Skip to content

    Contents

    Back to the future

    30 November 2013 - Evotix

       

    The National Examination Board in Occupational Safety and Health (NEBOSH) trains 35,000 candidates each year over 500 vocationally-related qualifications for today’s health and safety professionals. A popular area with students in recent years has been the adoption of safety software and technology in health and safety and its potential. We’ve noticed this because we’re often contacted with requests for data and evidence to back up various hypotheses.

    Paper’s legacy hangs heavy over health and safety compliance. It’s a reassuring medium; it gives people peace of mind and it’s hard to argue non-compliance when faced with a mountain of paper and ring-binders that are bursting at the seams. It’s the same reason companies still send junk mail – paper and print are trusted.

    However, software has touched every part of our professional and personal lives, making us work better, faster and easier, and it won’t be long before NEBOSH students stop contacting us looking to frame the technology situation in the health and safety sector. The answer will be too obvious for the question to be asked.

    One only has to visit the Health and Safety for Beginners forums and search “technology” to see how much enquiry there is into safety management software to reveal a level of conversation now that we wouldn’t have seen maybe five years ago.

    We wrote recently on how health and safety management software has become all but essential to achieving OHSAS 18001. The central tenet to this international standard is strong policies and procedures – a paper trail that quickly gets out of hand in mid-size to large companies, making safety management software for administering these policies and procedures almost a ‘standard in a box’.

    Action tracking is an area where software-based health and safety management systems excel, as per this thread. Health and safety compliance requires tracking corrective and improvement actions from the likes of external/internal audits, customer inspections, internal inspections, observations or investigations. Who has the resources to create and manage something like that manually?

    Safety management software can take care of almost all the cumbersome paperwork involved, in a central location (and not in a filing cabinet!). Automatic reporting, visibility of organisation-wide incidents via a user-specific dashboard, a comprehensive set of tools for documenting, reporting, investigating and, finally, providing everyone involved with key information of what actions need to be taken immediately. It’s time for paper to make like a tree and…

       

    RELATED BLOGS

    5 Ways Safety Software Can Enhance Manufacturing Companies’ Compliance and Safety

    19 September 2024 - Evotix

    Manufacturing environments are inherently risky. With the presence of heavy machinery, hazardous materials and fast-paced workflows, the risk of incidents is ever-present.

    Operational Efficiency, EHS Management Software, EHS Compliance, manufacturing
    Read Article

    What Is an EHS Audit? Understanding the Basics

    13 March 2025 - Evotix

    While it’s essential to establish health and safety practices at your workplace, the work doesn’t stop there. Health and safety professionals need to constantly review safety measures to ensure..

    Safety Audits, EHS Management Software, EHS
    Read Article

    The 5 Key Components of a Safety Audit

    14 November 2024 - Evotix

    Safety audits are essential for upholding health and safety standards across your organization. Beyond meeting legal requirements, they help proactively identify and address potential hazards that,..

    Investment in Safety, Safety Audits, Incident Management, EHS Compliance
    Read Article