How to Improve Safety and Effectiveness as EHS Management Responsibilities Continue to Grow

Inflation in the United States hit a 40-year high this past June, and many organizations are preparing for a recession by downsizing and asking workers to absorb more responsibility. However, expanding job responsibilities is familiar for safety professionals. 

According to the CDC, workplace culture and relationships can affect worker health and well-being and contribute to health risks like cardiovascular disease, obesity, and depression. As a result, in the last several years, an increased focus on employee physical and mental health has been gaining traction within safety and health circles.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health’s Total Worker Health program is the best example of how widely accepted this connection has become. NIOSH’s TWH program combines traditional safety practices with a focus on improving employee health and well-being through policy and workplace design.

If they have not already, many safety professionals will likely see their responsibilities expand to include employee health and well-being. Unfortunately, many safety departments are already understaffed. As a result, safety professionals who want to continue improving safety and effectiveness within their EHS management programs with less time must look at different avenues to increase their efficiency.

Building efficiency into EHS management 

Many methods companies use to manage EHS are inefficient and create additional work that’s both tedious and time-consuming. For example, some safety professionals still deal with safety audits on paper, injury and accident data on spreadsheets, or company compliance deadlines on a wall calendar. Unfortunately, these outdated methods leave gaps that open companies up to costly errors and non-compliance. 

Managing an essential part of business in such an archaic way doesn’t make much sense, especially when digital options can quickly eliminate traditional pain points and increase safety performance. That’s why a move towards EHS software is essential for building safety and effectiveness, especially when time is limited and responsibilities continue to expand. 

EHS software digitizes and centralizes a company’s EHS management process. That matters because when the various pieces of EHS, like audits or recordkeeping, are separated, the lack of communication between systems makes it much more complex and time-consuming to spot errors, trends, and risks within the data. 

Now that everything is in one place, the software can analyze leading and lagging indicators and quickly identify trends, risks, and gaps. Deeper insight into their organization’s safety and effectiveness help decision-makers predict the following safety incident and where to focus their attention. With more robust data, companies can shift from a reactive to a proactive safety approach. 

Many safety professionals have felt the anxiety and uncertainty that often comes with reporting to a regulatory body. With traditional, outdated systems, things like OSHA annual reporting sometimes involve digging through cabinets to find documents and hand-calculating rates, which adds significant administrative work and the potential for errors. EHS software dramatically improves recordkeeping, an essential piece of EHS compliance, because everything is digitized and in one place with easy access by critical stakeholders. 

Finally, safety professionals spend far too much time collecting paper forms like audits and inputting that data into whatever system they currently use. Software means that all those traditional paper forms are digitized and accessible to those who use them. The information they input is immediately in the system and available to anyone who needs it. 

By eliminating third-party data entry and much of the automation available with the software, EHS professionals can save a significant amount of time. Time to focus their attention elsewhere, where it can make a substantial difference in achieving workplace safety and effectiveness goals. 

ProcessMAP can help 

ProcessMAP has a comprehensive suite of pre-configured connected worker apps that streamline and transform the EHS processes of organizations. Integrated solutions help organizations actively learn from every incident, identify underlying root causes, and provide real-time actionable insight that anticipates and prevents potential safety incidents.

Click here to learn more about how ProcessMAP’s EHS software solutions can transform your organization’s Health and Safety processes and reduce workers’ compensation claims and regulatory fines.