Faulty handovers between shifts are costly and lead to harmful incidents or dangerous situations. Around 60% of incidents happen in the first 30 minutes of a shift due to poor or incorrect handover information. Therefore, it is necessary to reduce the complications and confusing practices.

When your workforce is distributed into different shifts or (partly) working remotely, it is crucial that the communication between supervisors, employees, and contractors is transparent and clear.

The hassle of traditional Shift Management

In many manufacturing, chemical, and utility companies shift handovers consist of sending emails and filling in paper documents. This leads to confusion and miscommunication. An overload of documents distracts your employees, contractors, and supervisors, resulting in a lack of clarity and a high risk for errors.

For employees and supervisors, gaining a comprehensive insight and having a clear overview of shift handovers is indispensable.

The way forward

On-site, when one shift takes over from another, it is important that workers can easily access handovers using a phone or tablet, instead of carrying around multiple paper documents, having to go through numerous emails, or leafing through heavy logbooks.

When it comes to data traceability, the software has the upper hand over pen and paper. With electronic records and logs, you can keep track of everything that happened during a shift. Moreover, these electronic logs are readily available at one glance.

What it means for you

The whole workforce and internal organization of a plant or company can benefit from integrating a digital solution to optimize shift handovers. Apart from more transparency and less confusion, Shift Management software has many advantages and functionalities.

Your team can access real-time reports, user dashboards and handy task management options to:

• Manage (create, add, update) shift tasks ad-hoc or automatically
• Define their own plan of recurring production tasks, which automatically link to the correct shift
• Define shift teams and schedules per production unit or line.

Through software you can also:

• Create easily accessible system generated logs based on working schedule and production lines set-up
• Access pre-filled morning or production meeting minutes
• Be sure of a clean audit trail
• Make integrations with Process Control Alerts and Plant Information Systems and with other process safety areas (Incidents, Maintenance tasks, MoC etc.).

There are also several advantages for the plant or company as a whole, which ultimately leads to a better performance and productivity.

• Around-the-clock shift communication enables the whole workforce to be transparently informed when ending and beginning a shift. By making this information and communication process automatic, employees will immediately be up-to-date.
• Digitization is the future in every part of society, so your company will be a step ahead of its competition with the use of efficient software. In other words, storing information electronically helps operators access a historical knowledge base in order to make better, more informed decisions and keep the plant running safely and efficiently.
• You can boost operational efficiency; Digital shift logs and real-time event reporting increase productivity and reduce downtime.

If you want to learn more about digital Shift Management, book a demo with one of our EHSQ experts.