Challenged to achieve regulatory compliance, EHS professionals are always looking for beyond-compliance ways to reduce risk. As organizational models have evolved to push accountability away from corporate functions toward business units and process-specific operations, the role of EHS professionals has also morphed.
The trend has been for EHS professionals to act in the role of consultant or coach within the organization, as opposed to an enforcer to be avoided. While this trend makes sense, a significant component of EHS accountability still resides within the EHS department and its professionals.
The use of Informal Networks provides a powerful way for EHS professionals to achieve their goals and empower others in the organization to embrace and champion EHS issues. Forward-thinking EHS professionals actively develop and leverage Informal Networks in their organizations.
The current issue of the Harvard Business Review (March, 2010) includes a timely article, “Harnessing Your Staff’s Informal Networks,” that captures the essence of what we have observed at Redinger EHS in our engagements. In the article, McDermott and Archibald report on their quantitative analysis of 52 Informal Communities within companies in 10 industries. They provide examples and cases in which a function, such as EHS, used informal networks with the organization to solve complex problems.
McDermott and Archibald emphasize that while there is clearly an informal quality to these communities, some structure is required. They have identified four principles that “govern the design and integration of effective communities”:
- Focus on issues important to the organization
- Establish community goals and deliverables
- Provide real governance
- Set high management expectations
Redinger EHS has observed and worked with several EHS teams that have demonstrated these principles in providing EHS leadership within their organizations. One EHS team led the organization’s sustainability efforts, and its results were accelerated with the use of these principles. Another EHS team used these principles to accelerate the reduction of its carbon footprint and overall waste reduction.
Building EHS communities within an organization is central to Redinger EHS ’s Quantum EHS approach. When internal functions in an organization operate from “being connected,” as opposed to “being separate” or being in a silo, they are able to powerfully impact overall organizational performance.
© Redinger EHS, Inc. (2010)