The Missing Link with EHS Software
There is a gap between digital transformation’s impact and how and organization deploys EHS tools.
- By David Natalizia
- Sep 01, 2022
Our world, both on the job and off, has been experiencing profound “digital transformation” in recent years, from the invention of smartphones, the dominance of social media and the ubiquity of apps to perform all types of functions in our lives. However, there remains a gap within digital transformation’s impact on how we work and, more importantly, how an organization deploys environmental, health and safety (EHS) tools to protect their workforce. While some organizations have deployed large-scale digital solutions for EHS and have achieved good levels of usage across their organizations, many continue to struggle with the disparate set of industry offerings and efforts to define a customized strategy for success.
As the EHS solutions landscape evolves and organizations re-evaluate current operations and procedures, they must pivot from leaning heavily on administrative specialists to handle data entry and electronic recordkeeping or “super users” to make enterprise systems work and instead focus on leveraging new nimble and intuitive platforms that are driven by a much broader cross-section of internal users and embraced as a regular tool by workers across levels and assignments. The move for most companies will be from feature-laden but unwieldy Swiss-Army-Knife platforms to more dynamic, interconnected offerings powered by a collective team to drive success. Ultimately, usability, interconnection and simplicity will differentiate the solutions that are truly resource-constrained embraced and those that add unneeded complexity.
External and Internal Safety Practices Drive the Need for EHS Software
Organizations are increasingly facing losses due to risk exposures, penalties due to health and safety offenses and growing workplace safety and training needs due to ongoing labor shortage issues. The need to protect the workforce and streamline labor and safety procedures has never been greater. Recent statistics from OSHA show that workers in transportation and material moving occupations and construction and extraction occupations accounted for nearly half of all fatal occupational injuries (47.4 percent), representing 1,282 and 976 workplace deaths, respectively.
The safety challenges of construction, manufacturing and energy companies are complex, and the industries are bifurcated by the resource-constrained and the resource-rich. Looking closer at the EHS software product offerings, companies have two major segments to choose from—large-scale high commitment firmwide integration solutions or small-scale one-off applications to solve individual challenges. However, with projections indicating the global EHS solutions market size will swell to $8.9 billion by 2026, the industry overall and potential uses of new entrant solutions are rapidly evolving to solve current demands.
This article originally appeared in the September 1, 2022 issue of Occupational Health & Safety.