A significant portion of occupational health and safety processes in Türkiye are still carried out through Excel. This is not only the reality of small businesses; it is encountered even in companies with high employee counts, multiple locations, and receiving professional services from OJHS. The basic reason for this is understandable: Excel is fast, accessible, known by everyone, and appears to meet the initial "listing" and "tracking" needs. An action list is made, a date is assigned, a responsible person is written; the business thinks it has established some sort of order.

However, everyone with field experience in Türkiye knows that the biggest problem in OHS is not detection but sustainable tracking. Conducting risk assessments, seeing non-conformities, and writing down deficiencies is often possible. The real difficulty is ensuring these findings are closed over time, preventing repetitions, clarifying responsibility, creating corporate memory, and transforming the "just get by" culture into a control mechanism. At this point, Excel becomes insufficient in most businesses after a while; because Excel keeps records but doesn't build a system.

This article analyzes why Excel often remains a "starting tool" in OHS, at what point it weakens the organization's control capacity, and why transitioning from Excel to a digital OHS system has now become a necessity in Türkiye, in the context of field reality and regulations.

First, an important distinction needs to be clarified: Excel is not a bad tool. In fact, the first order of OHS in many businesses was established thanks to Excel. The problem is not Excel's existence; it's Excel being assumed to be the "ultimate system" of OHS. Because OHS is not a static field. The subject of OHS is human behavior, machine and equipment safety, production tempo, subcontractor relations, maintenance processes, and the organization's general discipline. Trying to manage such a dynamic field with a single table leads to loss of control above a certain scale.

One of the most common problems in OHS processes in Türkiye is recurring non-conformities. The same non-conformities are rewritten on different dates, the same risks are redefined by different experts, the same actions are constantly postponed. Making these repetitions visible is the most critical indicator of maturation in OHS. Because recurring risk shows where the system is not working. Excel, however, cannot truly capture these repetitions; because it doesn't have a structure that correlates repetitions, produces trends, creates root causes, and establishes an alarm mechanism. Seeing repetitions in Excel depends on human attention and discipline. This discipline does not show continuity in Türkiye's work tempo.

The second important problem is the version and currency issue. Excel files often live on a specific person's computer. They are shared, emailed, sent via WhatsApp, sit in folders. After a short while, the question "which is the most current file?" begins. This question is the first signal of control loss in OHS. Because currency in OHS is vitally important. Going to the field with the wrong action list, a non-conformity thought to be closed actually not being closed, responsibilities appearing on the wrong person — such problems are not just management weaknesses; they are concrete errors that produce risk in the field.

The third critical problem is Excel's inability to produce corporate memory. Since a large part of OHS in Türkiye is run through the OJHS model, memory is already fragile. Experts change, OJHS changes, business management changes. What keeps the system standing in these changes is not the existence of documents but the organization's own memory. Excel usually makes this memory dependent on a person. After a while, if the person updating the table leaves, the table dies. Or even if the table continues, its meaning is lost. For this reason, for businesses that are growing and want to mature, Excel eventually becomes the "not fully working" zone of OHS.

The fourth problem is tracking and proof power. In Türkiye, OHS is not just a technical field; it's also a legal field. When an occupational accident, occupational disease, or a severe audit process occurs, the business doesn't just show documents; it must also show the process. Was the risk known, who was the action given to, what was the deadline, was there delay, was it recurring, had management seen this? When the answer to these questions is "yes, it was in Excel," Excel's proof capability remains limited. Because elements such as record integrity, transaction history, closure verification, timestamp, and role-based ownership do not naturally exist in Excel. Without these elements, it becomes difficult to demonstrate that a sustainable control system in OHS has been established.

The fifth problem is the ownership issue in the field. In many businesses in Türkiye, the biggest weakness of OHS is actions that "everyone knows but no one owns." Making an action list in Excel is easy; but closing the action is difficult. Because closure requires management follow-up. Follow-up requires visibility. Visibility requires a mechanism. Excel doesn't impose this mechanism as a discipline; it only works like a notebook. This leaves the closure of actions to the mercy of business culture. In Türkiye, since culture often says "production first," the closure of actions is delayed. Delayed actions are the path for risk to transform into cost.

For this reason, transitioning from Excel to a digital system is no longer at the "would be nice" level in Türkiye but at the "must" level. Especially if the number of locations has increased, if there is subcontractor intensity, if maintenance and periodic controls are critical, if the responsibilities of different departments are intertwined, Excel is not sustainable. Because Excel disintegrates as the organization grows.

Managing OHS with Excel is a natural starting step for many businesses in Türkiye. However, as risk grows and the organization becomes more complex, Excel ceases to be a management system; it transforms into an archive tool. The most critical need of OHS is not archive but control. Control is: closure of actions, visibility of repetitions, clarification of responsibility, delays being seen by management, and corporate memory living within the organization.

EGEROBOT ISG-SIS® is a structure designed to provide this transition. The goal is not to disparage Excel; it's to go beyond Excel's natural limits. The aim is to establish a system that correlates risks, non-conformities, actions, and audit processes; makes responsibility and tracking mechanisms visible; reveals recurring risks as trends; and makes the organization's OHS memory independent from individuals. Thus, OHS transforms into a managed discipline, not one that is "just gotten by."