“For the Provincial Sector, Yaacomm developed the app Healthy and Safe Working. The app offers tailored information on occupational health and safety topics. With the handy tips and videos, employees can get started straight away.”
Marga Waldekker, program manager at the AO Fund for Provinces, talks about the creation and use of the app.
Health and Safety Information always and everywhere at hand via an app
“Until now, the occupational health and safety catalogue was only available as a website. For office workers, a website is quite accessible, but part of the sector also works outdoors, such as road workers, people working in and alongside water, inspectors, and so on. And they do not always have access to a laptop. To make access as easy as possible, and to ensure that you always have access to occupational health and safety information wherever you are, we thought of an app.”
What is the most suitable communication tool for conveying information? The A&O Fund makes conscious choices here.
“When deciding which tool to use for offering information, you weigh up what you want now, but also what you want to be able to do with it in the future. For people in the field, the app provides an accessible way to quickly look up information, while also offering us further opportunities to keep employees informed.
Information on a website—no matter how nice and responsive—becomes a long read on your phone. In an app, the information is presented in a completely different way. An app has the advantage of quick access to concise, clear information that is available wherever you are. And an app offers other useful features as well, such as notifications and filtering options, so that the information that matters to you is shown immediately. Everyone carries a phone, so the call to action is more direct. On a website, information disappears into the background more quickly. We also see organisations setting the app as a standard app on work phones.”
Digitally accessible information
For the A&O Fund for Provinces, digital accessibility of products is an important theme. When building apps, Yaacomm always takes the requirements for digital accessibility into account.
Marga Waldekker says about this: “It is important to make everything you do digitally accessible and to be mindful of it. The app directly responds to this, and that is an important point for us. We want to be a diverse and inclusive organisation, and that means you have to be alert to this in all activities.”
The Health and Safety app in daily practice
In addition to the catalogue topics being quickly and easily searchable, the app also includes tips and videos. This makes the occupational health and safety topics concrete and directly applicable. In the app, you can indicate where you work and what type of work you do. Based on that, you receive tailored information in the app, which saves employees a great deal of searching.
Marga explains how provincial employees benefit from the app: “Safe and healthy working is relevant every day. Sometimes it’s in the smallest things, and it’s all about that daily practice. How is your home workstation? How do you sit at your desk in the office? How do you adjust your car seat? Do you take a break when you’re busy? Then it’s important that this information is easy and quick to find.
Some provinces regularly organise a lunchtime walk. You can use the app to draw employees’ attention to it. In this way, you can integrate occupational health and safety matters much more into daily work, which is what occupational health and safety is actually meant for. We all need to work safely and healthily every single day.”
Sharing relevant and important information
The A&O Fund for Provinces uses the app as a communication channel to reach more people. Marga: “In the autumn, for example, I give courses and workshops for works councils on workload and sustainability. These are topics that can be communicated very effectively through the app.”
With an app, you can reach specific groups of employees, for example only employees who work on the road in the province of Groningen. This allows you to inform employees very precisely about topics that are important to them.
An app can also be used for incident reporting. Marga sees this as a possible extension of the app. “In the event of an incident, a phone is absolutely crucial, because it allows you to report directly from the location”.
From idea to an app in the app store
Developing an occupational health and safety app: how does that work in practice? We asked Marga how she experienced the process from idea to end product.
“The development process was fun and smooth. We discussed in advance what information and components should be included in the app. Based on this, Yaacomm made a first draft. The most challenging part was describing the health and safety topics in an accessible way, which is really a special skill. The cooperation with Yaacomm went well, and the feedback process was quick. It is important to work from a mockup, an example of what the app will look like, and make adjustments from there. The test versions are also important, and it was great that we had testers who could test on various devices (iOS and Android). This provided valuable information for the final version.”
Yaacomm has already developed an app for the A&O Fund for Provinces: The Good Conversation app. This app helps employees and managers prepare for and record (development) discussions. Marga Waldekker: “What plays a role is the positive experience and cooperation we had with Yaacomm in developing The Good Conversation app. That app is very interactive. Because a lot of text needs to be entered to record the conversation, the app is also available as a web version; typing longer texts often works better on a larger screen. The Healthy and Safe Working app is mainly informative. You need to be able to find your information quickly and easily.”
A recommendation for organisations
Finally, we asked Marga what an occupational health and safety app can mean for organisations. “An app can help keep occupational health and safety on the agenda and provide concrete tools for a healthy and safe workplace. It is a great tool for reaching people in an accessible way and providing information.
For us as a sector organisation, it is a useful instrument and I’m convinced it also offers added value for individual organisations. The app provides many possibilities for fast and accessible information about healthy and safe working.”
More information about this app can be found on the website of the AO-fonds Provincies.
The app is free to download in the Apple App Store and Play Store.
Extensive information about tools in the field of health and safety and sustainable employability can be found on our website.