Back in the old days, the internet was one of the most awesome things ever discovered. Before its advent, interests for personal computers and cell phones were not so common. Now, almost everyone has it, for ordinary citizens to keep up with life and catch up with technology, and for businesses not just to keep up with competition but also to experience its benefits.
Nothing justifies better than all the benefits business software can provide. Hence, over the years, we have seen a lot of businesses already unafraid to invest in various systems for a business, e.g. POS software, Accounting and Bookkeeping Software, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, and of course, who can’t say yes to Environment, Health, and Safety (EHS) Software.
The EHS of Today
Environment, Health, and Safety or EHS is a general terminology that basically refers to the rules, laws, regulations, and programs required to be implemented in a workplace to support the law of protecting the health and safety not just of every employee but also the public. It also covers the ABCs of environmental hazard reduction and management.
Companies nowadays make use of different platforms to better implement EHS Programs and address EHS concerns:
- The Use of BBS
Different methods have been introduced to better implement every aspect of EHS. One of these is behavioural safety – a method designed to change safety behaviour of all employees with a vision of having less to zero injuries or incidents going down in a company. Records show that averagely, businesses that practiced BBS or behavioural-based safety for one year attained a better rate in terms of average injury counts, specifically realizing a decrease of 29%. It was projected, consequently, that after five years of using BBS, the reduction rate would likely reduce by 72 per cent, and would go even lower to 79% if implemented for seven years straight or more.
One of the first steps to make EHS program a success in every company is to acknowledge that unsafe acts are a threat and should be addressed as necessary. By using BBS applications, it is expected that company will be more aware of the threats unsafe acts pose and will be more focused on looking at the behaviour of every employee, on alerting them of necessary trainings, on collecting relevant data to improve processes and direct behaviour, on decreasing and tracking risk management, and on increasing safety provisions and savings. In the long run, it is expected that a BBS will have a company save a lot of money.
- The Use of EHS Software
EHS Software supports every business’s advocacy to comply with EHS standards which generally aim to ensure every employee is being taken care of enough for them to be motivated to work continuously and achieve a higher retention rate. This software also supports every company in complying with EHS on a legal standpoint. That is to make sure that the company is not in any way violating any EHS policies the government imposed. Additionally, it is there to remind every company of their responsibility to balance out the measure costs they can make in line with the outlook of the business.
While small-sized companies can be easy to monitor and manage, implementing EHS policies in large scale companies may mean the company will also have to maintain huge volumes of data and statistics. Fortunately, thanks to EHS software that is designed towards simplification of EHS for every business, every company owner will now have an easier and more organized EHS implementation experience.
A typical EHS software offers a feature to record reports, incidents, and other important details. Depending on the advancement of the EHS software, it can also provide facilities that offer automated risk analysis, forecasting, and reporting that is vital in decision making. You will find a lot of EHS Software in the market today and it can be overwhelming especially with the fact that each of them brags of promising features. Their prices vary wildly too. Hence, it is best to keep your focus and choose one only with the features your company may need.
- The Use of Incident Management Tool
Incident Management tool is one that focuses on monitoring of both safety and quality events to identify and eradicate better all the potential systemic risks. This helps in conducting deeper analysis about safety incidents, quality issues, and customer complaints. Most of the incident management tools feature integration of Health Safety Environmental & Quality or HSEQ to streamline processes through additional incident filtering feature to classify risks by level. This is expected to provide users an easier way to focus on areas that needs to be focused more. HSEQ is actually vital in a way that it suggests automated corrective action with all the necessary legal and policy implications taken into account.
Businesses are said to benefit from Incident Management Tools through achieving a new culture of safety. With such a tool that fosters more strict controls, processes are expected to be improved significantly.
Other Ways to Live EHS
Through time, companies have learned to create a proactive approach in identifying and eradicating hazards in a workplace with the help of the following:
- Employee Training – Companies have learned to standardize employee trainings to make sure employees are reminded of and are actually performing their jobs with safety – a process that an EHS software made easier. With combined efforts, such trainings can benefit the units by providing automated notifications for scheduled and overdue trainings, ensuring that nothing pressing went unnoticed.
- Risk Management – With a standardized system to manage risks, a closed-loop process that allows continuous improvement and proactive management is practiced. This is expected to provide companies a solution to differences before the latter creates a problem. With Risk management, employees are allowed and even encouraged to go even beyond EHS compliance.
The goal of EHS is to have companies 100% prepared for risks before they even happen. Businesses that can successfully face such predicaments will surely be of significant advantage. If EHS policies are lived right, job-related injuries and other incidents will surely be entirely eradicated eventually. And every workplace will surely conduct processes with an increased level of safety and security.