5 Key Questions in the Minds of Health & Safety Leaders: Insights from a Verdantix Survey

Safety leaders have a responsibility of making their organization a safe place to work. In addition, they also have a responsibility to align their safety strategy with the company’s ESG goals. How can safety leaders achieve this?

What safety leaders must do to have a well-rounded health, safety and environment management strategy that’ll reduce operational risk? What are safety leaders saying about their plans for 2023?

In this blog, we focus on a few insights gathered from a survey conducted by Verdantix, for which they interviewed and captured inputs from 302 EHS leaders.

Q1) What is the impact of a well-managed health and safety function on the rest of the organization?

In some cases, the health & safety team operates as a business function that is slightly disconnected from the rest of the organization. However, it is critical that leaders communicate the importance of how a well-managed, “connected” safety department will have an impact on the entire organization.

Your organization’s EHS function will play a direct role in the following areas:

• Help meet ESG goals
• Proactively minimize operational risk
• Enhance employee engagement and well-being
• Improve quality processes, since safety and quality go hand-in-hand
• Ensure safety across the supply chain and as well as contractor processes

Q2) How digital transformation of health and safety processes help meet your company’s risk management goals?

Recently, as part of our Applied AI series, we wrote a blog on how AI and intelligent automation are simplifying the incident management process. In this post, we wrote about how CQ.AI was helping minimize redundant work and repetitive tasks, especially in the area of safety investigations once an incident has been reported. There is no doubt: digital tools with AI capabilities are certainly accelerating the process of addressing safety risks - without wasting time!

But there’s more to this. Automation and digital transformation of all environment, health and safety processes/workflows will enable the following:

• Seamless integration of data, operational risk, and assets data is critical to overall workplace safety
• Having a modern solution wherein any employee can report safety observations, incidents or near-misses (from a mobile device) will go a long way in enhancing safety
• Using predictive analytics and AI-based modeling will certainly improve risk management capabilities
• Access to real-time data from the shop floor and across locations will make life easier for H&S leaders

Q3) How do you determine your company’s EHS budget for the year?

From a safety perspective, it is clear that a combination of reactive, preventive, and proactive processes is a “must”. Once an incident is reported - reacting with agility to minimize the losses and helping people involved in the incident is a given. But that’s certainly not enough. Processes must be put in place to investigate the incident/accident and plan corrective actions (CAs) so a similar mishap does not reoccur. This requires a well-designed RCA and CAPA process.

Your budget must take into account that a truly complete H&S department will work only with the right approach to digital transformation and automation. It’ll also certainly help meet OSHA and other compliance requirements and improve employee engagement & well-being, in addition to making the lives of safety leaders easier by aligning safety goals with ESG requirements.

Q4) How will enterprises use EHS Software? What processes will it help improve?

The value of investing in a modern, next-generation health, safety and environment management solution is very clear. The following processes can be streamlined with the right software:  

• Safety document management
• Incident handling
• Safety training and continuous learning
• Integrated risk management
• Health & safety compliance
• Environmental compliance

The data below from the Verdantix survey reiterates the value of investing in a modern, next-generation software.

Q5) How will the advent of AI and ML technologies shape the roadmap for automation and digital transformation?  

We’re already seeing how AI capabilities (with frameworks like CQ.AI) are streamlining the following processes:

• Speeding up the process of conducting safety investigations after an incident, using “similarity identification” to minimize redundant tasks
• Setting up “digital twins” to track real-time data from IoT devices, to enhance shop floor safety
• Using RPA and AI assistants to reduce repetitive tasks/prompt actions from employees
• Predictive analytics - to proactively spot risks and plan mitigation strategies
• AI-enabled compliance processes
• Using AI to identify training/skill gaps

Over the years, we’re expecting to see greater adoption of fleet safety telematics, AR/VR-enabled training, wearable vital sign monitors, and sensors for better environmental compliance.

To know more about how CQ’s Health & Safety Solution can enhance safety performance of your enterprise, visit: https://www.compliancequest.com/lp/ehs/