7.19.2010
Sustainability is on every corporate radar. The strength of the signal and distance from action vary. In some cases, internal task groups have been formed, sustainability risk assessments have been performed, and actions incorporated into operations and products and services. In other cases, none or some of these activities have been started, or actions have not gotten beyond PR drivers.
In the current MIT Sloan Management Review, Christopher Lueneburger and Daniel Goleman make a valuable contribution with a presentation of a sustainability implementation model and identification of different competencies needed at different phases of implementation. They also identify differences between traditional implementation techniques and practices in large corporate initiatives from those needed in a sustainability initiative. Lueneburger and Goleman say that a common mistake is approaching the implementation of a sustainability initiative with the same tools and mindset used in the past, stating that sustainability is “not your father’s corporate initiative.” Read More
Posted By Charles Redinger | in Emerging Issues, High Performance Teams, Innovation, Personal Mastery, Sustainability, Uncategorized | Tags: Change leadership, Cross-functional teams, Greenwashing, Integrated EHSMS, Seeing systems, Sustainability initiative, Sustainability leadership, Sustainability management system, sustainability risk assessment | No Comments »
5.19.2010
As a living system, a company’s risk profile is continually shifting. The growing attention on sustainability and corporate responsibility (CSR) has stretched companies as they wrestle with ways to characterize and manage their sustainability and CSR risks.
Integrated EHS, sustainability, and CSR management systems provide a robust structure to manage risks. A key concept in an integrated management system is “the management of change” (MOC), which focuses on identifying and managing risks as operations or the operating environment change. MOC procedures and process typically kick-in when new equipment or manufacturing lines are installed, during mergers & acquisitions, or during internal re-organizations. On the corporate responsibility front, forward-thinking companies include the monitoring of third-party monitoring criteria in their MOC process.
Strong MOC processes are part of a company’s front line defense for risk reduction. The MOC process should pick up most risks that arise in between formal risk assessments. Read More
Posted By Charles Redinger | in Corporate Social Responsibility, Emerging Issues, Innovation, Management Systems, Risk Management, Strategic Thinking & Planning, Sustainability | Tags: ANSI/AIHA Z10, Causal Loop Diagram, CSR, EHS Management System, Integrated EHSMS, ISO 14001, Management of Change, MOC, OHSAS 18001, Organizational Learning | No Comments »
4.30.2010
With the increasing need to address Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) issues, organizations are faced with several options on how to proceed in developing their internal capabilities. Beyond their sustainability and CSR strategy, there are nuts-and-bolts issues to consider, such as who will lead the effort and how to build the team or department.
A common starting place is to tap the EHS department and their personnel. The logic for this is strong given how central EHS is to sustainability and CSR. While the EHS function and its personnel are a good starting point, sustainability/CSR quickly encompasses areas in the organization well beyond EHS.
The C-suite needs to consider how it is going to identify and develop its people who lead and manage sustainability/CSR. In the case of EHS professionals, those competencies and skills go beyond their solid technical foundation. Read More
Posted By Charles Redinger | in Corporate Social Responsibility, Emerging Issues, High Performance Teams, Strategic Thinking & Planning, Sustainability | Tags: Competency, CSR, CSR Department Building, EHS Department, Leadership Capabilities, Management of Change, Strategic Planning, Sustainability, Sustainability Department Building, Vision | No Comments »
4.29.2010
McKinsey & Company recently published findings from its February 2010 survey on “How Companies Manage Sustainability.” Nearly 2,000 executives from a wide range of industries and regions participated. A highlight statement from the survey is that “most companies are not actively managing sustainability, even though executives think it’s important to a variety of corporate activities.”
This gap is attributed to no clear definition of what sustainability means, and as a result, only 30% or the respondents indicated that they “actively seek opportunities to invest in sustainability or embed it in their practices.”
The survey found that respondents framed sustainability in the following way: 55% as an environmental management issue; 48% as a governance issue; 41% as a societal issue; and 56% indicated they define sustainability in two or more ways. Only 6% said that sustainability is both a C-suite priority and that it was formally and effectively embedded in its business practices. Read More
Posted By Charles Redinger | in Corporate Social Responsibility, Emerging Issues, Risk Management, Sustainability | Tags: EHS Strategy, environmental management, environmental reputation, Managing sustainability, Risk Management, Sustainability Strategy | No Comments »
4.28.2010
It is common knowledge that sustainability is a big deal. It is a multidimensional issue that impacts all sectors of society. Companies wrestle with how they are going to respond beyond the obvious of energy conservation and waste reduction, when sustainability begins to blur with corporate social responsibility (CSR).
Some direction and insights are provided in an excellent article, “the Sustainability Imperative: Lessons for Leaders from Previous Game-Changing Megatrends,” by David Lubin and Daniel Esty. This article frames sustainability in ways that organizations can take actionable steps to impact their sustainability efforts (Harvard Business Review, May 2010).
Many readers are familiar with Esty’s landmark book, Green to Gold and his work in the environmental policy arena. Ideas presented in Green to Gold evolve in the Sustainability Megatrends article. Lubin and Esty assert that the current sustainability movement can be viewed as a megatrend as popularized by John Naisbitt in 1982. As such, there are lessons that companies can learn by examining other megatrends such as IT and quality. Read More
Posted By Charles Redinger | in Corporate Social Responsibility, Emerging Issues, Innovation, Risk Management, Strategic Thinking & Planning, Sustainability | Tags: Megatrends, new skills, Risk Management, Sustainability, Sustainability management system, Vision | No Comments »
4.23.2010
“What gets measured, gets done” is a popular saying in performance improvement circles. There is more though. Yes, true as this is, measurement – and I’ll go a step further here and say auditing – is just part of the “gets done” piece. When crafted within a context of breakthrough performance, EHS auditing and the audit function in an EHS department can be a catalyst for accelerated performance improvement and EHS integration. EHS auditing is commonly viewed as a necessary evil or burden to satisfy regulatory and legal requirements. Within this context, the results are predictable. There is little if any enthusiasm; there is a struggle; and there can be challenges with inter-rater reliability.
When EHS auditing is formulated through an organizational learning and systems thinking lens – supported by an integrated EHS management system structure – the function shifts from being summative to formative, as program evaluation professionals would say. There is a shift toward action research that fosters partnership in solving EHS challenges. Audits are viewed as opportunities to see things not previously apparent. Casual links and patterns are distinguished in a way that people can see their roles in the “organizational systems” and see possibilities to alter the system and their roles.
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Posted By Charles Redinger | in Auditing & Metrics, Emerging Issues, High Performance Teams, Innovation | Tags: Aspects/Impacts, Audit Department, Audit Program, Collective Wisdom, EHS, EHS Audit, EHS Auditing, EHS Management System, EHS Performance Measurement, ISO 14001, ISO 19011, OHSAS 18001, Systems Thinking | No Comments »
4.19.2010
With roots in regulatory compliance, it is no wonder that the internal view for EHS professionals is not always rosy. At times even being called or thought of as a cop. There are numerous evolving concepts that impact EHS effectiveness well beyond regulatory compliance. Some of these include the use of EHS management systems and six-sigma. Another area is how EHS audits are conducted and findings used. Still another is the role EHS professionals can play when their context (you can also say “mental models”) shift from one that is compliance-based (cop-on-the-beat) to one of advising and coaching.
A piece to this shift is accountability. In an advising/coaching role, EHS accountability is shared in partnership. EHS management systems help provide a framework for partnerships to flourish.
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Posted By Charles Redinger | in Emerging Issues, Innovation, Personal Mastery, Strategic Thinking & Planning | Tags: Art of Inquiry, Coaching, Corporate Coaching, Dialogue, EHS Accountability, EHS Audit, EHS Coach, EHS Management System, EHSMS, EPA Compliance, Mental Models, OSHA Compliance, Partnership, Six-sigma | No Comments »
4.19.2010
Organizational culture is complex and according to many experts, not well understood. EHS professionals often think about culture in terms of a “safety culture.” While safety is clearly important, the topic of culture is all-encompassing.
An area that I continue to explore is how can EHS departments and their professionals impact overall organizational culture? Said another way, how can you build and leverage your EHS culture?
Professor Ed Schein of MIT is regarded as an organizational culture pioneer. I recently heard him speak. The title of the lecture was “From Managing Organizational Culture to Leading Multicultural Teams.” He shared how his thoughts on organizational culture have evolved over the past several decades and discussed some of the material in the soon to be released 4th edition of his landmark book, “Organizational Culture and Leadership”.
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Posted By Charles Redinger | in Emerging Issues, High Performance Teams, Innovation, Strategic Thinking & Planning | Tags: EHS Culture, EHS Leadership, EHS Management System, EHSMS, ISO 14001, leadership, Learning Organization, Organizational Culture, Safety Culture, Systems Thinking | No Comments »
4.8.2010
There is increased activity on occupational health and safety (OHS) programs in OSHA with its new administration. The agency’s new director has a goal of addressing and improving the safety culture in companies. One vehicle to do this is addressing comprehensive OHS programs. There was activity in the mid to late 1990s in this area with attempts to codify the highly regarded Voluntary Protection Program and elevate the status of the OSHA’s 1989 Program Guidelines. These efforts morphed into attempts in federal OSHA to adopt a national Illness and Injury Prevention Program (IIPP) found in a handful of states, including California.
In a March 25, 2010 speech to a joint meeting of local sections of the ASSE and AIHA, David Michaels, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health talked about how OSHA inspectors are increasingly looking at how companies “are taking steps to improve the overall [OHS] performance, reduce risk, and make prevention a daily part operations.” He said that there is a more “intense look at whether there is in place a comprehensive safety and health management system, and asking ‘is it being implemented, and are management and workers working together toward continuous improvement.’”
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Posted By Charles Redinger | in Auditing & Metrics, Emerging Issues, OSHA & EPA News | Tags: EHS Management System, General Duty Clause, IIPP, Illness and Injury Prevention Program, OSHA, OSHA Program Standard, PEP, Performance Evaluation Profile, SHARP, Voluntary Protection Program 1989 Program Guidelines | No Comments »
4.1.2010
This is the second of several blog posts on the EHS Integration model we’ve developed at Redinger EHS, Inc. Please contact us if you’d like PDF of our white paper on this topic.
EHS Functions are often described in terms of levels of maturity. These can also be called stages of development, levels of development, and so on. It’s common to describe these levels or stages with numerical ranks, such as from 1 to 3 or 5, where level or stage 1 represents lowest level of maturity or development and the highest level represents a high degree of maturity.
The EHS Integration model presented here also presents a continuum of EHS Function maturity. This continuum is called “an EHS Integration Continuum,” with seven levels. Read More
Posted By Charles Redinger | in Emerging Issues, Innovation, Management Systems, Strategic Thinking & Planning | Tags: Beyond EHS Compliance, EHS Barriers, EHS Compliance, EHS Integration, EHS Mind-set, EHS Regulations, Implementation Dimension, Integration Dimension | No Comments »
