A contribution to the EHS community
Free safety software for every EHS professional
UPEHS has shared safety knowledge freely for years: articles, quizzes, a forum, a job board. This year we built something more useful on site. POLLE Safety is a safety platform for the people who run toolbox talks and issue work permits every day, and it is free for every account. No card, no cap, no seat limit. It opens in the web browser you already have, so there is nothing to download and nothing to install.
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Nothing to download, nothing to install
POLLE Safety is web software. You open it in the browser that is already on your phone, your tablet or the site laptop — there is no app to download, no app store, no setup and no IT ticket. Sign in on any device and your talks, permits and reports are already there, because the work lives in your account rather than on one machine. Your workers install nothing either: they scan a QR code or open a one-time link and sign on their own phone. If you would rather have it one tap away, your phone can add it to the home screen, but that is optional and it is the same browser software either way.
Why I am giving this away
You are the only EHS person on site. Monday morning you run the toolbox talk, pass the register down the line, and it comes back with signatures and a few thumbprints. The hot-work permit for bay 3 is filled in by hand, signed by three people, and goes into the file. Every record of that day is paper, and all of it is sitting at site.
Then someone asks for March.
Maybe it is an auditor. Maybe it is worse than an auditor. And the register is in a drawer in an office that has since been packed up, or it went home with the engineer who left in April, or the pages are damp and the signatures have run. You know the talk happened. You delivered it. You just cannot prove it any more.
That is the part nobody outside this role understands. Paper records do not fail quietly and at random — they fail on the one day you are asked to produce them, which is always the day everyone is looking for someone to hold responsible. The work was done properly. The evidence of it was lost. And you are the one who carries that.
I have spent 20 years in EHS — construction, pharma, cable, cement and manufacturing. At corporate level I have implemented and administered enterprise EHS platforms and compliance services: Enablon, Mitti (by SafetyCulture, formerly iAuditor), ENHESA, Entropy and Intenseye. So this is not a guess: I know precisely what enterprise systems fix, because I have rolled them out and run them.
They fix exactly this problem. They are also bought the way enterprise software is bought — per user, per month, against a corporate budget, with seat minimums that start well above the teams I am describing. A safety officer who is the entire EHS function cannot buy a twenty-five-seat licence. A contractor running a forty-person crew is not going to sign a corporate subscription either. So the sites that most need this discipline are the ones left on paper, and that is not a handful of sites. That is most of them.
Someone had to start.
POLLE Safety is what I wanted on site.
- Toolbox talks in English and seven Indian languages today, with more being added. Workers scan a QR and sign on their own phone — no account, no licence, no seat taken up. Attendance is captured the moment it happens, so there is nothing to lose and nothing to reconstruct later.
- Permits to work, issued and approved digitally, every step time-stamped, so the audit trail writes itself instead of living in a book at site.
- Safety committee meetings, with minutes, an action register that carries what is still open into the next meeting, and anonymous voting when a decision needs the room to be honest.
- Everything you record can be exported whenever you want. Your records are yours. They are not trapped inside my software.
- More modules are on the way. This is being built out properly, not parked.
It runs in the browser you already have. Nothing to install, nothing for IT to approve.
It is free. Every module, no card, no caps.
It is also built by one person. Me. No team, no investor, no sales department — which is exactly why nothing has to be held back to sell to you later.
UPEHS has been giving EHS knowledge away for ten years: articles, quizzes, a forum, a job board. This is the same thing, built as software instead of a page.
Safety is not a premium feature. A worker on a small site deserves the same permit discipline as a worker in a plant whose employer buys enterprise software.
Module 1: Toolbox Talks FREE
- 50 curated talks, written by a safety professional, each in English and seven Indian languages today — Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali and Kannada — with more languages being added.
- Quick brief for a two-minute delivery, or the full talk with hazards, safe practices and discussion prompts.
- Workers scan a QR or type an 8-digit code and sign on their own phone, then read the talk itself in the language they pick — and can change it mid-talk. Attendance fills in live while you keep talking.
- Close the session and the PDF and XLSX attendance reports are generated for you.
Module 2: Permit to Work FREE
- Set the work, the location and the validity window, then name who fills the permit in and who approves it, in order.
- The filler gets a one-time link by email or WhatsApp. No account needed. They add hazards, controls, PPE and photos of the controls in place.
- The hazard checklist and Job Safety Analysis come pre-filled for each permit type.
- Each approver acts from their own emailed link. Every action is time-stamped for the audit trail, and the permit closes itself when its validity ends.
Module 3: Safety Committee FREE
- Run the meeting from one screen: attendance for management and worker representatives, then every point raised with its discussion and the decision taken.
- When a decision needs the room to be honest, start an anonymous vote. People vote from their own phone by QR, 8-digit code or WhatsApp link — no account, and no name on a ballot.
- Actions carry. Anything still open comes back at the next meeting with who owns it and when it is due, so nothing quietly disappears between meetings.
- Close the meeting and the minutes PDF is generated, with a noticeboard QR so the crew can read what was decided.
What is coming next
Three more modules are being built on the same terms: Job Safety Analysis, Incident Reporting and a photo-based PPE Checker. They arrive when they are genuinely ready, not on a date picked for a slide.
What “free” means here
Every module and every feature is free for every account. No card, no cap, no seat count. Your workers never need an account of their own. See the terms of use for the detail.
What happened to EHS Jobs and the EHS Forum?
Both are retired. The job board stopped receiving new listings in January 2023 and the forum had gone quiet. Stale pages help nobody, so that effort now goes into POLLE Safety. The articles and quizzes stay exactly where they are.
Get started in a minute
- Create your account with Google or email. No card.
- Open the Toolbox Talks library, or raise your first permit.
- Share the QR or the permit link with your team.
Found a bug? Tell us from inside the app
POLLE Safety is young software and the fastest way to get something fixed is to report it from the app itself. On any POLLE Safety screen, open Help & support — the round ? button in the bottom-right corner — then choose WhatsApp the founder or Email support. The message carries the screen you were on, so we can see exactly where it went wrong. Feature requests and “this wording confused me” are as welcome as bugs; this is built by one safety professional and your report is how it gets better.
POLLE Safety is built by UPEHS Tech, the team behind upehs.com. Questions, bugs and suggestions: use Help & support inside the app, or email support@upehs.com.
If you think that is worth doing, I want to hear from you. Connect with me on LinkedIn — tell me what breaks, tell me what your site actually needs, and send this to a colleague who is still keeping a register in a drawer.
— Ulhas Polle · founder, UPEHS.com and POLLE Safety