Risk Assessment Feature 📋
Introduction
Overview
Managing and reducing workplace risk is important for businesses to keep their workers safe. GetHomeSafe was a great platform for monitoring users and managing risks in real-time.
However, identifying risks before users began work with GetHomeSafe wasn’t possible. This was a gap in the platform that several clients had provided feedback on.
Problem
Failure to identify and manage risks before workers begin their tasks could lead to serious safety incidents and put workers in danger.
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Users who create GetHomeSafe activities before starting work input details about their tasks. However, different types of work pose different types of risks. Often workers are unsure about what information is required by supervisors to accurately access risks.
Due to health and safety policies in New Zealand and Australia (GetHomeSafe’s two largest markets), workers must ensure a safe working environment and document procedures.
Failure to do so could lead to serious injury, fatalities, and potential legal prosecution if procedures were not enforced. This was obviously important for our clients to avoid.
Goal ⭐
Provide existing and new GetHomeSafe clients a way to identify and manage potential risks faced by workers, before work begins.
By doing so, GetHomeSafe aims to support compliance with health and safety regulations, minimize workplace incidents and help everyone get home safely to their families.
Emphasise
Assumptions
We knew our clients made keeping their workers safe a priority. We assumed existing clients were already managing risks in their daily routines using in-house procedures, possibly with other platforms.
Addressing this project could benefit our existing clients and attract new ones.
Research
We started by conducting interviews with clients who had provided feedback and those who already had risk management procedures in place. Additionally, we looked into how other companies reduce workplace risk.
Our focus was on understanding:
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What were clients currently doing to reduce risks? What did they need to know? This involved talking to those responsible for workplace safety.
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Why was risk management so important? We wanted to put ourselves in the shoes of the clients we were interviewing.
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We explored methods and products designed to manage and reduce workplace risks, allowing us to understand existing solutions and see what works well.
Define
Findings
Research findings gave us valuable insights into what was needed to create an effective solution to evaluate and manage risks. This guided our next steps and helped us focus on the most critical areas.
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Risk assessments were frequently used by multiple customers. They served as an excellent way to evaluate risks.
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Many clients used in-house procedures, primarily through digital and/or paper-based risk assessments.
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Questionnaires were great at communicating risks. Different questions were required for different types of work.
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Risk matrix’s were used to determine likelihood and consequence levels, allowing workers to evaluate risks better.
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Risk assessments needed to be easy to access for documentation purposes incase they needed to be reviewed or presented for later use.
Further Research & Understanding
We were familiar with risk assessments and their functionality, but we did further research to understand how they are used and their effectiveness. This includes looking at various versions available including some our clients use.
What We Need to Deliver
Research helped us identify what we needed do to to achieve our goals and solve the problems faced by customers. The solution needed to…
Customisable and tailored for each client
Incorporate communication of risks for specific types of work
Include a way to evaluate risks
Provide documentation
Ideate
Brainstorming
As we had already identified these areas, we brainstormed ideas for each of them separately. This approach was easier than generating ideas together and sorting them afterwards.
With our ideas, our team discussed which ideas would provide the most value, Would take the longest, Could work together, and would work with the existing platform. This helped us narrow down and combine ideas.
We decided a new feature was necessary, as it needed to tie in with clients' GetHomeSafe accounts, and integrations may not suit everyone.
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As different types of work include different types of risk, the creation and assignment of multiple risk assessments were needed. Tying this in with activity types would present the right questions to the right people at the right time.
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Creating questions would allow admins to choose what they want to know. Questions would be presented to workers before they start work so their answers could be reviewed, allowing supervisors to assess their situation.
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Integrating GetHomeSafe’s existing review and approval processes would allow supervisors to manage risks themselves. This was a far simpler approach and fit perfectly with a feature we already had, rather than creating something new.
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A spreadsheet report can be added to GetHomeSafe’s existing reporting system, providing downloadable documentation and analysis. This allows a large amount of data to be included into a single file.
Prototype
Concepts & Wireframes
To work with the GetHomeSafe platform, the solution needed to be responsive. I started by creating low-fidelity wireframes, initially for our web platform. The apps could follow after this was done.
Three wireframes were needed:
Creating risk assessments
Answering risk assessments from the web portal
Answering risk assessments from the app
Next, I created mid-fidelity wireframes and shared them with the developers before user testing. This step ensured my concepts were feasible and on the right track. The developers' feedback also provided suggestions for improvement that were taken into account.
Test
User Testing
Prototypes were shared with clients we had interviewed. We walked them through what we had created and explained how the feature would work, and how it could be used.
Prototypes were also shared with participants unfamiliar with the platform. They were given specific tasks to perform, providing fresh perspectives on usability and ease of use.
We observed interactions and gathered feedback. Positively, several clients said the solution would benefit them. However, issues were identified that needed addressing.
Identifying Issues
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Issue: Actions such as saving a favourite, changing activity types or returning to the home screen would discard answers lending to wasted time.
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Issue: Locating answers was difficult as they weren’t included in the risk assessment page where most people looked.
Solution: Add answers to the risk assessment page.
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Issue: The three available question types weren’t enough. Some questions required multi-selection.
Solution: add a new question type for multiple choice.
Ideate #2
Further Ideation
With feedback gathered and issues identified, I brainstormed solutions for the problems holding us back. These were shared with the team.
Identifying Issues
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Issue: Actions such as saving a favourite, changing activity types or returning to the home screen would discard answers lending to wasted time.
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Issue: Locating answers was difficult as they weren’t included in the risk assessment page where most people looked.
Solution: Add answers to the risk assessment page.
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Issue: The three available question types weren’t enough. Some questions required multi-selection.
Solution: add a new question type for multiple choice.
User Flow Diagram
Initially, I thought adding risk assessments into the new activity flow would be straightforward. However, I underestimated how much these changes would affect the user flow and failed to map out scenarios.
Realising this, I created a user flow diagram to visually illustrate these changes. This allowed us to understand how it would function and alter the existing behaviour.
Once done, I started work on the high-fidelity prototypes in Figma using GetHomeSafe’s brand guide and MUI component library. I began with the web-based platform and then moved on to the apps.
Implement
Final Solution
Upon release, we worked with existing clients who wanted to use the feature and helped them get set up and trained. Overall, we received alot of positive feedback, reporting and documentation was a highlight.
For clients using the feature, there were some initial drawbacks, as expected, but these quickly became routine.
Results
After several months of the feature being released, we assessed its usage.
417
risk assessments are being completed each day.
14%
of daily activities included a risk assessment.
It's possible that existing clients were unaware the feature was available, which may have impacted this number. Creating awareness could help us take this over the 20% mark.
Conclusion
Our teams work on this project lead to one of GethomeSafe’s most popular features which overtime has been successful in attracting new customers.
It has allowed business to integrate procedures and welfare monitoring into one platform, reducing the need for other products or systems.
And most importantly, help manage and reduce workplace risks.
Moving Forward
As the feature was used, we received feedback on how to improve it.
No way to enforce restrictions if no request for review was made
Risk assessments could only not be answered during or after
Answers couldn't be viewed by other team members
Some businesses use terms other than ‘risk assessment’
These ideas were added to the backlog for further review.
Takeaways
I'm proud of how we used client feedback to identify a gap in our platform, one that could enhance worker safety. This drove us to develop a new feature that has since become a part of daily work for many workers.
Not only did we meet our goal of improving workplace safety, but we also delivered a feature that adds value to our clients.
Looking back, I realise that creating a user journey map earlier in the process would have made concept development and implementation a lot easier.
Moving forward, a key focus will be on increasing the feature's adoption and ensuring it continues to meet the evolving needs of our users.