Published 11 Sep 2023

The 10 Best EHS Software for 2023

safety professional checking company's EHS board

What is EHS Software? 

An environment, health, and safety (EHS) software is a tech solution that enables organizations to protect the health and safety of workers through an automated system. Also called an EHS management software, it also helps simplify regulatory compliance by efficiently managing internal audits, inspections, reporting, and documentation.

Benefits

Maintaining a safe workplace and fully compliant operations is important in any business. This is why governments enforce various EHS standards that companies must comply with to ensure the wellbeing of their workers and customers. Gauging the effectiveness of such measures is best done with the help of an EHS software.

EHS leaders are responsible for maintaining a safe workplace for employees. They need to be able to manage safety reports and organize data from these reports in a way that can help them make the best decisions to avoid incidents and injuries.

Lastly, safety managers need a unified recordkeeping system to track and analyze data and generate reports immediately. Below are a few ways an EHS software can help organizations prevent untoward incidents and promote a healthier and safer environment.

Encourage a proactive safety culture

Mobile devices, combined with a dynamic EHS software, encourage workers to report hazards, even when they are busy at work. All they have to do is bring out their mobile device, put in the details of the hazard, take photos if possible, and click a button to complete the report. They can even work offline, and data will automatically sync once connected. Information then is quickly passed on to management, enabling them to create corrective actions on the spot.

By enabling everyone in the workplace to quickly identify and act on critical hazards without sacrificing much of their time and effort, they are empowered to take part in building a safety culture that focuses on implementing proactive measures—not one that waits until a safety incident or accident occurs.

Save time and effort from mundane admin tasks

With an EHS software, there’s no need for people to go through the struggle of collating physical photos and manual data entry when finalizing a professional safety report. They only need their mobile device, and the EHS management system software ensures that inspection data reaches the right decision-makers.

Additionally, management teams can save time by automating routine tasks, such as generation of CEO-ready reports, scheduling of regular inspections, and sharing of findings to key people.

Ensure confidence through compliance

Occupational health and safety management standards (such as ISO 45001) and OSHA laws and regulations help provide a structure to the maintenance of safe and healthy workplaces. Companies who aim to be certified for occupational safety standards can utilize an EHS compliance software to help demonstrate their organization’s compliance. Such software can help monitor incidents, audits, risk assessments, environmental risk management, and performance across multiple workplaces.

Standardize internal EHS audits

The process of updating and printing EHS audit checklists and putting them into multiple hands for review and distribution takes a lot of time. Staff at different locations may also be using outdated paper checklists, which makes standardization across your company highly challenging. With a digital solution like a cloud-based EHS software, companies can easily build and update digital checklists and easily share them to everyone in the organization—all within a few taps.

Make sense of numbers

An EHS software provides senior management teams a quick pulse of what’s happening in their workplaces and their people. Through a powerful business intelligence dashboard, they can easily view comprehensive performance reports, track the most critical safety data, uncover areas for improvement, and access historical data at any time.

Having an EHS system at your disposal can do wonders for your operations. It will help you keep your workplace safe, assure the security of your employees, and maintain the sustainability of your business.

Key Features

Consider these top EHS software features to help you decide which to use for your organization.

Smart form

To stay updated with the changing EHS compliance requirements, your EHS software must enable your organization to easily adapt through intelligent features such as creating smart forms tailored to suit the dynamics of your operations.

With this feature, create smart inspection checklists and templates from scratch, customize pre-made templates, or convert your existing paper checklists to digital forms.

Inspections and audits

An EHS software must enable your teams and EHS leaders to complete inspections from anywhere at any time as needed.

Having the capability to conduct regular inspections and audits captures issues or areas for improvement on your EHS program. These can then be used to recommend corrective and preventive actions (CAPA) and write CAPA reports from there.

Fast reporting

Detailed inspection reports and insights help problems get solved quicker. Being informed about the current issues and gaps present in your current systems allows for quality operations, change management, and protocol implementation.

With the mobile capability and user-friendly interface of an EHS software, it is now attainable more than ever to encourage workers to report safety issues right from the palm of their hands. When there’s a convenient system for reporting, you’ll get the necessary supply of safety data to give you better insights for improving EHS management.

Knowing about critical safety issues and immediately acting upon them are both crucial in EHS reporting. Ultimately, an EHS software must allow the appropriate stakeholders to immediately see flagged items gathered from safety reports, assign actions to responsible personnel, and monitor their progress.

Insights and analytics

Next-generation EHS management needs next-generation data analytics. Thus, all your safety information must be in one place–providing you actionable insights in just a glance. You can analyze the leading and lagging indicators of your EHS program and work on its strong and weak points. With such a technology like EHS software, you can quickly take the necessary actions and drive continuous improvement.

Integrations and workflow automation

For a holistic management program, your EHS software must have the option to connect other business software systems such as Tableau, Sharepoint, and more. Apart from that, you must also be able to automate the tedious aspects of your EHS management standards, from scheduling to report delivery to boost operational efficiency.

How to Pick the Best EHS Software

Here are 4 major things to consider when deciding which EHS software to use.

Cost

Some sample questions to ask for this factor include the following:

  • Will the EHS software pricing justify the value it will provide to the organization?
  • Are there existing subscription options for those who would like to weigh their choices?
  • Are the subscription plans customizable according to the organization’s specific needs and size?

For example, SMBs may consider using a free EHS software before subscribing to a premium plan, most especially if they’re still testing their options.

Features

While the features of various EHS software solutions may vary, it’s best to choose the one that provides the most appropriate usability to all kinds of users in your organization. These include your leadership team, EHS managers, frontline workers, and admin staff. Further, assess if you’ll be needing a specific kind of software deployment—iOS, Android, and Web—as not all EHS platforms offer a multifaceted solution.

Support

Based on your organization’s needs, check if the EHS software provider is easy to get in touch with for possible deployment concerns and other processes such as tool integration. Considering their means of customer support and availability of knowledge base is also a must to ensure a seamless experience.

Employee training

Keeping employees well-informed and equipped with ample knowledge on industry best practices—zooming in on EHS compliance regulations—is paramount to ensure safe practices in the workplace. Your EHS software must be able to integrate tools and functions that educate workers toward promoting a proactive safety culture.

Customer Success

Learn about these industry leaders’ EHS success stories as they utilize SafetyCulture:

Check out SafetyCulture’s ready-to-use EHS checklists below:

pat guevara safetyculture content specialist

SafetyCulture Content Specialist

Patricia Guevara

Patricia Guevara is a content writer and researcher for SafetyCulture. With her extensive content writing and copywriting experience, she creates high-quality content across a variety of relevant topics. She aims to promote workplace safety, operational excellence, and continuous improvement in her articles. She is passionate about communicating how technology can be used to streamline work processes, empowering companies to realize their business goals.

Patricia Guevara is a content writer and researcher for SafetyCulture. With her extensive content writing and copywriting experience, she creates high-quality content across a variety of relevant topics. She aims to promote workplace safety, operational excellence, and continuous improvement in her articles. She is passionate about communicating how technology can be used to streamline work processes, empowering companies to realize their business goals.

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