What's the biggest safety trend coming in 2017?

Minor injuries have been decreasing in recent years, but fatalities have increased. What that says to me is that people are underestimating the importance of the small safety issues that can add up to create a big issue (learn more about Making Major Improvements with Marginal Gains in Safety). When a plane crashes, for example, it’s often because a dozen smaller issues weren’t addressed and, combined, they added up to landing gear failure.

To counter this, we need to make 2017 the year to teach managers and employees what will happen if small safety issues are left unaddressed. Smart forms (digital forms used on tablets and smartphones) are a huge part of that. By collecting objective information, rather than opinion-based evaluations, it’s possible to feed data to analytics engines that can inform technicians of the potential risks they’re facing, how those risks could stack to create a bigger problem, and the fixes that are needed to remedy the risks.