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.
Many EHS professionals are familiar with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), due to its widely known management systems, ISO 9001 and 14001. Over the past five years, ISO has begun to extend its services more explicitly into the area of risk management—its first two management systems (9001 and 14001) are essentially risk management tools.
The issues and challenges presented in Green to Gold and suggested in REACH and the nanotechnology areas raise several issues. The first relates to an organization’s Management of Change structures and functions, while the second relates to the EHS function’s capacity to manage and guide the organization in these areas.
Nanotech issues and ideas metaphorically presented in the movie The Fantastic Voyage in 1963 are here. Nano-engineered materials are being incorporated into everyday products, including stain- or bacteria-resistant materials, stronger and lighter tennis rackets, more effective sunscreens, and super precise drug delivery vehicles. The promise of nano materials appears to be wide, impacting many industries and products.
At the NAEM Forum, in a session called “The EHS Manager as a Change Agent,” Don Ritz and Bruce Huber of Barrick Gold argued that EHS professionals can and must view themselves as change agents in organizations, and presented a process similar to the Seven Steps of EHS Integration developed by Redinger EHS.
With issues like global warming, sustainability, small industrial footprint, industrial ecology, and carbon calculus swirling in the press and the minds of many, there is increased attention on how organizations do or don’t incorporate environmental thinking into their business strategy. There have been numerous articles in the Harvard Business Review (most recently a special report titled “Climate Business-Business Climate”) and other business journals. The Wall Street Journal has been sponsoring a prominent conference titled, “ECO:NOMICS, Creating Environmental Capital.”