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Inaugural Digital Summit focuses on workplace and business transformation risks and opportunities

Embracing digital advancements within the workplace can introduce a “transformation within our thinking around people, business, risk, and strategy”, according to Ailsa King, Chief Commercial Officer, Marsh McLennan UK.

09/19/2024 · 4 minute read

Transformation within frontline workspaces

Embracing digital advancements within the workplace can introduce a “transformation within our thinking around people, business, risk, and strategy”, according to Ailsa King, Chief Commercial Officer, Marsh McLennan UK.

King was speaking at Marsh’s inaugural ‘Digital Summit’, on 12 September 2024. The event — exploring the digital revolution that is enhancing the safety, efficiency, and culture of frontline workspaces — brought together HR leaders, risk managers, and safety and operations directors from a diverse range of industries such as logistics, aviation, media, pharmaceuticals, and marine.

Attendees heard from various frontline technology platform providers — such as, SafetyCulture, Samsara, and Precure — and explored the solutions available to help organisations enhance the workplace experience for frontline employees. Demonstrations and exhibitions were provided on how this technology functioned, improved productivity, mitigated risk, and created cost savings. To underpin the solutions presented, select Marsh clients delved into their own practical experiences with adopting digital platforms and their successes with their employees.

Embracing the ‘digital revolution’ for a safer workspace

Throughout the event, various benefits were highlighted from the introduction of frontline technology platforms, including:

  •  Digital monitoring can detect and report on risk issues, the performance of both staff and equipment, and provide warnings before an incident potentially happens. Addressing unsafe conditions or acts at a more nascent level, can help reduce the occurrence or likelihood of more serious incidents, and claims, in the future.
  • Distributing engaging and tailored training for employees — via a mobile-based learning management system, for example — can create more ingestible content for frontline workers.
  • Introducing digital platforms can enable faster and more direct communication with isolated frontline employees — rather than messages becoming diluted or irrelevant when delivered by more dated systems.

Insurance benefits from improving safety culture

The adoption of digital-based systems for frontline workers can also provide advantages from an insurance perspective, such as:

  •  Insurers want to know more about an organisation’s risk culture and management strategies. A robust, digital-based system for frontline employees can reduce risks and improve the overall insurability of a business.
  • The advanced monitoring, surveillance, documentation, and data collection capabilities offered by a digital platform can help when defending or disputing claims — while also enabling incidents and claims to be rectified and notified quicker.
  • Adoption of newer systems and platforms to protect frontline workers can be funded via bursaries from insurers or brokers, who allocate capital for risk mitigation measures within organisations.

Leveraging data for better risk outcomes

Drawing insights from data, that is related but may not be correlated, is critical for empowering frontline workers and the digital platforms that boost their safety. Examples of this include:

  • Using digitally based platforms for data collection ensures information is collated with higher accuracy and constancy. Real-time data, with no latency, can also allow leaders and workers to make more informed decisions on the ground.
  • Access to greater, more accurate data can improve analytics and insights to create a more holistic view of how an organisation is functioning and managing risk. Connecting disparate sets of data can also help discover trends/patterns, while facilitating quicker identification of when interventions are required.
  •  Data collected can also provide better visibility of fuel and resource usage — information that can be used to formulate sustainability initiatives and create cost efficiencies.

Preparing for a more digitised workspace

As the role and capabilities of a digital workspace rapidly evolves, it is important that frontline employees — who comprise 80% of workers worldwide — are operating in a more secure, dynamic working environment. It is imperative that the work environment keeps pace with the changing digital experience of our personal lives, as employee expectations are growing.

However, while embracing risk technology can foster a safer culture within the workplace for frontline workers, it is important business leaders consider the “implications of digital innovation and workplace transformation”, said King. Implementation is a particularly important area, as digital initiatives may fail, leaders must consider comms strategy, organisation culture, external support, and colleague collaboration for an effective implementation of any new policy. Additionally, it is essential that employees are reskilled for the introduction of digital platforms, as this will enable them to successfully adapt to the changing landscape and remain safe on the job.

For further discussion on any topic raised above, or if you are interested in attending our next ‘Digital Summit’ in 2025, please reach out to your Marsh representative.

 

Our people

Adam Gillett

Adam Gillett

Senior Vice President, Head of Digital Advisory, Marsh Advisory

Milly Wallace

Milly Wallace

Senior Digital Partnerships Manager, Marsh Advisory

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