Employee engagement is a cornerstone of integrated EHS management systems, but an ongoing challenge in EHS and sustainability efforts. David Zinger addressed this topic during his session at last week’s 19th Annual NAEM Forum in Tucson.
When developing and implementing an EHS and sustainability initiative, Zinger stressed, each person must be able to voice his or her opinion and be listened to. “Never do anything about me without me if you expect me to be engaged,” he said. “If you want them to be on the same page, they need to be able to write on the page.” Read More
Continual improvement is a term we hear a lot about in business these days. It is a notion that is central to management system approaches rooted in the quality and ISO arenas. As central as this concept has become, I find that organizations struggle with how to define it and then practice it.
If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will see that there are many exciting advances in our field that go way beyond our compliance and technical roots. With the evolution of CSR, sustainability, and systems thinking, for example, there are many ways EHS/S can contribute and make a difference in organizations, beyond traditional compliance and risk management. There is a new context evolving; a new EHS/S space is available for capture.
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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 have been incorporated into operations, products, and services. In other cases, none or some of these activities have been started, or actions have not gone beyond PR drivers.
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 safety. Yet, while safety is clearly important, the topic of culture is all-encompassing.
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.