HSE Management: How Not to Approach it

Health and Safety is a profession that has been around for many years. The importance of the HSE Manager and HSE Management overall is continually increasing. However, this means it is harder to attract the right people for the position, so you want to keep people within the business healthy and at full efficiency as long as possible. Furthermore, organizations want to create a culture where people are happy and they feel safe, whether this is mentally or physically. In order to do this, having a state-of-the-art HSE approach is vital.

We still see the vast majority of companies juggling Word and Excel documents around as their HSE Management System. Or when they really move it up a notch, the company invests in consultants to get SharePoint off the ground. With these processes, there is not even a hint of structure, let alone data to leverage. Yes, it may get you through some audits, but it doesn’t do anything for the organization. The ramifications of this approach are sometimes very clear and out in the open, but more often than not, they are subtle and less clear. Furthermore, the dependence on SharePoint consultants makes the company less dynamic and dependent on the skill of the consultant on how he/she implements the requirements every time.

1. Loss of Efficiency

Obviously, all these Excel and Word documents cause a lot of inefficiencies in the processes. People are keying the same data numerous times, are unable to find the documents or information when they need to, and don’t fill in the forms because it takes ages and nothing is done with the data anyway. All these inefficiencies not only cost money but also kill the motivation of the employees. When people need to do things that feel meaningless, they simply tune out.

2. Attrition of HSE Managers

This is a topic that many companies avoid talking about, and many HSE managers resign when they don’t have the right tools and technologies to do their job properly. When there aren’t budgets to invest and they need to work with outdated technologies such as Word and Excel, chances are the HSE manager will simply leave after a year or so of working inefficiently.

3. Non-Compliance

Working with this unstructured approach and lots of Word and Excel documents holds a true risk to compliance. The company needs to show that it is in control of its processes. The more processes are automated, the more you can be in control of them. All these loosely organized documents, called an HSE Management System, need to be manually managed. When compliance needs to be proven for whatever reason, this can be a big challenge.

4. Business Continuity

Having a collection of Word and Excel documents that are mainly managed by one person is a big threat to the continuity of the company. When this person leaves, there is the risk that nobody knows what is going on and how to keep the ball rolling. Most of the time, the majority of the documents are managed by the HSE manager and when he or she leaves, lots of knowledge of these critical processes and documents walks out the door with them. Having a structured approach to HSE management prevents this from happening because everybody knows how to operate these processes, not just one person.

Conclusion

Approaching HSE Management with a collection of Word and Excel documents can harm the organization in many ways. Going for a more structured platform approach gives you not only structure and guidance but also access to innovation to build on the knowledge gathered by listening to HSE managers. These platforms allow you to wipe out lots of inefficiencies within a couple of weeks. Also, these innovative solutions make it easier for your HSE team to manage everything around HSE and reduce lots of frustration and stress for them.