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
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.
“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.
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.
Many EHS professionals are familiar with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) from its widely known management systems, ISO 9001 and 14001. Over the past five years, that has been activities to extend ISO more explicitly into the area of risk management. Their first two management systems (9001 and 14001) are essentially risk management tools.
At the NAEM Forum, Don Ritz and Bruce Huber of Barrick Gold led a session called “The EHS Manager as a Change Agent.” In this session, they put forth 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.
In his keynote address at the American Industrial Hygiene Conference and Exposition (AIHCE) in Minneapolis, economist and futurist Jeremy Rifkin stated that the most basic human instinct is to embody relationship–that is, to be connected with others. He spoke of the “struggle to be,” and argued that it is imperative to reach out to and connect with others at work, in our communities, and in society as a whole, and to do so with science behind us. He talked about the spatial change that occurred with the first Apollo flight to the moon in July of 1969. For many, Rifkin said, it was a defining moment in life—there was a spatial change in how we viewed the world and ourselves, and an expansion of mindset way beyond ourselves.