How UCB Built a Flexible Safety Management Approach with EHSwise
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Choose technology that adapts to your safety strategy, not the other way around.
Real-time visibility drives better decisions and leadership engagement.
Employee adoption is the real measure of successfull EHS software implementation.
For UCB, a global biopharmaceutical leader, focused on neurology and immunology research, traditional health and safety systems were no longer supporting the way the organisation actually worked.
As its approach to health, safety and wellbeing evolved, UCB needed more than a system designed around compliance tracking and fixed workflows.
Teams required a practical and adaptable platform capable of supporting learning, simplifying processes and providing real-time reporting insights across health and safety.
“One of the main challenges we had was having data in real time. Our original way of managing our data was onerous and resource intensive as our data was sitting in different places, and we struggled at times to keep on top of things” explains Rebecca Wood, Head of HSE & Wellbeing at UCB.
For Rebecca and her team, there was a growing need to demonstrate performance more effectively and provide meaningful insights to leadership and stakeholders.
This required access to reliable, real-time information that could be easily translated into actionable insights and communicated confidently at every level of the business.
Rather than adapting internal processes to fit rigid EHS software structures, UCB wanted technology capable of reflecting its own operational philosophy, evolving alongside the business and providing real-time insights into health, safety and wellbeing performance.
Moving Beyond Traditional EHS Systems
Like many organisations with mature health and safety programmes, UCB had already begun moving beyond a purely compliance-led approach to safety management.
The organisation’s strategy increasingly incorporated principles of Safety II, human organisational performance, psychology and safety science, focusing not only on tracking incidents, but on creating opportunities for learning and continuous improvement.
This required a system that can adapt to their unique requirements, a challenge that many organisations face when implementing EHS systems.
Fixed workflows and predefined structures often make it difficult for traditional systems to support organisations with unique processes, evolving safety cultures or innovative approaches to safety management.
Instead of enabling improvement, systems can unintentionally introduce additional administration and complexity.
The organisation wanted a platform capable of adapting to its own ways of working while helping simplify the employee experience.
“We’ve moved away from just achieving compliance in UCB, and it’s about how we can use our system to share best practice and learnings in an effective way” adds Rebecca.
Focusing on What Matters Most: Critical Risks
One of the most significant areas of transformation was UCB’s approach to risk assessment management.
UCB had the ambition to reduce unnecessary complexity and administrative burden for employees and enable adoption to a simpler and more practical system that focusses on the most critical risks to their business.
Supporting this approach required highly configurable technology capable of adapting to UCB’s own methodology rather than forcing teams into predefined templates or rigid workflows.
EHSwise was configured specifically around these operational requirements, helping ensure the platform aligned with how teams worked in practice.
The result was a more streamlined and user-friendly approach that reduced unnecessary bureaucracy while supporting greater clarity and consistency across the organisation.
Designing Technology Around Employee Experience
For UCB, usability was just as important as functionality.
From the outset, significant focus was placed on designing a system that employees could access easily, understand quickly and use naturally within their day-to-day activities.
Rather than digitising existing paperwork for the sake of technology, the project focused on creating practical workflows that simplified operational tasks and reduced friction for employees.
By aligning the platform closely with operational reality, the system supported employees rather than adding another administrative layer to manage.
Importantly, the technology was designed to evolve alongside changing requirements. UCB teams can make adjustments and refinements internally as processes continue developing.
Going Live in Just Over Two Weeks
Despite the complexity and uniqueness of UCB’s requirements, implementation moved at remarkable speed.
Once UCB’s brief and operational requirements were defined, EHSwise delivered a fully configured system ready for launch in just over two weeks.
Rather than spending months adapting processes around software limitations, UCB was able to implement a platform already aligned with its own methodology and operational goals.
Rebecca explains: “Once EHSwise took our brief in full, it took just over two weeks to provide us with a system ready to launch, which was incredibly fast“.
Improving Visibility Through Real-Time Data
Alongside configurability and usability, one of the most valuable operational improvements delivered through the platform was immediate access to real-time data and visibility.
Centralised dashboards now allow health and safety teams to access operational insights instantly, helping improve internal communications and responsiveness across the organisation.
Rather than manually consolidating information from disconnected reporting processes, teams can now view live reporting data at the click of a button.
For UCB, this represented a significant improvement in how health, safety and wellbeing activities could be monitored, and managed across the business.
As Rebecca explains: “The power of a dashboard and the ability to see exactly what’s going on in your organisation is so powerful. Having that data to hand immediately when you need it rather than having to crunch data in spreadsheets is a much more effective way of working.”
Creating a Flexible Foundation for the Future
As UCB continues evolving its health, safety and wellbeing strategy, adaptability remains central to its digital approach. The organisation plans to continue expanding the platform and incorporating additional areas of safety and environmental management over time.
UCB’s approach demonstrates that successful digital transformation in health and safety is most effective when technology adapts to the organisation, not the other way around.
By combining configurability, usability and real-time visibility, the EHS team has created a safety management approach that supports learning, reduces unnecessary complexity and aligns more closely with the realities of modern operational work.
This enhanced visibility enables the EHS team to move beyond reporting activities and focus on demonstrating measurable performance, communicating progress and influencing stakeholders with confidence.
When technology adapts to your people, safety improves
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