By Jon Zibell, Vice President of Global Alliances & Marketing, SciSure
Most labs believe their EHS program is in good shape, until someone asks for proof. Ask a lab leader whether their safety documentation is current, and the answer is usually yes. Ask them to produce it on demand, and this might result in a scramble through shared drives, email threads, and spreadsheets that may or may not have been checked in weeks.
That gap between what a team knows and what it can document is where risk accumulates over time. You might not see it in daily operations, but rather only during an audit, inspection, or regulatory review where “probably” is not an acceptable answer. And in 2026, this gap is only getting more expensive to leave open.
The real problem is visibility (or lack thereof)
Most EHS professionals are more than well prepared, but under-connected.
In a typical research organization, scientists and researchers operate in one world, lab operations runs in another, and health and safety sits in a third. Each group has its own tools, its own workflows, its own version of the truth. There might be a spreadsheet for chemical inventory, an LMS for training, a separate app for inspections, and a manual process for procurement review. Each one works to a point. The problem is that none of them talk to each other.
That fragmentation is a structural source of compounding risk over simply an inconvenience.
- When a researcher introduces a new material, does EHS know in real time?
- When a chemical moves between labs, does the inventory reflect it?
- When procurement places an order, does anyone check whether it pushes the facility over its maximum allowable quantities (MAQ) limits?
In most labs, the answer to all three questions is: not immediately, and sometimes not at all.
This is where risk builds slowly, in the gaps between systems, teams, the moment something changes, and the moment the right person finds out about it.
Why 2025 and 2026 raised the stakes
Lab safety compliance has never been static, but the last two years have sharpened the focus in ways that matter for how EHS teams operate. In 2025 and 2026, the pressure on organizations has not come from entirely new categories of lab safety risk, but from the expectation that core controls can be clearly demonstrated in practice.
In the US, OSHA’s Hazard Communication Standard requires employers to maintain hazard communication programs, keep safety data sheets readily accessible during each work shift, and provide employees with information and training on chemical hazards and protective measures. OSHA’s broader guidance on chemical hazards and toxic substances reinforces the same point: chemical safety depends on information being available and understandable to workers, supported by effective exposure controls.
In 2026, that emphasis remains concrete, with OSHA’s updated Hazard Communication Standard carrying specific compliance deadlines for substances. In the UK, HSE’s COSHH framework similarly requires employers to assess risks from hazardous substances and to plan, manage, and monitor the controls used to protect workers.
Together, those expectations raise the bar from having a policy on paper to being able to show, with confidence, that safety information and exposure controls are current, accessible, and working in day-to-day operations.
What strong safety culture looks like & why it matters
When we talk about EHS programs in operational terms, we have to realize that this isn’t ultimately about audits, but rather about people.
Researchers and scientists don’t want to spend their time on health and safety administration. They want to go home to their families at night, healthy and unharmed. They don’t want to be exposed to materials that will cause problems down the road. But they also don’t want to be buried in administrative burden: clunky systems, training that has nothing to do with the work they’re doing, and processes that feel like box-checking rather than genuine protection.
When an organization gets safety right, people notice. They feel respected. They trust that the institution has thought carefully about their wellbeing, not just its compliance posture. Research consistently shows that strong safety cultures improve engagement, reduce turnover, and support better organizational outcomes. When people walk into a lab and feel like safety is an afterthought, the opposite happens. It’s demoralizing, it erodes trust, and people do what they must do to get back to their work as quickly as possible, which is exactly when gaps get missed.
The goal of a strong EHS program is a culture where safety practices are followed because people understand why they matter, and where the systems supporting those practices don’t get in the way.
The cost of fragmented systems goes deeper than a failed audit
I don’t think most EHS and Lab Operations teams underestimate the value of good systems. I think they underestimate the cost of not having them, because that cost is rarely visible until something goes wrong.
It shows up as the hours spent the weeks before an audit reconstructing records that should have already existed. Or as the researcher who can’t start a new protocol because nobody can quickly confirm whether their training is current for the materials involved. It shows up as the near-miss that never gets connected to three prior incidents that would have revealed a pattern, because each one was logged in a different place by a different person.
These issues compound not because anyone was negligent, but because the system that tracks orders doesn’t talk to the system that tracks inventory. And it shows up as the daily frustration of experts who spend too much of their time on administrative work rather than on the decisions that directly affect whether people stay safe.
A fragmented system pulls expert attention away from the work that matters most: identifying where risk actually lives, acting on it before it compounds, and building the kind of safety culture that protects your people and your organization over the long term.
In fact, some of the specific gaps that tend to surface in labs relying on manual processes are exactly the kind that don’t announce themselves until someone is already looking for them. For example, inventory accuracy that drifts after go-live or hazard information that never makes it to the door,
What the right infrastructure actually changes
We can’t eliminate risks in a research environment. Anyone who tells you otherwise is oversimplifying. What we can do is reduce the likelihood and severity of harm through deliberate processes, connected systems, and the kind of visibility that lets experts act before problems compound.
A connected safety and risk management system does something that manual processes structurally cannot: it gives the right people the right information at the right time, across all the functions that shape safety outcomes, including research, lab operations, EHS, and procurement. For example:
- When a new material enters the lab, the EHS team is in the loop.
- When a training record lapses, it surfaces before it becomes an audit finding.
- When inventory moves, the record moves with it.
- When a procurement decision risks pushing a facility out of compliance, that’s visible before the order is placed, not after the shipment arrives.
The best safety professionals I know already understand where the risk lives. What they need is a system that makes that risk visible, trackable, and actionable, so they can spend their time on the decisions that matter rather than on the administrative work of keeping fragmented systems aligned.
If you’re evaluating where to start, our review of top-rated EHS software platforms for enterprise labs covers how the major platforms compare on chemical inventory, inspection workflows, and training visibility. And if your risk picture includes procurement, which in most labs it should, it’s worth understanding how procurement and the lab connect when the right systems are in place.
A practical starting point
The labs that improve fastest identify the squeaky wheel, the highest-probability and highest-consequence gap in their current program, and they start there. For some organizations, that’s chemical inventory; for others, it’s training alignment. For others still, it’s the procurement-to-compliance connection.
The goal is to take the first step in the right direction, build momentum, and expand from there. Crawl, walk, jog, run. Every organization I’ve seen make meaningful progress on safety culture started by solving one real problem well, then built from that foundation.
If someone asked you right now to prove that a specific safety control was followed on a specific day, how long would it take you to answer, and how confident would you be in what you found?
If the answer involves a search through shared drives or a call to a colleague who might remember, that’s a reflection of what your systems are, and aren’t, built to do.
The risks accumulating in most labs aren’t hypothetical. They’re the product of capable, diligent people working with tools that weren’t built for the complexity they’re managing. The difference between catching those risks early and discovering them during an inspection is visibility, and the organizational commitment to build systems that make safety culture real, not just documented.
At the end of the day, this is about whether the people in your labs go home healthy. That’s worth thinking about before the next inspection, not during it.
About the Author: Jon Zibell
Jon Zibell is Vice President of Global Alliances & Marketing at SciSure, where he leads strategic partnerships with organizations like The Engine (MIT), My Green Lab, and Safety Partners to help life science and research institutions modernize lab operations and compliance. He writes about the operational, safety, and technology challenges facing modern scientific organizations. Jon holds a B.S. in Marketing & Corporate Communications from Bentley University.
References
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (2024). Hazard Communication Standard. Available at: https://www.osha.gov/hazcom
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (2026). Chemical Hazards and Toxic Substances. Available at: https://www.osha.gov/chemical-hazards
Health and Safety Executive (2026). Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH). Available at: https://www.hse.gov.uk/coshh/
