Most companies start the same way: a spreadsheet with a list of employees, a “periodic training due” column, a “medical exam due” column, conditional formatting in red. It works. The question is not whether Excel is bad, but at what point it stops being enough and what the company loses then.
What the regulations say
The employer may not allow a person to work without the required training (Polish Labour Code, Art. 237³) or without a valid medical certificate (Art. 229). The formats and frequency of training are set by the regulation of the Minister of Economy and Labour of 27 July 2004 on OHS training. The regulations do not prescribe a tool. They prescribe an outcome: at any moment you must be able to show that a specific person had everything required on a specific day. A tool is judged by whether it delivers that outcome.
Where Excel works
- A small workforce, one workstation, one person in charge of OHS. A few dozen rows, one owner of the spreadsheet, deadlines checked every Monday.
- Fixed requirements. Nobody changes positions, there are no specialist qualifications, medical examinations are of one type.
- No turnover. New employees arrive rarely, so induction training is not an everyday matter.
Under such conditions an OHS app is not needed, and an honest vendor will tell you so.
Where Excel ends
Several sources of truth. HR has its spreadsheet, OHS has its own, the shift manager has another. An employee changed position in one; in the other two they are still an operator. During an inspection everyone shows a different version.
Deadlines that depend on the position. The frequency of periodic training differs for blue-collar, managerial and engineering and technical positions. A change of position changes the deadline and sometimes requires on-the-job instruction. In a spreadsheet a person does this, if they remember.
Evidence. A spreadsheet shows a date. It does not show who entered it, when and on what basis. After an accident the question is not “was there training?” but “how will you prove it?”. The training card, the numbered certificate, the test record, the issue date: these must be at hand, attached to the person.
People without e-mail. A spreadsheet will not notify the employee or the manager. The notification is a person who remembers to check.
Online training. Guided self-study is permitted for some positions. A spreadsheet will not run the training, mark the test or issue the certificate.
Scale. Beyond a certain number of employees and departments, someone loses half a day every week on “reviewing deadlines”. This is a cost that is easy to calculate: that person's hours times the weeks.
A comparison without marketing
| Question | Spreadsheet | OHS app |
|---|---|---|
| Who cannot go onto the shop floor today? | you have to filter and compare columns | a “not cleared to work” list on the dashboard |
| An employee changed position | manual change of deadlines in several places | the new position's requirements and gaps straight away |
| Deadline notification | none, unless someone checks | e-mail/notification to the manager and the employee |
| Online periodic training | outside the spreadsheet | course, test, certificate in the record |
| Evidence after an accident | a date in a cell | a document with a number, date and change history |
| Inspection report | put together by hand | one button, PDF/Excel |
| Employee without e-mail | not applicable | badge, PIN, QR code, shop-floor kiosk |
When to switch
Not “when there is time”, because there won't be. Three signals that it is time to stop adding columns:
- Two people keep two spreadsheets about the same employees.
- The last inspection or customer audit required more than one day of “preparing documents”.
- Someone worked with an expired medical examination or training and you found out after the fact.
How to switch without stopping the company
Import the current spreadsheet (the rollout starts from the data you have, not from an empty database), set up position requirements, one department as a trial, then the rest. You do not have to give up Excel straight away: for the first month the spreadsheet and the app can run in parallel until people trust the notifications.
ErgoFlow's OHS app was created for exactly this reason: requirements by position, an employee record with evidence, notifications, online training and a shop-floor kiosk for people without e-mail. More in OHS news.
Legal status as of October 2026. This article is for information only and does not replace legal advice or the opinion of your OHS team.
