Page 32 - OHS, September 2022

EHS SOFTWARE
It is foolish to continue to
expect people to perform tedious manual processes that automation can do better.
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.1
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 2026,2 the industry overall and potential uses of new entrant solutions are rapidly evolving to solve current demands.
Identifying Opportunities and Gaps
Before Implementing New Measures
Enterprise solutions, as noted with large construction, manufacturing, energy and chemical companies, have a specific use audience and require robust budgets, people and time. However, these enterprise solutions are typically clunky, slow to change or adapt and hard to educate or train employees on proper use. On the other hand, smaller companies in other sectors without large budgets and resources are left with a collection of specialty applications to pick through.
This gap in the market can provide challenges for users when looking to properly implement and leverage across existing firmwide procedures and processes. However, as workers themselves become more connected, there is a real opportunity for organizations to take a hybrid approach as the industry continues to innovate.
As the industry increases its adoption of innovative technologies such as wearables and Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, there is a real opportunity for smaller and mid-size firms to improve the overall health and safety measures of their workplace through an interconnected approach. For instance, data from wearables already used by workers to indicate health stressors can be incorporated into broader EHS risk platforms to highlight capacity concerns, location risk or other workplace risk factors. The ability for platforms to be either data sources or data aggregators expands the potential power and customization.
One only needs to look to the personal app category of health and fifitness apps to see how interoperability has expanded the reach and power of these apps. And as fifirms also increase their use of IoT devices to track a range of environmental risks, they can also enhance their EHS platforms through artifificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to predict maintenance needs which can mitigate the risk of future malfunction and potential workplace injury.
Each company’s needs are unique, and their approach to integrating EHS solutions will rely on reassessing and identifying gaps in current procedures and processes. However, once an organization understands how to combine customization, integration and access with cost efficiency, each company can then begin to drive a more digital and resilient EHS process. While the road ahead for EHS digital transformation is complex, companies can begin their journey by taking the following key steps:
Understand the current state and context. Know the size of the organization, its geographical reach, what technology is already in place and the benchmark solutions already being used by similar organizations. Consider how far down the path of digital solutions your organization has already gone.
Establish goals and objectives early. These cannot strictly be high-level goals; they must be actionable and differentiated so that the conditions of success and failure are known in advance. Think beyond “launch day” or “deliverables” to business impact over time. Consider how the platform will need to adapt over time.
Use elements of design thinking to guide the process.
Consider what users and key stakeholders need to accomplish and what functions and business intelligence they do not have now that would increase performance or enable a higher volume or rate of production without increased risk exposures. Design thinking centers on optimizing solutions for needs and not swayed by what is expedient or has a lower up-front cost versus benefits and value over a lifecycle.
Adapt, build, buy and partner. Strangely enough, some very large organizations that have developed customized internal systems for their own purposes have struggled just as much as smaller organizations that become frustrated in the search for off-the-shelf solutions. This is due in part to some sophisticated organizations mistaking their high levels of technical capability for what is a good fit to devote their precious internal resources. Whether software is built from scratch or bought ready-made, careful consideration of both the needed/desired functions and amount and type of support needed for implementation and ongoing updates and process improvement is a condition of success.
Once a partner is selected and adoption begins, companies must begin to focus on more tactical execution for use as well as measurement. To start, companies must form the right team— specifically with employees who will use the solution daily. Then, they must consider support personnel, IT experts and process specialists. It is crucial for an organization to take the time to establish a working team, approaches and communication. Once in place, organizations can shift quickly to the following steps:
Establish milestones and essential features and functions.
Use the goals and objectives established as your guide and dig
28 Occupational Health & Safety | SEPTEMBER 2022 www.ohsonline.com