The goal of the OHS Insider is to give safety professionals the information, tools and other resources they need to manage their OHS programs, protect their workers and ensure compliance with the OHS laws.

To see how well we’re doing fulfilling your needs, we recently conducted a survey on the various kinds of content we publish both on OHSInsider.com and in the monthly newsletter, Safety Compliance Insider.

Over 240 of you responded’thank you! And Anne T. of Vale won a Kindle. We hope you’re enjoying it, Anne.

Highlights from the Survey Responses

The kinds of content you rated as being most useful were:

1. Know the Laws charts, which accompany feature articles and compare the OHS laws in each jurisdiction on particular requirements or topics

2. Feature articles providing an in-depth look at how to comply with OHS requirements for a specific hazard or issue, such as portable ladders

3. Hazard Profiles that look at an individual type of hazard, the dangers it poses and how it’s regulated (Here’s one on asbestos.)

4. Dos & Don’ts, short how-to articles usually based on cases or other real world examples

5. Winners & Losers, which compare two cases involving the same issue but with different outcomes.

But you also counted the Spot the Safety Violations and Test Your OHS I.Q. pieces (aka ‘Quick Quizzes‘) as two of your favorites. (In fact, we now have pages dedicated to these kinds of content.)

Some of the aspects of the OHS Insider website specifically that you particularly liked include:

• The amount of information
• Accessibility and ease of using it
• Tools in general and checklists specifically
• Information by jurisdiction
• Constant updates on new laws, news, cases, etc.

How Do You Use Our Content’

The overwhelming top response was that, in general, you use the content primarily to learn about OHS compliance requirements.

However, you use individual types of content in different ways. For example, you mainly use the Spot the Violations to train workers (One person wrote that he prints out and posts the Spot the Violation on the worker bulletin board.) You also use the model tools mainly to audit and the Brief Senior Management pieces to educate senior management.

Using Your Feedback to Improve Our Content

Getting all this great feedback from readers is pointless unless we’re actually going to use it to make improvements. And that’s exactly what we plan to do.

Here are some of the changes we’ve already made and/or are planning to make in the near future:

• Because you really like the Spot the Safety Violations and primarily use them for training, we’ve started making PDFs of these pieces so it’s easier for you to download them and give them to workers or post them in the workplace.
• You also said you like the Quick Quizzes and use them to train workers, too. So we’re going to start making PDFs of these pieces as well.
• So you don’t have to repeatedly sign into the website to use it, we’re looking into a way to let you save your login information, i.e., installing a ‘remember me’ feature.
• We’re going to explore ways to make the website easier to navigate, such as by breaking the topic index down into subcategories. For example, the PPE category may have separate subcategories for fall protection, eye protection, safety footwear, etc.
• We’re also exploring the development of industry-specific content and/or centres. Based on the survey and recent poll results, the oil and gas industry will likely be the first one we target.