From the environmental side my biggest time suck is all the reporting needed for our wastewater facility (we have a SPDES permit which is pretty strict). Probably amounts to 10-20 hours per month.

From the safety side it’s managing all the safety observations and near misses - for us this includes submitting, following up, and closing them out. This task also probably takes 10-20 hours per month

Simply the administrative side of being an EHS person. That could be typing out a risk assessment that you initially wrote with pen on paper, or filing training records and making sure everything is organized. Or even buying things for the EHS department. I think EHS people should have an admin role to help support them.

This one depends on the day or week. Sometimes COVID-related tasks suck up my entire day so I fall behind on my other EHS stuff. Sometimes it’s checking or updating training for a new safety plan. Sometimes it’s industrial ventilation surveys - those will steal some hours...

Certain safety reporting software programs are a massive waste of time. I've used softwares where you need to navigate through 6 pages of dropdowns to make a simple safety observation. Combine that with management that requires a daily number of logged observations, and you will be staring at your screen logging stuff and doing nothing actually productive in the field because you have quotas to fill. I personally think that time would be better spent in the field correcting things and only logging the big issues, instead of spending 5-plus minutes to report an employee not wearing safety glasses.

Admin duties do take up alot of time. I agree with that statement. I also think my permit reporting can take up alot of time due to certain regulation requirements. At my facility, we are Full Quantity Generators, we track emissions for reporting purposes, we also file for NESHAP, Stormwater, and
the good old Tier 2 report.