Safety Hub App Overview

Safety Hub

1. What it is

Safety Hub is the workplace safety app. It records incidents and runs their investigations, tracks corrective actions in a register shared with Inspections, collects safety observations, schedules toolbox talks, tracks required certifications, issues permits to work, pre-qualifies contractors, dispatches emergency alerts with a muster roll-call, and produces OSHA (US) and WCB (Canada) determinations. A public portal at /safety lets anyone report a hazard without logging in.

• Enablement: Safety Hub requires a licence. An admin enables it per business from Admin → Apps → All Apps; it is never turned on automatically.
• What it is not: Safety Hub is not Lone Worker (timed check-ins and SOS for people working alone — Lone Worker can open a Safety Hub incident, but the alert engines are separate). It is not Inspections (checklists and field audits — the two apps share one corrective-action register). It is not Compliance Hub — the risk register and legal register live there, and Compliance Hub reads Safety Hub records as evidence. It is not the Broadcasts app — emergency alerts are composed and sent inside Safety Hub.

2. Standing it up

1. Enable the app at Admin → Apps → All Apps. Grant access to the people who should see it through Access Management; anyone the app is published to can report incidents and observations.
2. Create locations at Admin → Locations. Incidents, observations, permits and talks are tied to a location. A manager sees safety records only at the locations they manage, so a record with no location is invisible to plain managers.
3. Choose modules at Safety Hub → Admin → Settings → Modules. Eight toggles: Incidents, Observations, Toolbox Talks, Certifications, Emergency Alerts, Contractor Pre-qualification, Permits to Work, and OSHA Compliance (US) under Compliance. All are on by default. WCB Compliance (Canada) is off by default. Each module’s sidebar entries appear only while its toggle is on.
4. Decide who sees every site and who may send alerts under Settings → Who Can Do What. Who can see safety records at every site? defaults to Safety Hub app admins. Who can send a Safety Hub emergency alert? defaults to managers and admins. Pick a group for either to hand the capability to an EHS team without making them business admins. The alert Bookings sends from its evacuation dashboard to everyone checked in to a building is a separate setting, in Bookings → Settings.
5. Define certification requirements at Safety Hub → Admin → Certification Requirements. A requirement alone shows nothing: compliance is computed against certifications employees actually hold, which come from certified skills in Skills & Credentials or training records from Training Connect. Set up both sides or every roster stays empty.
6. Assess contractors before their first permit. With Require a current pre-qualification before issuing a contractor permit on (the default), a permit naming a contractor cannot be issued until that contractor has an approved or conditional assessment under Team → Contractors. Permits for your own employees are unaffected.
7. Open the public portal, if you want one. The /safety portal needs two things: Safety Hub enabled, and the Safety Hub portal switched on in the Portals app. Safety Hub’s own Settings page shows a Public Hazard Portal card with Open portal settings and a Close the public portal button — it can close the portal but never open it. Fill in Public Emergency Contacts and the Emergency number (shown as 911 when blank), and mark the knowledge-base articles that should be public.
8. Leave autonomous operations off until you are ready. Enable Autonomous Safety Operations is off by default. Turning it on does nothing by itself: the AI Console (linked from the Settings page) also needs a trust level, and on probation every proposed action waits for your approval.
9. Confirm it worked. A manager landing on Safety Hub sees the dashboard tiles (days without injury, incidents this month, incidents reported or under investigation and those awaiting close, permit tiles, expiring certifications) and, once set, the emergency number and contacts. An employee is taken straight to Submitted by Me. On mobile, employees see their own submissions, permits and alerts, My Certifications and My Corrective Actions; the phone’s injury report takes the people involved and witnesses, like the desktop form.

3. How it fits together

Incident vs observation vs near miss — An incident is a formal event record with one of eight types: Injury, Near miss, Property damage, Environmental, Security, Vehicle accident, Equipment failure, or Other. It carries a severity (Low, Medium, High, Critical), an investigation, OSHA/WCB determinations and corrective actions. An observation is a lightweight sighting — Positive, At-risk or Near miss — with an optional follow-up and no investigation. A follow-up ticked when it is submitted asks the people told about observations at once; a safety manager at its site moves it to Under review, Resolved or Closed from the observation page. “Near miss” therefore exists on both sides, and the public portal files a Near Miss as an observation, not an incident. Other is the neutral landing type for reports that fit nothing else; reclassify it once reviewed.

Investigation vs corrective action — High or Critical incidents, and every Injury, require an investigation. The investigator records findings and completes it; completion is one-way. Corrective actions are separate rows in the Corrective Actions register, shared with Inspections (Leader Rounds issues stay in Leader Rounds), each with a type, priority, due date and assignee. An incident cannot close while its investigation is open. When Require Effectiveness Verification Before Closing Over Completed Actions (ISO 45001) is on, it also cannot close while a completed action is awaiting the Verify step — which must be done by a manager who is neither the assignee nor the person who marked the action completed.

Requirement vs held certification — A certification requirement says who must hold what, scoped by role, location, department or job title, with a validity period and reminder lead. A held certification is the employee’s certified skill or training record. Compliance is the match between the two; the Training Gaps view separates “expired” from “never certified”.

Alert vs muster check-in — An emergency alert is the message you dispatch over In-app, Email, Push, SMS and Voice. Its recipient response is either Require acknowledgement (recipients confirm they saw it) or Require safety check-in — the muster, where each recipient answers “I’m safe” or “I need help” and the roster shows who has not answered. “I need help” pages responders: the alert’s author plus the configured notification group; if none of them can be reached, the Safety Hub app admins, else the business administrators — never the person asking. When nobody can be paged, the person is told to call their manager or emergency services.

Permit stored status vs what the board shows — A permit’s status is Draft, Requested, Approved (shown as Issued), Suspended, Closed, Cancelled or Expired. Active and Past end time are not statuses: an issued permit is Active inside its work window and Past end time once the window closes. Nothing flips a permit to Expired until an hourly check finds it 24 hours past its end without a close-out — and an expired permit still counts under Past end time until it is closed out, for 30 days after its end (older ones stay under All, where they can still be closed). The same check cancels a request whose work window ended before anyone issued it, and tells the requester.

Pre-qualification current vs lapsed — An assessment decided Approved or Conditional is current until its Valid until date. Past that date it shows a Lapsed badge and no longer satisfies the permit gate; a daily check then moves it to Expired. Conditional counts as current, with the conditions recorded on the assessment.

“Safety officer” is not a role — Where Safety Hub adds “safety administrators” to a notice, it picks them in one of three ways. High/Critical incident alerts, at-risk and near-miss observation alerts and overdue corrective-action escalations add the site’s safety lead (the Safety Lead contact named on the location, if they are a manager or a Safety Hub app admin); when the site names none, or the record has no site, they add up to 5 business admin accounts instead. Expired-certification notices (beside the person’s manager), permit approval requests (beside the site’s managers) and contractor pre-qualification reminders with no reviewer add up to 5 business admin accounts. When the AI agent escalates a High/Critical incident on its own, it notifies every active business admin. To name a real EHS team, set Route incident and hazard alerts to this group under Settings → Notifications.

My, Team and Admin zones — Everyone gets the My zone: Report Incident, Submit Observation, Submitted by Me, My Certifications, My Alerts, My Toolbox Talks, My Corrective Actions, My Permits and Knowledge Base. Managers add the Team zone: Emergency Alerts, Incidents, Corrective Actions, Observations, Campaigns, Toolbox Talks, Topic Library, Certifications, Permits to Work, Contractors, OSHA (US), WCB (Canada) and Analytics. Admins and Safety Hub app admins add Alert Templates, Certification Requirements and Settings. Within the Team zone a plain manager is site-scoped; admins, app admins and anyone granted Who can see safety records at every site? see everything.

Knowledge base and the portal — An article ticked Visible on public Safety Portal is on the portal only once it is published and not restricted to named readers; the list and the article show a Public badge when it is, and the list’s On the public portal filter shows just those. Archive takes an article down for everyone — employees, the portal and Ask AI — while it is rewritten, and Restore puts it back where it was — live, in review, or a draft until its text is extracted. On the portal’s report form a visitor can say When did it happen?; it is read in the business’s time zone and defaults to now.

Worked example: a hot-work permit for a contractor. A supervisor opens My Permits, clicks Create Draft Permit, picks Hot work, describes the work, sets the site, the Work starts / Work ends window (14 days at most) and the Contractor (if external), and ticks the hazards. They click Request approval; the permit becomes Requested and authorisers get an in-app notification. Another manager for that site opens it and confirms all six precautions — from Combustibles removed or shielded within 11 m (35 ft) to Fire watch during work and 60 minutes after — then clicks Confirm precautions and issue permit. If the contractor has no current pre-qualification and the gate is on, that click is refused with the contractor’s name. Once issued, the board shows it as Active during the window. At the end of the shift either party clicks Close out, ticks Work complete or stopped; area inspected and left safe, adds close-out notes and clicks Close permit. The record then reads “Area left safe”.

Worked example: a contractor assessment. A reviewer answers the 15-question questionnaire for a roofing contractor, answering Yes to everything except Workers’ compensation / employer’s liability cover in force. The score is 91% — normally a Low suggestion — but the suggested tier is capped at High, because a No on any 3-point Performance or Insurance question always caps it. The reviewer records the decision as Conditional, keeps High risk, sets the conditions and a Valid until date defaulting to the Default Pre-qualification Validity (months) setting (12 out of the box).

4. Running it

Investigating an incident

1. Go to Safety Hub → Team → Incidents. Filter by status, severity, type or location.
2. Open the incident. If Auto-assign Investigators is on, an investigator was assigned at report time — the location’s manager, else a business admin; otherwise it stays unassigned — with a deadline of Investigation Deadline (days) after the event. Assign or change the investigator here if needed.
3. The investigator records findings and completes the investigation. Anyone can ask Ask AI “which corrective actions do I owe?” for their own open actions, soonest due first. Add corrective actions; they appear in the shared register with due dates and assignees. An overdue investigation with nobody assigned, or whose investigator no longer manages its site or has left, goes to the site’s safety lead to reassign; when an assignee or investigator leaves, the safety lead is told what they still held. Overdue corrective-action escalations open the action itself.
4. Determine OSHA recordability (or WCB reportability) from the incident. A fatality is always recordable; otherwise an injury with days away, restricted work, medical treatment beyond first aid, loss of consciousness or a significant injury is. A case number is issued and the entry appears on the 300 Log, where the case number opens its Form 301. A case’s date — and so the year it is logged in — is read in its site’s time zone, else the business’s. A site-restricted manager’s OSHA and WCB dashboards, 300A and annual summary count only their sites, the same cases as their log. OSHA keeps one 300 Log and one 300A per establishment: pick the site under Establishment on the dashboard, the log or the 300A (and its PDF), which then names the establishment it covers.
5. Close the incident. Closure is blocked while the investigation is open or, with the ISO 45001 policy on, while an action awaits verification. Use Print report or the Evidence pack when an auditor asks.

Running a toolbox talk

1. Go to Team → Toolbox Talks and schedule a talk: title, a topic from the Topic Library, location, facilitator, time, duration (prefilled from Default Talk Duration) and expected attendees. Attendees are invited, and reminded on the morning of the talk, when Send Toolbox Talk Invitations, Reminders and Missed-Attendance Notices is on.
2. The facilitator starts the talk and records attendance. With Require Attendance Signatures on, an unsigned roster is refused. Attendees on the roster record their own attendance — on the talk page on a computer or on the phone — once the facilitator has started the talk. Expected attendance counts the roster’s people who are still with the organisation (plus anyone who attended); the talk page says how many on the roster have left.
3. Complete the talk with post-meeting notes, and print the attendance sheet if you keep paper records. The next morning, absentees’ managers and the facilitator are told who was missing — the same switch covers this notice, so turning it off also stops it.

Issuing a permit to work

1. Go to Team → Permits to Work. The board counts permits awaiting approval, active now and past end time; the default filter shows open permits — draft, requested, issued and suspended.
2. Open a Requested permit, confirm every precaution for its type, add Authoriser’s notes and click Confirm precautions and issue permit. Precautions can only be ticked by managers.
3. Use Suspend (with a reason — work must stop; the requester is told) and Resume while the work is paused — Resume is refused once the permit’s end time has passed, or while a contractor’s pre-qualification is not current (when Settings requires one). The requester, the authoriser or a Safety Hub manager at the permit’s site can close it, while it is Issued, Suspended or Expired (an expired permit still owes its close-out); a permit left open past its end time is nudged, then expired 24 hours later. Cancelling a permit notifies the requester, the authoriser and the crew.

Assessing a contractor

1. Go to Team → Contractors and click to open an assessment for the vendor: scope of work, trades on site, EMR, TRIR, fatalities and citations in the last 3 years, insurance expiry.
2. Answer the questionnaire — Yes, No or N/A with evidence notes per question — and attach documents (insurance certificates already on the vendor are listed alongside). Click Submit for decision — the site’s safety lead (else the business administrators) is told it is waiting.
3. Record the decision: Approved, Conditional (with conditions) or Rejected, the risk tier, and Valid until. Once decided, its evidence documents can no longer be removed. The register counts current, open, expiring-within-30-days and lapsed or expired contractors (one per contractor, by its latest decision), and the reviewer is warned 30 days before expiry.
4. When a contractor’s pre-qualification lapses or is rejected while its permits are issued or suspended, nothing suspends them: their authorisers are told, and each permit (desktop and phone) shows a banner to decide whether work continues.

Dispatching an alert and reading the muster

1. Go to Team → Emergency Alerts and compose: title, body, an SMS version (a voice call reads the title and message), audience, channels, the recipient response and a chase-up deadline. Saving always creates a draft; start from an Alert Template for recurring scenarios.
2. Send it. Only the people named by Who can send a Safety Hub emergency alert? can press Send; an approval workflow never holds an emergency alert — it sends at once, and if a workflow covers alerts its reviewers are told afterwards. You can still submit a draft for review before you send it. With Translate emergency alerts into recipients’ languages (AI) on, each non-English recipient reads the alert in their language. An alert never waits for its translation: a text or mobile-app push that goes out before it is ready is in the original language, and is sent again in the recipient’s language when the translation is ready within 5 minutes of Send (the second text is billed). A call is not repeated; an email is written in the recipient’s language when it is sent.
3. Watch the roster: safe, needs help, unresponded and not reached (no channel carried the alert to them), with per-channel delivery diagnostics. A “needs help” pages responders with an Inbox action item. On a safety check-in, the sender or an alert admin can press Remind who hasn’t answered to re-send it to everyone with no check-in — in the app, by push and by text where the alert used them, never by phone call — at most once every 15 minutes; each reminder is listed under Activity. Unacknowledged recipients of an acknowledgement alert are chased every 6 hours over in-app, email and push until the chase-up deadline.
4. A sent alert cannot be edited: to correct it, send a new alert, and stand the first down only once the emergency is over. If a dispatch reaches nobody 10 minutes after Send, the alert reads Stalled — not sent and its page offers Retry sending to whoever may send alerts. Recipients read the alert in their own language on the alert page, in My Alerts and in the mobile app once the translation is ready; a Need help answer can carry a note from the phone too. The tenant’s emergency number and contacts show on every alert’s recipient page and on the Safety Hub home pages.
5. Cancelling a sent alert sends everyone it reached a stand-down notice in the app (and a push to the mobile app), and texts the all-clear to anyone it reached by text or phone call but not by push; no call or email is sent. Open incident from the alert pre-fills an incident with the alert’s details.

Monitoring certifications

1. Go to Team → Certifications for the roster, then Expiring, Expired, By Employee, By Requirement and Training Gaps.
2. Holders and their managers are reminded at the requirement’s own Renewal Reminder — left blank, the Safety Hub Expiry Reminder (days before) setting (default 30) — then 7 and 1 days before expiry; the Expiring list, its badges, the home tile, the phone and Ask AI use the same lead time. When a certificate lapses, the holder is told, and the manager and safety administrators are told weekly for 30 days.
3. Employees see their own under My Certifications, with a Practice Hub link for re-certification practice, and a card listing what is asked of them that is not on their record (with its training course, where one is linked).

5. Settings

All settings live at Safety Hub → Admin → Settings, grouped by card. Changes apply immediately. Reset clears only Safety Hub’s own keys back to these defaults.

Setting	Card	Default	What it changes
Enable Safety Hub AI Agent	top of page	On	Whether Ask AI answers Safety Hub questions and runs its tools
Enable Autonomous Safety Operations	top of page	Off	Lets the hourly detector nudge owners of stalled investigations and escalate unassigned High/Critical incidents; also needs a trust level in the AI Console
Enable AI authoring assists (alert copilot and describe-to-fill)	top of page	On	The alert composer copilot and describe-to-fill on the observation, requirement and topic forms
Enable Incidents Module	Modules	On	Incident reporting, investigations, the corrective-action register, OSHA and WCB
Enable Observations Module	Modules	On	Observations and campaigns
Enable Toolbox Talks Module	Modules	On	Talks and the Topic Library
Enable Certifications Module	Modules	On	Requirements, rosters and expiry reminders
Enable Emergency Alerts Module	Modules	On	Alerts, templates, muster and the alert API
Enable Contractor Pre-qualification Module	Modules	On	The Contractors register and expiry warnings
Enable Permits to Work Module	Modules	On	The permit board, My Permits, mobile permits and the hourly permit check
Require a current pre-qualification before issuing a contractor permit	Modules	On	Refuses to issue a contractor permit without a current assessment
Default pre-qualification validity (months)	Modules	12	Prefills Valid until on a decision
Emergency number	Public Emergency Contacts	blank (shows 911)	The number on the portal’s emergency page, and the one Ask AI’s emergency guidance tells people to dial
Emergency contacts	Public Emergency Contacts	none	Name, role and phone shown on the portal
Who can see safety records at every site?	Who Can Do What	Safety Hub app admins	Cross-site visibility of incidents, corrective actions, certification rosters and observations
Who can send a Safety Hub emergency alert?	Who Can Do What	Managers and admins	Who may press Send (web, API and Ask AI)
Default channels	Emergency Alert Defaults	In-app, Email, Push	Pre-selected channels in the composer
Default recipient response	Emergency Alert Defaults	Require acknowledgement	Pre-selected response mode in the composer
Translate emergency alerts into recipients’ languages (AI)	Emergency Alert Defaults	On	Per-recipient AI translation; a text or mobile-app push that went out before it was ready is sent again in the recipient’s language within 5 minutes of Send
Enable OSHA Compliance (US)	Compliance	On	OSHA dashboard, 300 Log, Form 301, Form 300A
Enable WCB Compliance (Canada)	Compliance	Off	WCB dashboard, incident log, employer’s report, annual summary
Default WCB Province	Compliance	blank	Province used when an incident’s location has none
Auto-determine WCB Reportability	Compliance	On	Runs the WCB determination when an injury is created or updated (only with WCB on)
Require Photos for Injury Incidents	Incident Settings	On	Refuses an Injury report without a photo on desktop and mobile — never on the public portal
Auto-assign Investigators	Incident Settings	On	Assigns an investigator when a qualifying incident is reported
Investigation Deadline (days)	Incident Settings	7	Days after the event before an investigation is overdue
Require Re-authentication Before Printing or Exporting Incident Reports	Incident Settings	Off	Step-up identity check before exports, prints and OSHA/WCB filings
Require Effectiveness Verification Before Closing Over Completed Actions (ISO 45001)	Corrective & Preventive Actions (CAPA)	Off	Blocks closing an incident while a completed action awaits verification
Escalate Overdue Actions To	Corrective & Preventive Actions (CAPA)	No escalation	Daily overdue notice to the site safety lead (else business administrators) or the assignee’s manager — by email, and in the app for anyone with no email
Allow Anonymous Observations	Observation Settings	Off	Shows the anonymous option on observation forms
Observation Categories	Observation Settings	PPE, Housekeeping, Behavior, Equipment, Ergonomics, Chemical, Other	Category choices on observation forms
Default Talk Duration (minutes)	Toolbox Talk Settings	15	Prefilled duration on a new talk
Require Attendance Signatures	Toolbox Talk Settings	On	Refuses an unsigned attendance roster
Expiry Reminder (days before)	Certification Settings	30	Lead time for expiry reminders and the “expiring” window
Route incident and hazard alerts to this group	Notifications	none (site managers, then business administrators)	An extra group for incident and observation alerts and help-request paging
Enable Email Notifications	Notifications	On	The email leg of every Safety Hub notification
Alert Site Managers and Administrators on New Incidents	Notifications	On	The routine alert for a new incident. High and Critical incidents run the escalation cascade whatever this says
Add the Site Safety Lead (or Business Administrators) to High-Severity Incident Alerts	Notifications	On	Adds the site’s safety lead on High/Critical, else up to 5 admin accounts
Alert on At-Risk, Near-Miss and Portal Suggestions	Notifications	On	Alerts for at-risk and near-miss observations and portal suggestions
Send Toolbox Talk Invitations, Reminders and Missed-Attendance Notices	Notifications	On	Invitations, reschedule notices, day-of reminders, and the next-day notice to the facilitator and absentees’ managers naming who missed a talk
Send Certification Expiry Reminders	Notifications	On	Milestone and expired notices
Send Weekly Safety Summary	Notifications	On (off for businesses that had Safety Hub before 28 Sep 2026)	Monday 08:00 local email digest of the previous week
Weekly Summary Recipients	Notifications	Safety team	The chosen group, else Safety Hub app admins, else business admins (at most 25); or every active manager and admin

6. More help

• Safety Hub FAQ — specific setup and operating questions, employee complaints, and every limit
• Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about Safety Hub from these articles.