KPA says its upgrade to myKPAonline allows dealership managers to monitor safety through an online dashboard and to assign safety issues to individual staff members. “Safety issues are a lot more complicated for dealerships than they were even five years ago, so it makes sense to have an online solution that can take in huge amounts of information and translate it into a simple dashboard for each dealership,” says Eric Schmitz, KPA vice president of product development. “The dashboard works because it gives managers the big picture about worker safety conditions, just like the dashboard in a car gives drivers the big picture about the engine working conditions.”
Behind the dashboard is the myKPAonline software that gathers regulatory information from federal and state agencies and matches the regulations with common processes and tools at dealerships, service centers, body shops and commercial garages. The program rates risk levels and ranks importance for addressing each issue. KPA says its safety Engineers across the country visit dealerships in the system to ensure accuracy and review onsite safety issues that have been recorded in the dashboard. While onsite, the engineers also check-in with managers, monitor progress for the dealership’s ongoing safety initiatives, lead safety meetings and conduct training sessions.
We noticed that even with the system, some dealerships were taking a while to address issues, and during that time, even smaller problems can have a higher risk factor,” says Peter Zaidel, product manager for myKPAonline, explaining how the upgraded system empowers managers at the dealership to assign safety issues to individual staff members. “Giving workers project ownership gets them much more involved, it builds a safety culture, and we have seen that it changes their behavior in the work environment. It keeps them thinking about safety first, which is actually what makes this safety innovation more like a safety revolution.”
