Work accidents and customer safety are a major issue in the telecom industry. Employees of companies that offer telecommunications services are exposed to work accidents, especially during installation and operation of radio networks, operations that involve, in most cases, working at height. The telecom industry has a 3.87% Annual Injury Rate, which is quite high compared to other industries.
So, how do you navigate and uphold industry safety standards to ensure that you minimize harm? The answer may surprise you: proper project and asset management can save lives.
Telecom field worker safety
Common safety issues within the telecommunications industry
Tower climbers are working at extreme heights every single day. When potentially dangerous activities become routine, it’s tempting to forgo formal safety standard checks, but this kind of thinking can be deadly. In order to overcome this, it’s imperative that companies create and maintain a formal safety protocol and track whether these protocols are completed.
How to mitigate the risk of injury for pole climbers and other field technicians in the telecom industry
In order to formalize and track safety protocol completion for each site visit, you might think that an entirely new solution is required. Fortunately, if you’re a Sitetracker user, you already have everything you need to mitigate the risk of injury for pole climbers and other field technicians. Sitetracker users can track these safety protocol steps using their project management platform checklists feature. Within the Sitetracker Platform, and in the Sitetracker Mobile app, checklists are available that can be added to each site visit to ensure that all pole climbers and other field technicians are completing all safety protocol steps for every visit.
Checklists can be added for a variety of items including managing specific weather conditions like heat or high wind to standard safety measures to reduce slips and falls. Checklists are customizable to your company’s safety standards and steps.
What you need to do now to implement safety checklists for telecommunications field workers
To reduce injury on the job, implement checklists to ensure that proper safety equipment is worn by requiring a photo upload, that proper checks have been completed by adding items that can be ticked off as they’re done, and that workers in the office are in the know through two way syncing between the Sitetracker Platform and the SItetracker Mobile app.