How to Use SoterAI — Your Guide for Safety & EHS Professionals
This guide is for you if…
- You're responsible for ergonomic assessments, hazard inspections, incident investigations, or safety program documentation
- You spend too much time writing reports and not enough time acting on them
- You want your assessments to be more defensible, consistent, and faster to produce
- You're managing a high volume of work with limited time and resources
What great looks like in your role
Great safety professionals close the gap between hazard and action faster than anyone else. They don't just identify risk — they document it well, communicate it clearly, and drive corrective action. The best ones compress the time between “I see a problem” and “the problem is fixed and documented.”
SoterAI is built for this. It lets you do in 20 minutes what used to take 2 hours — without sacrificing quality or defensibility. Your judgment remains central. The tool handles the structure, consistency, and documentation burden.
Your first wins
Run your first ergonomic assessment
Why it matters: Ergonomic injuries are among the most common and costly — and assessments are time-intensive to do well.
What to do: Upload a video of a task being performed. Ask SoterAI to analyse it using REBA or ManTRA and recommend controls.
What you get: A full structured ergonomic assessment with risk scores, body part breakdown, and a prioritised controls hierarchy — in minutes, not hours.
See also: Workflows Overview and Ergonomic Solution prompts
Complete a hazard inspection
Why it matters: Inspections are only as good as the documentation and follow-through they generate.
What to do: Use the Hazard Inspection workflow. Upload photos or describe what you observed. SoterAI helps you structure findings, assign risk ratings, and generate corrective action recommendations.
What you get: A clean, defensible inspection report with prioritised actions — ready to share with supervisors or upload to your records system.
See also: Hazard Identification Techniques and Managing Actions
Analyse your incident trends
Why it matters: Individual incidents tell you what happened. Trends tell you what's going to happen next.
What to do: Ask SoterAI: “What patterns do you see in our incidents over the last 6 months? What's driving them?”
What you get: A plain-English analysis of your incident data — what's recurring, what's improving, and where to focus prevention effort.
See also: Risk Intelligence and Records Management Module
Investigate an incident
Why it matters: The quality of an investigation determines whether you fix the real cause or just the symptom.
What to do: Use the Incident Investigation workflow for minor incidents and near-misses, or the Complex Incident Investigation workflow for recordable injuries, lost-time incidents, and high-potential near-misses.
What you get: A structured investigation covering root cause analysis and corrective actions. For complex ones, a comprehensive report covering evidence, witness interviews, RCA, CAPA, and management review.
See also: Corrective Action Plan and Creating Records with AI Assistance
Key use cases
Ergonomic Assessments
Upload a video of any task and get a full REBA or ManTRA assessment with risk scores, body part analysis, and a controls hierarchy — in minutes.
Ergonomic Solution →Hazard Inspections
Walk a site, take photos, note observations — then let SoterAI turn your raw notes into a structured inspection report with risk ratings and prioritised corrective actions.
Hazard Identification →Policy Review
Upload any policy or procedure and ask SoterAI to check it against current regulatory requirements (OSHA, Cal/OSHA, etc.) and flag gaps.
OSHA Regulation & Standard →Incident Trend Analysis
Go beyond individual incident reports. Ask SoterAI to analyse patterns across your incident data — what's recurring, what's getting worse, what's improving.
Risk Intelligence →Toolbox Talks
Generate a toolbox talk on any topic in seconds. Specify your industry, workforce, and the hazard you want to address — SoterAI produces a structured, plain-English talk ready to deliver.
Toolbox Talk prompts →Program Documentation
Draft or update written safety programs — lockout/tagout, confined space, fall protection, ergonomics — grounded in your existing policies and current regulatory requirements.
Safety Program prompts →Incident Investigation
For minor incidents and near-misses: use the Incident Investigation workflow to structure your investigation, identify root causes, and generate corrective actions. For serious incidents: the Complex Incident Investigation workflow covers evidence gathering, witness interviews, root cause analysis, CAPA, and produces a comprehensive investigation report.
Build your own workflows
The built-in workflows cover the most common safety tasks. But your work doesn't always fit a template.
Custom Workflows let you build your own automated workflows inside SoterAI — tailored to your specific processes, your industry, and your organisation's way of working. Examples of what safety professionals build:
- A site-specific hazard inspection tailored to your facility layout and known risk areas
- A contractor induction checklist that pulls from your own policies
- A monthly safety report template that automatically pulls from your incident and inspection data
- A permit-to-work review process specific to your operations
You don't need to be technical to build one. You describe what you want the workflow to do, and SoterAI helps you build it.
To get started, navigate to the Workflows section in SoterAI and select “Create Workflow,” or read the Building Custom Workflows guide.
Data Sources — your organisation's knowledge, built in
SoterAI is only as good as the information it has access to. Data Sources is how you make it yours.
Upload your organisation's policies, procedures, incident records, inspection reports, risk registers, and any other documents — and SoterAI uses them to ground every answer it gives you. Instead of generic responses, you get answers that reflect your actual policies, your specific hazards, your real incident history.
Ask “What does our confined space procedure say about atmospheric testing?” and SoterAI answers from your procedure, not a generic one. Ask “What corrective actions have we taken for manual handling injuries in the last year?” and it pulls from your own records.
What to upload
- Safety policies and procedures
- Incident and near-miss records
- Inspection and audit reports
- Risk registers
- Training records and competency frameworks
- Regulatory guidance specific to your industry or jurisdiction
To add documents, navigate to Data Sources in the left sidebar and upload your files. For a full walkthrough, see Uploading & Managing Documents.
How to get the most out of SoterAI
Use it at the start of every assessment. Don't wait until you're writing up. Start SoterAI when you're planning the assessment — it helps you structure your approach and know what to look for.
Let it write the first draft. For reports, toolbox talks, and program docs — always let SoterAI produce the first draft. Your job is to review, refine, and apply your judgment. That's a much faster workflow than starting from scratch.
Upload your photos and videos directly. The more raw material you give SoterAI, the better the output. Don't summarise — share the actual evidence.
Ask follow-up questions. If the first answer isn't quite right, push back. "Make this more specific to our industry." "Add the regulatory citation." "Simplify the language for a frontline audience."
Use it to pressure-test your own thinking. Before you submit an investigation report or a risk assessment, ask SoterAI: "What have I missed?" or "What would a regulator look for here?"
For prompt crafting tips, see Importance of Prompts.
A note on your data
Your incident reports, inspection records, and safety documents contain sensitive information. SoterAI protects this data to enterprise standards: SOC 2 Type 2 certified, AWS-based infrastructure, and end-to-end encryption. Your data is secure and never used to train external models.
The bottom line
You already know what good safety looks like. SoterAI gives you the speed and consistency to deliver it — every assessment, every inspection, every report. Less time on paperwork. More time on the work that actually prevents harm.
Ready to go deeper? Start with the Introduction to SoterAI or explore Workflows Overview.
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