Software platforms supporting EHS requirements should be considered as a basic need of industrial operations at this point. Corporate leaders, business demands and industrial expansions have embraced the digitization based pivot. However, even when we are thinking about automation via such platforms for some of the ‘process critical’ bottlenecks, we still are not thinking, in essence, objectively.

The objective in question is sometimes vitally limited to problem solving.

Other actors such as assured safety, worker assistance, timely compliance and more importantly EHS excellence via an integrated digital ecosystem is what should actually be on our minds.

We can develop and achieve this narrative by combining two of the greatest strengths that are available to the organization for EHS – human capital and digital platforms.

Leveraging these two requires a thinking that goes beyond the ordinary ‘fix-the-issue-and-move-on’ approach. It requires the thinking of EHS champions who are invested in ‘problem solving’ under efficient time cycles armed with rich data insights that look to shape decisions of the future.

Roadmap for carving integrated digital EHS ecosystem

Instead of letting the weight of industrial importance flow from one to another, EHS champions think of the 3 domains represented above as equals. Rather than learning from independent domains, integrated co-dependent and interdependent systems that jump and cross domains, ought to dictate key decisions.

EHS champions aren’t only about measuring performance by looking at conventional parameters. For example, accident and incident management can provide key insights when effectively linked with occupational health for the organization. Similarly, management of change and knowledge based lessons, when linked together to complement change via documented knowledge-support efforts, can make upgradations simpler and welcoming for the workforce. An insight from this case can be better adoption, less downtime and maybe even lesser chance of injuries to workers while operating a ‘changed’ or new system.

How do EHS champions think?

EHS champions leverage system-based thinking and believe in converting insights into actionable intelligence. Isolated reporting and corrective measures aren’t sustainable in the longer run. A virtue EHS champions recognize and realize on the facility floor.

Gaining traction and trust via workforce mandate is important to EHS champions. Technology and its implementation alone cannot achieve the kind of feats modern day organizations wish to materialize. Workforce participation and their “two cents wisdom” becomes the ‘hearts’ and ‘minds’ of digital platforms.

Ecosystems rely on individuals, their relations and ultimately on collection of such aggregated smaller networks to function. Integrated digital EHS ecosystem would depend on similar laws and rules where employee participation and data veracity through networked systems will fast become the basis of operations’ bottom line.

Democratic success for EHS

Another key aspect demonstrated by EHS champions is that they become crucial to other people’s success. Learning and implementing is bettered by them through learning, training others and allowing parallel implementation which saves times and increases efficiency.

This is taken straight from the core tenets of technology and integrated digital ecosystems where the speed of propagation is proportional to the number of actionable agents. This is catalyzed via EHS champions due to their knowledge and keenness to involve others.

It is necessary for organizations nowadays to identify and promote such individuals whose participation can increase the chances of their successful digital transformation.

For most businesses, EHS champions from within the organization with their shop floor insights and knowledge can help alleviate the burden of a critical exercise.

Such human capital can swing the result in favour of the organizations quickly and emphatically by creating the ‘awareness’ that integrated digital EHS ecosystems deserve. All this, not only for compliance to regulatory purposes on the surface but also for generating deeper risk management understanding and safety assured operations in the longer run.