3.18.2011

Reintroducing EHS/S in Your Organization

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.

To do this, at some point you will need to think about how you will reintroduce EHS/S.

Let’s face it, the EHS/S department, function, and staff is not always popular. With our background in regulatory compliance and with a technical focus, we can be viewed as enforcers, cops, nags, etc., and we don’t always do a good job in communicating purpose and value. This history needs to be addressed and the evolution from it needs to be demonstrated. Another challenge is that even within a new context for EHS/S, there are very real compliance and risk management requirements that must be met. Even so, there are ways to do this and provide leadership. Read More

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3.17.2011

Nuggets of Gold for EHS/S Professionals from Boston College’s Corporate Citizenship Profile 2010

Boston College’s Center for Corporate Citizenship released “Profile of the Practice 2010: Managing Corporate Citizenship as a Business Strategy” in December 2010. The report provides a robust overview of the current state of CC/CSR from 190 responses to a Center survey conducted in June and July of 2010. The report characterizes respondents as mostly “large public corporations with an international scope”; 60 percent of the companies had annual revenues over $1B.

The report generally shows increased involvement of EHS/S professionals and departments in CC/CSR activities from its 2008 Profile report. The trend is toward cross-functional teams: 40 percent report that EHS departments were on their CC/CSR cross-functional team. These teams were predominately represented by Communications/PR (66% percent) and Community Involvement/Foundation (65 percent). The remaining 60 percent related to EHS indicates an opportunity for greater involvement for EHS/S professionals.

Read More

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11.17.2010

Are You an EHS, Sustainability, or CSR Musician, Conductor, or Composer?

At the Pegasus Conference 2010: Systems Thinking in Action, held last week in Boston, several pioneers—including Daniel Kim, Robert Fritz, and Peter Senge—presented nuggets of wisdom for EHS, Sustainability, and CSR professionals. I’ve shared a few of them below.

Building upon the concepts he introduced in his groundbreaking book, The Path of Least Resistance—in which he presented his landmark model on the structural tension between vision and current reality—Fritz discussed the Structural Dynamics of Leadership.

The role of leaders, he said, is to change or alter the underlying structures that affect culture and behavior. This is important because structure is more causally dominant than individual talent, good intentions, past experiences, creativity, or capacity. The most effective leaders possess strength of character, are able to work with structural forces, and have the ability to create a shared vision and shared structural tension. Read More

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4.1.2010

Levels of EHS Maturity in the Redinger EHS Integration Model

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

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4.1.2010

A New Model for EHS Integration

This is the first 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.

Through my work with Environmental Health & Safety (EHS) management system design, measurement, and implementation,[1] I have observed that the implementation of a formal EHS management system does not necessarily maximize EHS performance.  Implementation of a formal system is a valuable and necessary step to achieving higher performance, but to reach maximal performance, or even a performance ideal,[2] it appears that there is “further east to go.”

For the past several years I have been intrigued with this gap, that is, how can an organization achieve higher levels of EHS performance, even if it appears that they have a pretty good approach in place?

With this question in mind during my organizational consulting and research work, and post-doctoral work at the MIT Sloan School of Management, I have identified what appears to be a way to reach a new State-of-the-Art[3] in EHS performance.  The key issue, or distinction I’ve identified is EHS Integration.[4] That is, the full and complete integration of EHS functions[5] in an organization, well beyond what is commonly thought of from a program or system implementation perspective. Read More

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