Posts filed under ‘EHS Skills’
What do you call your EMS?
Megan Lum
It’s cliché, I know, to say that change is constant. But it’s so true and I try to remind myself to remain open and flexible. At Pacific Gas & Electric, we continue to make significant changes to our business to better serve our customers. One of the changes we are currently trying to implement in our environmental organization is a re-imagining of our environmental management system (EMS) – leveraging the strengths of some elements, while boosting the effectiveness of others. We’re using a cross-functional team to work on this, including having frequent meetings with various stakeholders.
During one of those stakeholder meetings, we had a brainstorming session on “What do we do to ensure a successful, sustainable EMS?” The conversation was quite animated, and one comment struck me: “If you want this to be sustainable, don’t call it an EMS when you roll it out to people.”
This brought a lot of head nodding. If EMS was introduced as a grand new program, it may come across as yet another corporate initiative, which could be an impediment to making it a truly sustainable program.
I’ve seen success on both sides of that coin. I’ve implemented EMS programs where all the elements of an ISO 14001 program were present, but it wasn’t officially called an EMS. Everything was introduced as part of the environmental program, and employees incorporated environmental practices into work processes and job descriptions as part of the slowly changing culture. Everything was there, but it just didn’t have a specific name.
On the other hand, sometimes rolling out an EMS as a specific program can be a benefit – particularly if a company is working toward it as a stated goal. Having a goal of getting an EMS ISO 14001-certified can bring employees together, encourage teamwork, and drive culture change faster than a more subtle approach.
We’re still in the re-imagining process, so it will be interesting to see which path we choose.
What do you call your EMS?
Megan Lum, P.E. is the Manager for Shared Facilities and Environmental Operations, at Pacific Gas & Electric Co. In this capacity she is privileged to lead a team of about 30 professionals, who provide environmental compliance support for the company’s gas and electric distribution, fleet, materials management and real estate operations. She is a member of NAEM’s Board of Regents and will be participating in NAEM’s EHS Management Forum as a speaker in the Management of Change session.
Increasing EHS Value in Tough Economic Times
Mark Posson
Can we do more with less? Absolutely! This tough economy is affecting all aspects of an organization and environmental management is not immune. Today’s reality in most organizations is stagnant or declining resources and a continuing mandate to increase environmental performance. We need to resist the tendency to pull back in tough economic times and instead be introspective and improve the way we execute. We can free up the resources to meet the demands of expanding requirements by continually improving our business processes. The increased efficiency will free up resources and the increased effectiveness will boost performance and stakeholder value.
Strategically, what processes provide the greatest value to our stakeholders? Where can we get our biggest return for the time invested? These basic questions will help prioritize your improvement targets and possibly identify processes that can be eliminated. A ranked list of processes for improvement will guide your pace of change and tactical execution.
Tactically, the simplest path to improve a process is to follow the elements of lean:
- Identify the value to the stakeholder (your customers)
- Determine the sequence of activities (current process flow)
- Identify the activities that create value
- Eliminate activities that do not add value
- Identify process inefficiencies and their cause(s)
- Eliminate the cause(s) of inefficiencies
- Create the new process (future process flow)
- Implement the new process
- Measure results
The steps are simple but often challenging to implement in light of day-to-day execution pressures. We can’t expect different outcomes by following the same processes. The investment in process improvement will provide the payback in better results with fewer resources.
What strategies do you use to do more with less?
Mark Posson is the former Director of Environment, Safety and Health at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co. and the current Chair of the city of Pleasanton’s Energy and Environment Committee. He recently began offering consulting services to help organizations improve their environment, safety and health performance.
Corporate Social Responsibility: Is it measurable?
Lisa Barnes
Those of us who have grown up in the environment, health and safety (EHS) arena are very comfortable with quantitative metrics. We are comfortable measuring and reporting in terms such as metric tons, millions of gallons and parts per billion. However, we are increasingly being called upon to report on our company’s social responsibility performance. This is a bit trickier and we need to work with different types of metrics that aren’t as easy to quantify. Metrics for social issues such as ethics, labor relations and community support are not as easily quantified as waste disposal, water use, greenhouse gas emissions and injuries and illnesses.
Measuring corporate performance in the social arena is getting increasing attention in recent years and is a continually evolving area. Most corporations have moved beyond traditional environmental sustainability reporting. There are guidelines available with social responsibility metrics. The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Reporting guidelines include 40 Social Performance Indicators, which it groups into four categories:
- Labor Practices and Decent Work
- Human Rights
- Society
- Product Responsibility
There are also industry-specific guidelines such as the International Council of Metals and Mining (ICMM) and American Petroleum Institute (API) guidelines, that include social parameters. For specific aspects within the broad area of social responsibility there are guidelines that companies can formally agree to follow, including the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights.
Sustainability ratings that compare the performance of corporations usually focus on the full spectrum of corporate responsibility issues and social performance is often an important element in how companies are ranked. The SAM Corporate Sustainability Assessment Questionnaire, used during the assessment of companies for the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes (DJSI), includes a series of questions in the “social dimension.” In 2010, these questions were categorized as:
- Labor Practice Indicators
- Human Capital Development
- Talent Attraction & Retention
- Corporate Citizenship and Philanthropy
- Standards for Suppliers
- Stakeholder Engagement
Corporate Responsibility’s methodology for ranking The 100 Best Corporate Citizens includes seven categories that are each weighted based on their relative values. The “Employee Relations” accounts for 19.5 percent and Human Rights accounts for 16 percent of the score highlighting the importance of these social issues.
The crucial part of social responsibility measurement is focusing on the most appropriate and relevant metrics for your company. Going back to the basics of materiality – deciding what is most important – helps companies decide where to focus their resources for measuring and reporting in the social arena. Once the material issues are identified, you need to find metrics that are measurable in a meaningful way. What are the material social issues for your company and how do you measure your performance in those areas?
During the Social Metrics session at the upcoming EHS Management Forum in Tucson, we will hear how three global companies have incorporated social metrics into their CSR strategy. For those of you who have social metrics of your own, how did you identify which ones to track? Did you use an existing protocol or develop a unique set for your company?
Lisa Barnes is Technical Director of Climate Change Services for Bureau Veritas North America. She is a registered professional engineer, certified industrial hygienist, Lead Verifier for Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Lead Assuror for Sustainability Reporting and Lead Verifier for ISO 14001 Environmental Management Systems. Ms. Barnes’ education includes a bachelor of science in engineering from University of Vermont, master of health sciences from Harvard University and a master of business administration from St. Mary’s College. She has more than 25 years of experience in environmental, health and safety.
Bad Hiring Decisions Haunt Good People
Alex Pollock
Why do bad hiring decisions haunt good people? I’m involved in making an important leadership staffing decision as I write and I’ve researched some of the latest thinking to help minimize the potential for a poor staffing decision and thus prevent the long term damage that it causes.
I’ve been guided in the past by the timeless “3 C’s” of character, competency and chemistry, but I wonder if I can embellish this based on recent research. I found the work of Jeffrey Cohn and Jay Moran in the book, “Why are we Bad at Picking Good Leaders” (2011) most useful. They described what they feel are the essential attributes of effective leadership under the headings of:
- Integrity: the foundational attribute, honest, ethical
- Empathy: feel with people, social savvy, combined with integrity drives trust
- Emotional Intelligence: evident self mastery skills: “know yourself, control yourself, and improve yourself.”
- Vision: forward-thinking with a sense of possibility and wonder, innovative
- Judgment: focus on the important while seeing the “big picture”, take decisive action
- Courage: the ability to “act with grace under pressure”
- Passion: the drive to achieve, learn and master
In hiring decisions I’ve been encouraged to do my homework by the axiom “ You will get what someone has already gotten… no excuse for surprises.” I found the techniques that Cohn and Moran suggest, such as scenario discussions to be most useful for determining whether a candidate does indeed possess the desired attributes or not.
Help me out please. Have you ever made a poor hiring decision? What lessons can you share from the experience? What attributes do you view as important for leaders to possess and what techniques to you use to assess competency during the recruiting process?
The Considerable Challege of Setting Goals
Bruce Klafter
Inside most companies it may seem at times that we are virtually awash in goals, targets, objectives, incentives and other means of spurring us to action. Like many things in life, “too much of a good thing” can be counterproductive, but there is no question carefully formulated goals are critical to environmental, health and safety (EHS), and sustainability programs. As the great philosopher Yogi Berra once stated: “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.”
On October 19 at the NAEM Forum, we are going to explore a number of questions related to goal setting, but principally the “how” of it.
What makes setting an enterprise wide sustainability goal a tricky proposition? Here are some of the factors I believe come into play:
- A good deal of data is required and in many cases our data is missing, incomplete or lagging;
- Benchmarks are important, but can be misleading because no two companies are situated in exactly the same place;
- Multi-year goals are usually advisable, but the longer the duration of the challenge, the greater the uncertainty that creeps in. How many of us accounted for a global recession in 2009?
- Top-level participation is essential, but a certain amount of background is necessary and time and attention are hard to come by;
- How ambitious does your company wish to be, i.e. how far should the goals be stretched or how much risk of failure will be tolerated?
- How do the goals relate to overall company strategy or do you have the right people in the room to set the goals?
- What will it cost to attain the goals (a near certain question from your friendly CFO)?
Please add your questions to the mix and we will answer them all at the Forum (at least that’s my goal!)
Bruce Klafter is Managing Director for Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) at Applied Materials, Inc., where he also heads Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability. He will be speaking during the “Sustainability: Defining your Program, Setting the right Goals” session as part of NAEM’s EHS Management Forum on Oct. 19-20 in Tucson.
Conviction Alone Doesn’t Compel Change
Kimberly Wallis
This month in our ‘Emerging Leaders’ series, we introduce you to Kimberly Wallis, a master’s candidate at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, and a student member of NAEM. This summer she worked on energy issues as an intern with the Union of Concerned Scientists.
These days, a job in the hand is definitely worth more than two in the bush. No elected official is going to even consider a move that might cost their constituents jobs. So, convincing legislators in Ohio to invest in renewable energy, rather than in coal, one of their main industries, seems like a hard sell. Vague statements about ‘the green economy’ and ‘green collar jobs’ aren’t going to cut it with the legislators or with their constituents. “Maybe I would get better pay at a wind farm,” thinks the technician. “But I don’t know where these jobs would come from, or how many they would be. I’m better off just sticking at my old job.”
How many, where, and how much? Those are the questions the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) tried to answer regarding clean energy jobs in the Midwest states, including Ohio. It’s hard to convince people to give up the status quo for uncertainty, even if evidence shows that the change will be beneficial, so UCS put resources into erasing some of that uncertainty. As an intern there this summer, I helped paint a picture for Ohioans of what a different future might look like.
How would the change affect a household’s monthly energy bills? What would the net jobs increase be, not countrywide but in Ohio? In short, how would investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency impact the daily life of an Ohioan, and is it worth giving up the certainty of the status quo?
It’s not enough to tell people what not to do. It’s not even enough to tell them what to do instead. “Better the devil you know” – and uncertainty is always a devil. Painting a picture of what the future could look like gives people something to strive for, whether they are in your community or in your company. It’s the difference between a mission statement and a vision statement – and as the vision becomes more specific and tangible, it becomes more persuasive.
A call to “decrease waste!” or to “reduce GHG emissions!” isn’t going to convince anyone to give up the security of the status quo. What are you offering them instead, is the question.
When it comes to making the case for new EHS and sustainability programs, what tactics have you found to be most effective?
Kimberly Wallis is a graduate student in environmental management at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, where she focuses on energy issues and effective communication. She is particularly interested in how individuals and organizations change.
Staying Connected
Megan Lu
Every Friday, I, along with every PG&E employee, receive an e-mail from the CEO. It provides a link to the CEO’s blog in which he shares the issues that are on his mind – issues and challenges facing the company, how we’re going to rise to meet them. He also recognizes employees and teams for their successes.
The title of the e-mails (and the blog) is always the same: “Staying Connected”. When I first joined PG&E I thought that was a clever play on words; after all, we are a utility. It’s our business to help people “stay connected”. Recently, during a particularly busy day at the office, it occurred to me that “staying connected” isn’t something that’s only applicable to the CEO.
During the course of a typical business day, I have interactions with many people.
- Working with my direct reports. We update each other on current hot topics, what progress has been made on projects, what steps were to come next, with whom we had to partner, how we are going to communicate and where we are going as team.
- Meeting my internal business clients. I meet with the leadership teams of my internal client business groups regularly. We talk about their issues, how Environmental Operations can help them face those challenges. I also provide updates on new requirements their team may have to comply with in the near future, and work with them to achieve compliance.
- Working with a cross-departmental team. We were pulled together to address a concern by one of our external customers. Before our initial meeting, there’s a flurry of e-mails to prepare. What message would we send? How do we send it? How do we address their concerns? What do we need to do before we meet?
- Maintaining external/agency relationships. There are meetings coming up with some regulatory agencies to review the work done to date on plans to be submitted for their approval. We confer internally to go over questions, options and expected questions. Then, we make sure we provide open, transparent and clear communications with the agency to demonstrate our commitment to compliance and doing the right thing.
- A former colleague contacts me via LinkedIn. We exchange e-mails and catch up on what’s happened since we worked together. It’s always great to keep in touch; plus those former colleagues are always valuable resources when I’m trying to solve a particularly difficult issue.
As environmental professionals, it’s imperative for us to keep the communication flow going in order for us to be successful at what we do. At the end of the day, it’s clear that “staying connected” is a significant portion of my job. I “stay connected” over the phone, face to face, by e-mail and by social media.
How do you stay connected?
Megan Lum is Manager of Environmental Operations, Shared Facilities for Pacific Gas & Electric Co.
Collaborating on compliance
James Bilgo
For James Bilgo, Supervisor of EHS Program Management for Kohler Co., ensuring regulatory compliance is a unique challenge. A diverse manufacturing and services company, Kohler has more than 80 ‘facilities’ worldwide, including small tractor factories, high-end furniture showrooms, sales offices, spas, hotels and even golf courses. They all share the Kohler name, though, and Bilgo’s auditing team works hard to protect it. We caught up with him this week to talk about the company’s auditing programs and how he helped build a strong compliance culture.
GT: Today, the Kohler Co. is known for its strong culture of compliance. How did your team achieve that?
JB: Going back 25 years ago, we were probably like most companies in that we would go to our operations and spend a week there walking through their facilities and doing what everybody would call your environmental, health and safety (EHS) audit. We would then write up a report and then walk away.
What we noticed was that we started seeing the same thing, time after time at all our facilities. And we just said, ‘We need to take a different approach to this. We need to be part of their team. We have to build up that comfort level so if they have that problem, we’re the people they think about calling.’
So what we’ve done over the past 20 years is to develop systems that cooperatively and proactively show our operations the path to improvement. We then train them, help them, encourage them, and basically do whatever we can to help them get there.
GT: Can you describe what your inspections are like now?
JB: Today our visits don’t feel like inspections. Our facilities actually ask us, ‘When are you going to come next? We really need you here. We want to show you some of the good things we’re doing; we want to get this next tier level of performance.’
When we walk through a facility now, we don’t walk around and point out problems; we walk around and look at things. And many times, the things that stop us in our tracks are good things.
GT: When there is a problem, what kinds of things do you do to help them solve those problems?
JB: When there is an issue, we try not to just be critical; we want to be very positive. A lot of times we have a discussion, the facility managers make suggestions and we add our expertise about what other plants are doing.
We also have a Web page, where we put all of our best practices and all of the programs we think the facilities should be pursuing. When someone has done a good job, we put their best practice out there for everybody to look at and share.
Every year, we hold an EHS conference, where we bring in all our EHS people from all of our operations all over the world to share best practices, and figure out how to solve the problems. And when someone does have a problem, we end up sharing the solution with everyone so it’s more of a cooperative effort.
GT: How do you train your team to ensure they provide the right direction to the facilities?
JB: The guys who work for me, very seldom get technical training. I train my people more on how to have a crucial conversation, how to be a leader, how to have emotional intelligence so they can communicate in a very positive way to the operations. That’s a lot of what my guys take to the facility.
Our department has three main purposes. The first is protecting the Kohler brand. It’s very important that when people think of Kohler they think ‘They’re the guys with the really nice golf courses,’ or ‘They’re the guys who make those fantastic bathtubs.’ We want people to think about Kohler and think about great company, great quality. Two, we want to send all of our associates home in better condition than they were in when they arrived in the morning. And the third is, minimizing the impacts of our operations on the environment and on future generations. So all of our programs are geared to one of those three main objectives and that’s what we tell our operations.
GT: Can you describe how you’ve structured your system?
JB: Ours is a tiered system, in which the facilities are recognized for their achievements.
On the safety side, we developed the Kohler safety management system, a very detailed roadmap for operations to achieve world-class safety performance. We looked at other programs out there, developed our own and distributed it to the facilities. At first, everybody went through it and tried to find the easy things — and not necessarily the right things to do first.
So we found out that we kind of made a mistake there. You’ve got to build. You have to have a good foundation first before you can put on the roof. So we went back and we looked at the whole system, identified our expectations and prioritized the issues. Is this an issue that falls into Tier 1 (compliance); Tier 2 (management commitment); Tier 3 (Has it been adopted by all associates?); or Tier 4 (There’s no reason for us to even come and look at their operation)?
We’ve had this going for eight to ten years and we’re still heading down the path.
GT: What are some of the hallmarks of Tier 4?
JB: To reach Tier 4, the assessment involves going out and interviewing the associates on the floor, asking them questions and seeing how they answer.
What we’re looking for is whether they expound upon their answers and show us more than what we asked. If so, they’re portraying a positive EHS attitude and demonstrating that by showing us what they’re doing. To reach the highest tier on the environmental side, for example, they should be able to look in the garbage can and say, ‘See? We don’t even need garbage cans here because we don’t throw anything out anymore.’ We’re not there yet, but that’s what you want them to ultimately say.
GT: Do you still have checklists?
JB: We do have an assessment tool that asks specific questions that we confirm through documentation, interview or observation. It then explains what we should specifically be looking for. On Tier 1 it’s mostly show me the documentation; at Tier 4, it’s right to the interview and the observation. Is it very obvious to me that they understand it and they are living it?
GT: How do you ensure they maintain their status?
JB: We have a safety group (outside of our team) that does a complete assessment of the Tier 3 and Tier 4 facilities. Every few years, they will go back and reassess the operation to ensure it is maintaining its status. It’s my team’s responsibility to continue to work with the plant to keep up the good work.
James Bilgo is the Supervisor of EHS Program Management for Kohler Co. He will discuss the company’s collaborative auditing programs at NAEM’s upcoming “EHS Compliance Excellence” event on July 27-28 in Minneapolis.
How did you pick your EMIS?
Kelvin Roth
Apart from picking the right school and the right interview clothes, one of the biggest decisions you’ll need to make as an EHS professional is what EMIS (Environmental Management Information System) to use. This decision will not only make or break your department’s effectiveness, but will also greatly impact your staffing, budget, and ability to integrate with the rest of the business. In fact, it may set you on the right course to career success.
Today, EMIS have expanded beyond just environmental management systems and compliance. They now touch everything your department does including health and safety, auditing, training, and corporate sustainability metric tracking. An effective EMIS is a critical component of most thriving EHS departments. Most companies invest a tremendous amount of time, money and “brain sweat” into these systems. So how come some systems are a lot more successful than others?
Here’s the secret: it all starts with choosing the system that is the best fit for your needs. Choose correctly and your life becomes easier, your staff becomes more effective, and you’ll lose 10 pounds (ok, that last part may not be true). Choose incorrectly and your workload doubles, your staff spends time running in circles, you’ll spend $$$$, and you’ll gain 10 pounds (again, not proven, but the stress eating will likely do this).
Don’t get me wrong, configuration and implementation are also very important. But, if you choose the wrong system, you’ll spend far more time and money on those two activities than desired and you’ll likely never end up with the EMIS you need or want. Choose the system that is the best fit for your needs and those two steps become much much easier.
On the new NAEM portal, I’ve recently co-authored a white paper with Laura Murphy, from KMI, that lays out eight essential steps for getting this big decision right. To see the full paper, you’ll need to visit the website (and yes, that is a blatant plug for logging in and exploring the new content posted there), but I wanted to use this forum to discuss some of the advice you might have for those who are approaching this process.
What are some of the mistakes you’ve made in going through the EMIS selection process? What would you do again? What would you avoid?
A Tale of Two Generations
Stephen Evanoff
I recently participated in a discussion among senior environmental, health and safety (EHS) managers about how to attract recent college graduates and young professionals into the EHS management field. It occurred to me that this discussion, like most others on this topic, consisted exclusively of a bunch of Boomers, whose perspective and assumptions may not reflect those of the Millennial Generation they were discussing.
The careers of the people in the room and the EHS management profession began at the same time and grew in tandem. It as exciting for us. There were new regulations. Public expectations were increasing. We had top management attention and support, and hefty budgets. We were able to build programs, conduct research on and deploy new technologies, and establish new career paths. Boomers have experienced the EHS profession as a growing, dynamic, and prominent discipline within our companies. A career spent in EHS management had great appeal to us.
But, over the past decade, changes in our profession have been much more subtle and incremental. I wonder, now that EHS management is a mature and recognized component of business management, does the Millennial Generation view our field as less exciting and innovative than we did?
Sure, society faces major challenges ranging from loss of biodiversity, global warming, deteriorating ocean ecosystems, deforestation and limited water resources. But, when it comes to core EHS management programs, such as auditing, training, and compliance, have we lost our luster in the eyes of the Millennial Generation?
Should we begin to shift our EHS career paradigm to a model designed around bright, capable, young people who are more interested in mastering the basics of our profession and then moving on to careers in other parts of the business? If so, it would have a profound impact on how we manage our people and programs.
Am I “out in the ozone” in my thinking, as we Boomers used to say when we were kids? What have been your observations and experiences?
