Stanford Researcher Discusses eCompliance’s Impact on Lost Time Incidents

Over the course of July and August 2017, we undertook a study of eCompliance’s current customer base. We did so with the goal of finding any changes in safety performance among these companies.

My initial expectations were that companies might see a small reduction in incidents, but that their main reason for using eCompliance would be the reduction in paperwork and simplification of their workflows.

In order to understand the changes brought by eCompliance, we reached out to a random sampling of customers currently using the software. We discussed Lost Time Incident Rates (LTI) and how they had changed, in addition to other metrics that these companies were tracking.

As we went through the process of gathering data, my original hypothesis seemed partially confirmed – many clients were seeing tangible benefits that had nothing to do with Incident Rates and I assumed that the way eCompliance simplified safety management might be its greatest benefit.

For example, a third of surveyed companies choose eCompliance, despite already having a 0.0 LTI rate before implementing the software, which suggested there were reasons to use eCompliance despite having no room for reducing LTI rates.

Despite this, I was surprised when we began to analyze the data we had collected throughout our study. Among our 33 sample companies, we saw 90% either reduce or maintain their LTI rate. In addition, there was an average 55% reduction in LTI rates across our whole sample. This was more than I had expected.

As a student living in Silicon Valley, I have heard enough pitches about the life-changing benefits of software to approach many of them with significant skepticism. Despite this, I was able to look at the data we had gathered and saw a real, tangible benefit arising from these customers use of eCompliance.

A quarter of the companies using eCompliance had even completely eliminated LTI. Rather than providing only workflow benefits, it became clear that eCompliance was also empowering companies to significantly reduce their incidents and improve their overall safety.

Although it maybe should have been clear from the start, I realized how effectively these two aspects were working together. The way eCompliance promotes a positive safety culture, increases reporting of potential hazards & incidents, encourages better tracking of statistics, and simplifies the process of managing a safety program, were all important reasons customers were happy with eCompliance.

In addition, those same customers were seeing tangible reductions in LTI rates which empowered them to focus even more heavily on creating a safe workplace.

In my time doing research for this project I was impressed by the tangible benefit that eCompliance currently provides for its customers, and by the potential it has to improve safety at many more companies.

Niklas Ostersmith is currently working on his MA at Stanford University. He received his BA in Philosophy from Stanford in June 2018 and looks forward to returning this fall. His current focus is in Formal Logic.