncing between projects, typically 4 to 7 in a week, and have limited time to see everything. In fact what corporate safety folks end up doing a lot of is project safety submittals, programs etc. We are not a replacement for your safety team, rather an augmentation. Why have email when you can write a letter? Why send a text message when you can make a phone call? We want, and in this case, need answers faster and technology, specifically in our case-- mobile tech, is the vehicle that gets us our information faster.

We really feel that our app can be easily implemented in any company; small or large, construction or manufacturing; we can help in any situation where workers are exposed to hazards. Reach out to us if you would like to hear more. If you mention you read this article we will give you a year free for up to 5 users. Yes a year free, no gimmicks. Email us experts@safetybadger.com