EHS Software (Environment, Health & Safety Software)

EHS Software Definition: What is Environment, Health, and Safety Software?

"EHS" is an abbreviation frequently used in the business environment for the English terms "Environment", "Health" and "Safety". Translated into German, the terms specifically mean "Umwelt", "Gesundheit" and "Sicherheit". In a business context, however, they usually refer to specific sustainability and safety precautions, which is why they are commonly equated with "Environmental Protection", "Health Protection" and "Occupational Safety".

• Environment: This EHS area addresses and adheres to strategies for creating green systems in businesses. Critical points include analysing the impact of current conditions on both the man-made and natural environment, and implementing positive measures while taking into account applicable laws.

• Health: This area focuses on the health aspects of daily work life. The primary goal here is to create conditions that are beneficial to the health and wellbeing of employees. Biological and psychological health factors are considered, as well as social and cultural ones. Certain legal requirements also apply here.

• Safety: A multitude of risk factors potentially lurk in businesses, in the working day of employees, and in the natural environment around the operation. This EHS area deals with reducing these risks through strategically planned and legally prescribed preventive and mitigation measures.

EHS software helps those responsible to implement corresponding tasks. In particular, it provides assistance in managing specific safety programs and complying with current (legal) regulations. It enables companies to identify hazards, track incidents, record injuries and illnesses, monitor changes in legal requirements, and assess the risk level at the workplace. Furthermore, such programs often offer tools to develop individual safety guidelines and procedures, set up training programs for employees and organize safety documents.

EHS vs. HSE vs. HSQE (EHSQ) In the context of EHS programs, names like "HSE software" or "HSQE software" often emerge, which can quickly cause confusion. In fact, HSE is an abbreviation for the same concepts as EHS, namely "Health", "Safety", and "Environment" – just in a different order.

Such applications are often referred to as EHS Compliance Software because they always centralise the compliance with regulations.

HSQE just adds another component: the "Q" stands here for quality assurance. This way, specific quality features of work processes are additionally monitored via such systems. Alternatively, HSQE software is referred to as EHSQ software.

Why should companies use EHS management software?

In terms of environmental, health and occupational safety, companies today have a massive number of duties and regulations to comply with. The aim is to meet many ISO standards, such as ISO 14001, ISO 9000 and ISO 9001. Depending on the sector a company operates in and how large it is, the effort required to deal with such regulations can be huge.

It can be assumed that companies or the corresponding responsible employees currently face an average of around 1,000 legal standards in environmental, plant and occupational safety alone. Failure to meet the relevant obligations can result in significant negative consequences – up to and including the (temporary) closure of certain production lines or even the entire operation.

Both large corporations and small and medium-sized companies must accept such challenges and manage them as efficiently as possible. It is hardly achievable to keep an overview, develop suitable strategies, not miss new guidelines or implement them correctly immediately, and always ensure that all participants follow the rules. Even for the best environmental or safety officers, manual implementation is not easy. An optimally coordinated EHS management system provides effective relief.

The software can even do much more than massively contribute to compliance with current regulations. The branding of companies and their value as employers are also considerably boosted by the use of an HSE program, at best. The conclusions in this regard are relatively straightforward, but have significant effects:

• Broad efforts in environmental protection - ensured by EHS software (ideally with public certificates) - are generally particularly respected. This, in turn, can make the respective brand more attractive to many prospects.

• The situation is very similar with regard to the employer's brand. If prevailing health and safety standards are reliably and verifiably adhered to, the best professionals in the business can be convinced all the better. Money is no longer everything, especially for sought-after experts!

Both aspects are extremely relevant in view of the increasingly fiercely contested markets and the growing shortage of skilled workers in many sectors.

How does an EHS management system work?

The functioning of EHS software can best be explained by the typical range of functions. The commonly listed features, outlined below, interlock with each other and thus provide broad support for daily tasks related to ensuring appropriate environmental, health and occupational safety.

• Risk Management: EHS management software can help businesses identify, assess, and manage safety risks. It provides insights into the potential dangers associated with various activities or procedures. It can also be used to develop strategies for risk minimisation or elimination.

• Regulatory Compliance Management: An EHS system helps organisations to ensure that they comply with all applicable environmental, health, and safety regulations. This includes continuous monitoring of the relevant measures, audits to track progress, and reporting features that provide an overview of the current overall situation.

• Incident Analysis: With an EHS tool, companies can capture information about incidents in a central system and evaluate it from beginning to end. Such platforms offer specific root cause analyses and reports to capture trends over time, among other insights.

• Training and Education: A comprehensive EHS management system tracks employees' training needs to ensure they have the appropriate skills to perform their tasks adequately. The software can also facilitate the development of online training modules, providing those concerned with easy access to relevant training materials.

• Document Management: EHS software provides a central repository for safety data sheets and other relevant documents. The regulations recorded therein can change relatively quickly in many places due to changing procedures or operating resources. All such sources can be centrally kept up to date within an EHS platform, and employees always have straightforward access to the most recent data if needed.

• Analyses, Audits, Reports: Many EHS management software solutions come with intelligent auditing functions that allow users to carry out internal safety inspections. The software then automatically generates reports based on the audit results. Identified issues can therefore be addressed quickly and precisely based on concrete data before they lead to larger negative impacts.

• Workflows and Notifications: An HSE system can be configured to initiate automatic workflows when an incident occurs or when a process is not completed on time. It also allows for the setup of automatic notifications when certain milestones are reached, such as when an audit is due or when the training certification of individual employees is expiring.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of EHS tools?

The central advantage resulting from the use of an EHS program lies naturally in the safe pursuit of specific (legal) guidelines. Additionally, such a system can significantly contribute to a more positive brand perception among target customers and potential employees. A summary of the detailed benefits that companies can gain is below.

• Efficient Compliance with Regulations: EHS software supports businesses in taking into account relevant local and national regulations for environmental, health, and workplace protection. It provides a comprehensive overview of the state of compliance and assesses to what extent the company meets the guidelines. The software also helps to identify additional requirements that might be necessary to comply with the regulations.

• More Precise Auditing: EHS management software allows data from safety audits to be captured more quickly and accurately. It can help standardise the audit process across multiple business locations or regions. It also provides real-time access to audit results based on predefined parameters.

• Improved Tracking: With an EHS tool, companies can track employee data on certifications, training programs, sick leaves, etc. This also includes analysing incidents related to injuries or illnesses and damage to property or lost equipment.

• Lower Risk Exposure: EHS software can enable risk assessments to be carried out efficiently, identifying potential hazards associated with typical processes or activities within the company. This allows for proactive rather than reactive measures to be taken. Certain danger trends can be identified, enabling those responsible to make informed, early decisions to minimise risk.

• Increased Cost Efficiency: Especially with the automations integrated into an EHS system, businesses can achieve significant cost savings. For example, no manual reports need to be created, resulting in considerable labour savings. Also, a lot of effort can be saved in terms of training, inventory tracking, compliance monitoring, or auditing processes using EHS.

• Improved Safety Culture: Through the comprehensive monitoring and reliable consideration of safety and health standards, EHS software creates an environment that promotes safety awareness throughout the company. This can contribute significantly to employees internalising the respective processes and guidelines and to the development of a strong safety culture.

• Increased Productivity: By implementing EHS software, companies can find solutions to problems related to safety, health, or the environment more quickly. Also, employees are thus better able to implement these solutions. As a result, everyone has more time for their core tasks, leading to higher productivity.

Despite these numerous significant advantages, some disadvantages or potential problems with the use of EHS software cannot be avoided. The following challenges are typical.

• Data Protection Concerns: A lot of sensitive data is processed in EHS processes. Many of today's EHS software providers host this information on their servers or in the cloud. This external storage regularly gives company managers a headache. Of course, this doesn't have to be the case. To exclude corresponding concerns and possibly even dangers, interested parties in an EHS solution should check whether the providers they are looking at can guarantee the required security standards.

• Limited Adaptability: While HSE software solutions are customizable, there are limits. Often a compromise needs to be struck - especially with more complex requirements - between achieving perfect results and adapting one's own business processes to a certain extent to the respective solution. Those who do not want or can't do this, have no other choice but to resort to a costly custom solution. The additional costs should of course be worthwhile.

How do you choose the right EHS software?

The EHS market is now very extensive: Starting with individual solutions, which focus on a certain EHS area - like the analysis of environmental data - to large enterprise suites offering complete coverage of all facets, there are numerous options available.

Narrowing these down and eventually finding the perfect EHS software for one's purpose is anything but easy. However, with the following tips, those responsible can significantly simplify the search and efficiently research the right tool.

Alignment with Your Own Needs Companies from different sectors have various (legal) requirements for environmental, health, and occupational safety. The chosen software should be able to fulfill these comprehensively, or at least in the focused parts.

Those who want to buy EHS software have two options in principle: On the one hand, there are standard off-the-shelf solutions that can be minimally adapted to your own needs, and on the other hand, there are customised products that are precisely tailored to the respective sector and operational requirements.

To find out what the application should be capable of and which variant makes the most sense, the first step is to highlight the pain points that it is eventually supposed to overcome. Based on the corresponding findings, the selection can be heavily narrowed down.

Additionally, care should be taken to ensure that the HSE software can grow with the company over the years. It is important that the provider provides a wide range of functions, resources, and upgrades that still adequately support the company in the future. If this is not the case, a new, more powerful software may need to be purchased after a short time. This represents a significant amount of time and cost.

Easy Usability Acceptance of a new system can be a challenge. Whether and to what extent an EHS solution is ultimately used depends largely on the usability of it. Those interested should therefore ensure that the system they have chosen is easy to use and understand so that it is quickly and fully accepted.

In order to create ideal conditions, those responsible should take a close look at the future users and analyse their competencies. It is necessary to choose a solution that everyone, i.e. both technically proficient and less proficient employees, can handle easily. To ensure an optimal introduction, providers often offer training, online tutorials, and/or guided walk-throughs.

Good Support When choosing an EHS software, the likely needed extent of support should not be overlooked. This, of course, includes direct and fast enquiry options for problems or other concerns. Since an EHS program concerns highly business-critical processes, it is all the more important to get prompt help, for example, in the event of a partial failure.

But further services, such as implementing the software, the addressed training and familiarisation phases or even strategic support, can also be used from time to time.

What do EHS programs cost?

The costs for EHS management software can vary greatly. They depend on a number of factors: especially the industry and the size of the respective company, as well as the complexity of the needed protective measures or corresponding regulations, play a role. The price is also influenced by the required functionalities and likewise by the number of users.

In general, the costs for EHS programs range from a few hundred euros for simple solutions to thousands or even tens of thousands of euros for extensive and complex custom programming. The latter are then exactly tailored to the specific requirements of the respective company.

Larger organisations with diverse requirements often have to buy a custom-tailored enterprise application. However, almost all EHS providers allow businesses to choose from various modules and add-ons. This way, it's possible to get tailored functionality even with off-the-shelf tools that ideally address the individual prerequisites. Most providers have tailored their standard packages to cover as many requirements as possible. However, the costs can still quickly add up.

In addition to the initial expenses associated with the purchase or subscription of EHS software, investments for extended support, implementation, and training of employees may also arise. These should, of course, be taken into account when budgeting for a new system.