Health & Safety
Date
September 2021
Project period
6 months
Role
User experience designer, User requirements specialist, User researcher
Kit
Sketch, Abstract, Zeplin
This was the first project I consulted for during my partnership with Anglian Water. The vision was to help every employee be safer at work, but this required not only design work but also a push for organisational change.
Together with my squad, we created Safe and Well - a tool that is meant to be a go-to place for everything related to Health and Safety, which includes assessments, checklists, reports and people management.
Say no to paper forms!
Entering the water supplier industry was quite new to me as I had never worked with that kind of client before.
It was surprising to see how dated certain methods still are and how big of an impact this might have on the day-to-day work of field employees.
As they were still asked to assess their risk on paper, this resulted in a lack of transparency and ease of accessibility.
Luckily, our product help with standardising the process and helped user with accessing the app whenever and wherever they need it!
“Don’t waste your time on talking to users, they will just cloud your judgment”
— Senior Anglian Water Stakeholder
Guidance and support in learning over long manuals
The point of work risk assessment has to be completed before every job field employees are taking.
My approach was to ensure that users are informed and feel empowered to make the right decision as this can make the difference between someone stopping their job or getting injured.
Each question is explained and guides the user with all the information they might need at the time without overloading their cognitive load and forcing them to search for this information on Sharepoint.
Live updates
With the new app, I also ensured that we improved the communication between teams.
Previously there was no standardised way of communicating between managers and their teams. Some teams used WhatsApp, and others just called in.
This often resulted in field employees taking on risky jobs as they feared confrontation with their managers.
We ensured that whenever PoWRA (Point of Work Risk Assessment) is completed and the user decides to pause the job, we notify the manager directly.
This improved reporting and gave engineers more courage to do what was right.
Standardised form
The app was released to many various business units, which involved Water, Water Recycling and more. Previously each unit followed a different type of assessment and it was difficult for the Health & Safety team to monitor performance.
While designing the app, I ensured that this issue was addressed and the form is flexible enough, so that it can be used across the whole business.
Organisational shift
Our work led to a few changes - both in project management, as well as in Health and safety:
Stakeholders have recognized the value of agile development and have begun advocating for its adoption across the organisation, encouraging other squads to follow suit. This shift in mindset emphasizes a user-centric approach, prioritizing problem-solving over assumed solutions.
Since the app's release, there have been no major preventable accidents reported by the Health & Safety department that would necessitate Reporting of Injuries, Diseases & Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013 (RIDDOR) reports.
As a result of the success of the Point of Work Risk Assessment app, the squad has transitioned into an Enabling & Enterprise squad and received additional funding for three more years.
Improved data
Digitalising forms brings many different benefits. One of them is that we can connect users to insight in a much simpler way.
We integrated our forms with PowerBI and gave the Health and Safety team tools to monitor safety levels across the whole organisation.
This allows them to track how different business units are performing, the number of PoWRAs completed, and identify which teams need extra training or equipment.
“We don't launch and leave, we launch and learn.”
— The principle we believed in as a squad
Results since release
The Health & Safety app, developed and launched within a six-month period of initial funding, has achieved remarkable outcomes and stakeholder engagement.
Since its release in May 2022, the app has facilitated over 450,000 risk assessments, with an average of 30,000 forms completed each month. Managers have reported that the app has helped them identify training gaps and issues with Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) among their teams, which would have otherwise gone unnoticed.
The Point of Work Risk Assessment form within the app has been recognized as a positive example in the "Love to Listen" survey, highlighting its effectiveness within the organization. Many users who actively participated in testing and shared their ideas for improvement have become loyal users of the app and have begun advocating for it across the business.
The app has received praise from senior stakeholders in various Anglian Water business meetings, including CEO Peter Simpson, who commended it during an Anglian Water Open House event.
To ensure ongoing measurement of impact, System Usability Scale surveys have been conducted. The app's usability score has improved from 57.5 to 76.88 (out of 100), and further improvements are expected to yield even higher ratings.