When it comes to workplace safety, health and safety managers can never take too many precautions. But routine procedure can fall by the wayside to quicker methods that create more profit but also additional risk.

Small and mid-sized business often don’t realize they can have the best of both worlds. Environmental, Health and Safety software provides a streamlined and transparent safety culture, all the while ensuring its return on investment.

Environmental, Health and Safety software at your workplace

Each EHS software can be configured to meet certain industries’ needs, but there are a few key functions that define it across the board. By automating regulatory compliance, making accident data visible in all cases and placing increased scrutiny on employee safety, businesses experience less productivity downtime and greater operational efficiency.

While it may seem as though these systems are best developed to keep workplaces safe in environments where there’s little oversight, like large businesses, the fact of the matter is  small and mid-sized business often benefit the most from the software’s inclusion. Consider these figures gathered by the Asbestos Institute:

• Companies ranging from 1 to 99 employees received 80,654 citations from OSHA in 2013, totaling $112.2 million.
• Organizations with 100 or more workers were cited just 9,052 times for a grand total of $33.2 million.

Given those figures, small and mid-sized business need an overhaul of their safety cultures, as they are currently cited far more than large businesses.

7 Steps to Safety

Implementing EHS software allows employers to take advantage of steps to a better safety culture, as laid out by the Maine Department of Labor:

1. Don’t half-heart safety: Safety managers need to be completely on board with the revisions that will take place, as they will fundamentally change day-to-day operations. This could come in the form of more training or perhaps better safety equipment.
2. Get employees involved: An excellent safety culture starts from the ground up. To revolutionize how the organization views risk at the workplace, workers need to have input and be willing to make a change.
3. Find the right system: Adopting the perfect EHS system is key. Consider what types of regulations or standards for which your company regularly receives citations. Remember OSHA is changing its mandatory injury submission protocol, so you’ll need software that allows for automated and offline reporting.
4. Ensure compliance: One of the best ways to cut down on compliance infractions is to dedicate time to understanding them and implementing safeguards across the board.
5. Practice, practice, practice: Training is the best way to make sure the entire company is in line with industry-best safety practices. Use predictive analytics to understand where the majority of risks originate, and create training regiments that aim to mitigate these issues.
6. Everyone gets a voice: In the perfect culture, entry-level employees need to feel safe enough to tell a C-suite executive on a worksite to put on safety gear. This will ensure everyone adopts the new strategies.
7. Rinse and repeat: By addressing the safety culture each year—even if there hasn’t been any accidents—facility managers remind everyone that safety is the top priority.