UL PureSafety Offers a New Approach to Safety Management
The new release of its Learning and Safety Management System at Safety 2012 allows users to include information collected in an incident investigation in a multimedia-based training course.
DENVER – UL PureSafety introduced a new release of its Learning and Safety Management System at ASSE's Safety 2012 conference in June, calling it a first-of-its-kind tool to improve a client's safety culture, reduce incidents, and improve productivity.
"It's really exciting and innovative, and I think marries our heritage in online training delivery and management, course content, with core safety management work flows –- incident recording and investigation, and corrective action management," said Bill Grana, who heads PureSafety and is vice president of the UL Knowledge Services unit.
LSMS will change the way company think about learning and safety management, according to UL PureSafety.
"I think for a long time we've talked about it, we've heard from our customers, that a lot of the learning that occurs in an organization occurs through storytelling, the lore and things that are passed down. The new release, our LSMS, is going to help companies realize that stuff, preserve it, and incorporate into standard, off-the-shelf curricula," Grana explained.
He said the release is the third iteration of an LSMS originally released in 2011. It allows users to take all of the information collected in an incident investigation, including the documentation and photos, and then leverage it to create a multimedia-based training course. These might be only three to five minutes long, shorter than UL PureSafety's traditional courses.
"There's a need, I think, for more innovation within the software space in occupational health and safety," he said. "So I think we're really trying to think outside the box a little bit, through different lenses, and to vary work flows in a new way that is combining training management, course delivery functionality, with safety management, incident management, investigation, the way we're doing it with this platform."
He said Underwriters Laboratories Inc. has embarked on an aggressive plan to grow through acquisitions, making it very interesting time to be a part of the company. Through surveys of its customers, UL realized some years ago that people felt it was in the OHS business because of the famous UL brand, but in reality it was not. Today, that has changed. After a lengthy courtship, the company in December 2011 incorporated PureSafety into its Knowledge Services business unit and in April 2012 acquired EduNeering, a compliance solutions and training provider for the life and health sciences sector, from Kaplan Inc. and added it to the same unit.
"It's a very logical extension of the UL brand," said Grana. "I've basically grown small businesses for the past 18 years. To become part of a 10,000-employee business is different, but they've been very deferential in terms of our operations," he said, adding that being part of UL opens some new international opportunities for PureSafety.