OHS Management Software Development: All You Need to Know

Today’s evolving workplace is pushing the demand for an accurate health and safety management mechanism in place. Every organization has a moral obligation to ensure safe working conditions for its workforce, subcontractors and visitors. Having a safe workplace prevents the potential risk of health hazard exposures and accidents.

Having an ergonomically designed, risk-free workplace prevents the potential threat of health hazard exposures and accidents. Regardless of its size, keeping up with complexities, especially with both federal and state laws, becomes challenging at times.

If you’re committed to providing a safe and healthy work environment. In that case, you will need a dedicated occupational health and safety (OHS) management system. Wondering what type of system would meet your organizational needs? If so, then gear up for a detailed overview of the essentials that you may want to consider while building the solution of your choice.

Table of Contents:

• What is an OHSMS?
• Benefits of Occupational Health Management Systems
• Components of an Effective OHS management system
• Must-have Occupational Health Management Platform modules
• How an OHS Management System Promotes Long-term Sustainability?
• How to Develop an OHS Management System?
• How much Does it Cost to Develop an OHS Management System?

An occupational health and safety management system (OHSMS) is a systematic framework to manage health and safety risks. It consists of an organized set of policies, procedures, standards, records that organizations use to reduce the extent and severity of workplace injuries & accidents.

• Single Source Manages High-Quality Data
  Implementing an OHS management system can help ease organizational duties surrounding workplace health and safety. It includes case management, injury reporting, incident investigation and prevention documentation. Easy synchronization of data helps make the clinical visits faster with a comprehensive medical surveillance program.
• Helps Meet Regulatory Compliance Requirements
  Irrespective of the industry you operate in, your organization must follow specific safety rules and regulations. It is always imperative to comply with these standards and procedures. An online safety management system will ensure that the company complies with the government laws, industry groups and internal policies. This establishes safer working environments.
• Higher Productivity
  Productive employees are valuable assets of an organization. Employees who feel safe in their working environments are more effective.
• Improved Staff Morale
  Employee morale is an essential factor that determines the organization’s success. People feel satisfied when employers display genuine interest in their well-being. Developing an online WHS system offers a sense of confidence, trust and belonging between staff & employer.
• Increased Business Profits
  Workplace fatalities, injuries and illnesses cost companies a significant amount of money each year. Having the right safety management system can help prevent such expenses. Minimizing accidental injury and illness of workers also results in cost reduction. It includes training temporary replacements for these employees while they recover.

• Management Leadership and Commitment
  The management team provides the vision, sets up policy, goals & objectives. They provide resources to lead and support the implementation of OHS management programs.
• Worker Participation
  Worker participation is an essential component of organizational commitment while considering the improvement in health and safety. Involve employees throughout the design and implementation of safety procedures.
• Hazard Detection & Assessment
  Hazard identification is a vital element to assess the risk to prevent workplace injuries. Procedures must be in place to perform ongoing job hazards analysis. Provide staff with authority to notify supervisors about unsafe conditions.
• Hazard Prevention & Control
  Now, management & employees work together to take action and prevent it from happening again. Also, engineering and administrative controls can be applied to either isolate the hazard or limit the number of times workers get exposed to the potential dangers.
• Program Evaluation & Improvement
  There’s always a scope of improvement when it comes to health and safety practices. It is necessary to check the effectiveness of hazard controls periodically. The program should constantly monitor workplace hazards and evaluate existing procedures for efficiency.
• Employee Training & Empowerment
  Depending on the nature of your workplace, all employees, including senior management, should receive proper and effective safety training. Employers must ensure that workforce gets trained, become qualified and competent to perform their tasks.
• Workplace Inspections
  Worksite inspections must help you to identify hazards and prevent developing unsafe working conditions.

• Case Management
  With integrated guidelines and a unified case manager toolset, manage occupational claims and respond to regulatory inquiries. The Record Management Module facilitates the development, upload, storage and access of all checklists, forms and insurance documentation.
• Monitor Medical Data
  Track which employees are due for which testing and when the test is required. Easily collect and report employee’s data with Electronic Health Records (EHR). Combine information and track clinic visits, absences and tests.
• Compliance and Reporting
  Real-time reports help track the compliance rates of the most complicated surveillance programs. It helps identify which employees are in and out of compliance and take necessary actions to fill the gaps.
• Manage Medical Surveillance
  Integration with an advanced scheduler allows you to create the surveillance activity, set up exposure groups, and automatically notify the employee(s) being recalled as many times as required.
• Manage Employees Histories
  It works as a one-stop resource for an employee’s entire medical history. It involves hazards logged, inductions undertaken, training attended, checklists completed and more.

Managing work health and safety risk to protect employees and preserve long-term business sustainability is OHS’s primary function. The development helps reduce risk, ensure continual safety & health improvement, and regulatory compliance in the following ways:

• The evolving and new risks are identified & controlled with established workplace hazards, risk assessments and audit processes
• Reduce the occurrence of workplace accidents and costs involved in insurance premiums and regulatory fines
• Implementation of relevant, applicable, and simple programs that transform general health & safety principles into specific programs
• Formalize employee participation in worksite health and safety policy
• Promote a healthy workforce and improve staff morale
• Create public awareness of the organization’s commitment towards employee’s well-being.

Each organization has different needs and scope for specific elements in their health & safety mix. Our project team works across each phase of your system development, including;

• Perform a gap analysis of existing programs by providing recommendations based on identified risks
• Showcase gap analysis findings and recommendations to management
• Collaborate with the senior management team for workplace health and safety management software development.
• Draft comprehensive program documentation, including internal standards & procedures, in a well-organized and easy-to-understand format.
• Provide training to management and workforce personnel about OHS policies and principles. It includes hazard detection, audit processes, safety training and more.
• Set-up policy to incorporate employee involvement in the OHS risk management process.
• Facilitate new risk management modules integration with an existing corporate management system.
• Formulate regular internal and external audits as part of the WHS management plan
• Coordinate certification process with government auditing bodies

The final cost of building a custom system depends on several factors. The broad estimate for development cost consideration comprises of:

• The modules or components
• Unique organization needs – structure, levels/departments
• The platforms, tools & frameworks
• Possible integrations with third party solutions – analytics, visualization & cloud storage
• Regulatory compliance framework of the region
• Feature consideration

As a standard consulting practice, our team can help analyze your project requirements, map the potential challenges, and work with you to develop the outcomes based on your chosen key features. Our experience in custom enterprise software development of varied scope enables us to create a cost-effective model that fits in your budget.

Prioritizing health and safety in the workplace is essential for employees. It helps businesses control immediate and long health & safety hazards. The OHS management system software development allows organizations to manage risk & compliance in the workplace within stated corporate objectives and budgets.

As an experienced custom healthcare software development company, Rishabh is your reliable partner to build OHS risk management software.