What are the top three priorities for EHS professionals in 2023 and why?

EHS management aims to identify and protect workers and companies from job-related risks associated with physical, chemical, and biological hazards. However, the number and complexity of the activities, policies, and procedures required to achieve this goal make EHS management a complicated job.

The priorities of a company’s EHS program will depend on many factors, including the maturity of its safety and health program, its location, industry, and workplace safety culture. While the specific needs of each organization may vary, most EHS professionals experience similar pain points that influence where they are likely to prioritize their efforts. 

The top three priorities for EHS professionals in 2023

A recent poll asked EHS professionals to name their top priorities for 2023, and the results illustrated these common pain points. This post will examine the top three responses and a few reasons why EHS professionals might rank those as their top priorities. 

 Standardize practices across locations

Standardizing EHS practices at large corporations with multiple locations across different states or countries is challenging. This issue becomes more complicated when safety teams are small and can only visit a site once or twice a year. In addition, recently acquired locations may have their own safety and health processes that have evolved organically over the years.

When it comes to achieving workplace goals for safety, the vast amount of activities, policies, and procedures mean it’s easy for things to fall through the cracks. Therefore, a standardized, systematic, and consistent approach to EHS management is essential to reducing injury and accidents and ensuring regulatory compliance. 

When you standardize, you eliminate variations and unnecessary risks that have prevented many organizations from achieving their goals for safety. In addition, standardizing means companies can develop a solid game plan to achieve company safety, health, and environmental goals and apply those methods to every location to get consistent results. 

Improve analysis capabilities

Organizations that have been around for a long time have slowly built their safety and health programs from scratch as the regulatory landscape has become more demanding. Unfortunately, what this looks like in many organizations is a mismatch of different processes, programs, and methods for managing the various pieces of EHS.

Some of their processes may be on paper in a file cabinet, others in an Excel sheet, and some in a more modern form of EHS software. While each approach may work as intended, valuable information is lost because they are separated and don’t communicate. As a result, companies lose the ability to analyze their safety data and miss an excellent opportunity to gain deeper insight into their organization and stop an accident or non-compliance before it happens. 

Analysis capabilities help uncover variations and risks and make standardization of EHS processes and policies more effective. For this reason, many organizations want to improve their safety analytics because they know how powerful they can be. 

Eliminate manual forms/digitize processes

Even today, critical portions of some companies’ EHS programs, like safety audits, are still on paper. By digitizing EHS, you can improve analysis capabilities and understand the risks confronting workers and organizations. 

Digitizing EHS means that valuable data is available to stakeholders immediately. Take an accident or injury witness statement, for example. Management traditionally would need to call supervisors and ask for that information or wait for the paper document to be scanned and emailed to them. With digital forms, that witness statement is available immediately to everybody who needs it.

By eliminating these delays in reporting, companies can respond to root causes, non-compliances, and workplace hazards immediately without having to wait on a piece of paper in someone’s pocket or desk. 

EHS software may be the answer

The pain points illustrated by the EHS professionals surveyed are nothing new; they have plagued industries for years. Thankfully, the solution to these pain points is also well established. For the respondents of this survey, adopting EHS software or upgrading to a more comprehensive option might be the answer to achieving their priorities for 2023. 

EHS software simplifies the process of EHS management by digitizing, collecting, standardizing, and analyzing EHS data across your entire organization and putting it into usable information that can help decision-makers make well-informed business choices. 

ProcessMAP can help

EHS professionals aim to eliminate the risk of workplace hazards for workers and the companies that they represent. To achieve their goals for safety and move their programs forward, they must look closely at how they currently manage EHS and consider moving towards a modern, comprehensive approach.

EHS software from ProcessMAP helps companies digitize, standardize, and analyze safety data across their entire organization. Schedule a demo today to learn more about how ProcessMAP can modernize your organization’s safety and health program and create a safer, more compliant workplace.