In 2025, 620,386 work-related accidents with sick leave were reported in Spain, according to provisional data from the Ministerio de Trabajo y Economía Social. Of these, 584 were fatal during working hours, 735 if commuting is included. These figures are slightly better than those of the previous year, but they paint a reality that most citizens are unaware of: behind each one of them is a management system that worked... or failed.
That system has had a name for three decades: occupational risk prevention.
That system has had a name for three decades: occupational risk prevention.
A legal obligation, not an option
The Ley 31/1995 de Prevención de Riesgos Laborales requires all Spanish companies, from the self-employed with one employee to the multinational, to identify the risks of each job position, evaluate them, plan measures to eliminate or reduce them, train and inform workers, and monitor their health. It is not a recommendation: the PRL regulatory framework in Spain includes sanctions that can exceed one million euros in the most serious cases, in addition to criminal liabilities for administrators.
«Prevention is not a folder of documents that is shown when the Inspection comes», explains Dr. Xavier Guardino, Director of Prevention at Sabentis, a Spanish platform specialized in the management of safety and health at work. «It is a living system: every new hire, every change of machinery, every construction project that starts modifies the company's risk map. And the law requires that this map be always updated».
The Ley 31/1995 de Prevención de Riesgos Laborales requires all Spanish companies, from the self-employed with one employee to the multinational, to identify the risks of each job position, evaluate them, plan measures to eliminate or reduce them, train and inform workers, and monitor their health. It is not a recommendation: the PRL regulatory framework in Spain includes sanctions that can exceed one million euros in the most serious cases, in addition to criminal liabilities for administrators.
«Prevention is not a folder of documents that is shown when the Inspection comes», explains Dr. Xavier Guardino, Director of Prevention at Sabentis, a Spanish platform specialized in the management of safety and health at work. «It is a living system: every new hire, every change of machinery, every construction project that starts modifies the company's risk map. And the law requires that this map be always updated».
“"Prevention is not a folder of documents that is shown when the Inspection comes"
In practice, this translates into a considerable volume of management: risk assessments by position, emergency plans, training records, delivery of protective equipment, medical check-ups, incident investigation, coordination with contractors. Everything documented, everything traceable, everything up to date.
The problem: 21st-century safety with 20th-century tools
Here the paradox of the sector appears. While risks evolve—digital fatigue, musculoskeletal disorders, thermal stress due to climate change—a substantial part of Spanish companies continues to manage prevention as in the nineties: physical folders, scattered spreadsheets, and emails.
The result is known to any prevention technician: duplicated or expired information, training that expires without anyone detecting it, assessments that do not reflect the reality of the workplace, and weeks of preparation every time an audit arrives. The digitization of PRL emerged precisely as a response to this documentary overflow.
Here the paradox of the sector appears. While risks evolve—digital fatigue, musculoskeletal disorders, thermal stress due to climate change—a substantial part of Spanish companies continues to manage prevention as in the nineties: physical folders, scattered spreadsheets, and emails.
The result is known to any prevention technician: duplicated or expired information, training that expires without anyone detecting it, assessments that do not reflect the reality of the workplace, and weeks of preparation every time an audit arrives. The digitization of PRL emerged precisely as a response to this documentary overflow.
What it means to digitize prevention
Digitizing prevention is not scanning papers. It consists of centralizing in a single platform all the processes that the law requires and connecting them to each other: that the risk assessment of a position automatically triggers the planned measures, that the system warns before a training or medical check-up expires, that an accident registered on a construction site feeds the statistics that management will see.
To understand the scope, the example of Sabentis serves, which structures management into 45 integrated modules: from risk identification and assessment to contractor management, emergency plans, health surveillance, or the dashboard that summarizes the preventive status of the entire organization in real time. The logic is that the data is entered once and circulates throughout the system, instead of living repeated, and outdated, in twenty different files.
«For years, the question from the prevention manager was “where is that document?”. The correct question is “what do my data tell me?”», points out Óscar Martos, CEO of Sabentis. «When a company centralizes its preventive management, it discovers patterns that were invisible: in which shifts incidents are concentrated, which centers are behind in training, where it is convenient to invest. It goes from reacting to anticipating».
Digitizing prevention is not scanning papers. It consists of centralizing in a single platform all the processes that the law requires and connecting them to each other: that the risk assessment of a position automatically triggers the planned measures, that the system warns before a training or medical check-up expires, that an accident registered on a construction site feeds the statistics that management will see.
To understand the scope, the example of Sabentis serves, which structures management into 45 integrated modules: from risk identification and assessment to contractor management, emergency plans, health surveillance, or the dashboard that summarizes the preventive status of the entire organization in real time. The logic is that the data is entered once and circulates throughout the system, instead of living repeated, and outdated, in twenty different files.
«For years, the question from the prevention manager was “where is that document?”. The correct question is “what do my data tell me?”», points out Óscar Martos, CEO of Sabentis. «When a company centralizes its preventive management, it discovers patterns that were invisible: in which shifts incidents are concentrated, which centers are behind in training, where it is convenient to invest. It goes from reacting to anticipating».
“"For years, the question from the prevention manager was “where is that document?”. The correct question is “what do my data tell me?"
What the company (and the worker) gains
The benefits operate on three levels. The first is compliance: the documentary traceability required by the standard no longer depends on a person's memory. The second is efficiency: prevention technicians spend less time chasing papers and more time being where they add value, in the workplaces. The third, and the decisive one, is safety itself: a system that detects expired training or an unexecuted measure in time is a system that prevents accidents, not one that documents them after the fact.
For the worker, the difference is also tangible: they receive their training when it is due, their protective equipment is registered and renewed, and any risk communication they make is recorded and followed up.
The transformation, in any case, is no longer a future trend. Companies that lead their sectors in occupational safety manage their prevention today on occupational risk prevention software, just as they moved their accounting or human resources to specialized systems two decades ago. Prevention was the last major business process that remained on paper. It is no longer doing so.
The benefits operate on three levels. The first is compliance: the documentary traceability required by the standard no longer depends on a person's memory. The second is efficiency: prevention technicians spend less time chasing papers and more time being where they add value, in the workplaces. The third, and the decisive one, is safety itself: a system that detects expired training or an unexecuted measure in time is a system that prevents accidents, not one that documents them after the fact.
For the worker, the difference is also tangible: they receive their training when it is due, their protective equipment is registered and renewed, and any risk communication they make is recorded and followed up.
The transformation, in any case, is no longer a future trend. Companies that lead their sectors in occupational safety manage their prevention today on occupational risk prevention software, just as they moved their accounting or human resources to specialized systems two decades ago. Prevention was the last major business process that remained on paper. It is no longer doing so.
