No industry or field can remain static. Change is inevitable. This can sound ominous, but oftentimes change is a good thing. New technology and new thought processes can lead to more efficient ways of working, more job satisfaction, and more benefit to customers or clients. Recently, a positive change that the industry has seen is the increased availability of environmental health and safety management software, or, EHS Management Software.
As our understanding of what a safe and healthy workplace should look like has evolved, so have the policies and procedures that go with it.
These custom-designed solutions have significantly contributed to making EHS manager’s jobs easier. Two areas where they have been especially effective are compliance and incident management.
EHS Compliance Made Easier
The main issue with environmental health and safety compliance is that it’s an umbrella term encompassing a lot of territory. The EHS manager is tasked with ensuring that chemicals are safely stored and disposed of, that employees are versed in the proper usage of chemicals and machinery, that inspections are performed on time, that reports are submitted to managers and governing bodies, and numerous other tasks.
All of these tasks have to happen on different time tables, which is both a blessing and a curse. If everything was due at once, it would be almost impossible to prioritize. But keeping track of so many deadlines and making sure that none are missed can be a logistical tangle that is difficult to unravel.
With the help of environmental health and safety management software, EHS managers can more easily stay on top of regulations and deadlines. An EHS compliance software module keeps track of when everything is due, providing you with reminders on when to schedule inspections or submit paperwork. Furthermore, it makes all of those tasks easier to perform. It can auto-generate task lists for inspections and allow you to easily submit reports online.
Faster Incident Resolution
Incident reporting is the most fraught aspect of EHS management. At best, there’s been some loss of resources or property damage, and at worse someone has been seriously injured. The EHS manager’s job is to ensure that everything is recorded properly in order to prevent repeat incidents.
Although you will hopefully rarely have to use an EHS incident management module, you want it to be there for you when you need it. This aspect of an environmental health and safety management software suite is dedicated to ensuring that all of the relevant data is entered properly and submitted to the right people.
With an incident management module, you can share reports with all of the relevant departments in your company, from the health clinic to the supervisor on duty, to other EHS managers in different locations. In these instances, it’s important for everyone to have the same data to ensure the proper response to the incident.
Change Can Be Good
Advances like EHS management software allow you to spend less time on paperwork and more time on making sure that you’re providing the safest work environment possible. Today’s software solutions are far more efficient than relying on physical forms, faxes, and other outdated tools. This is a change that we can all embrace.
