Posts tagged ‘Environmental Management’
Adding the Big “S” Doesn’t Always Make it Sustainable
Mark C. Coleman
Does it seem as if environmental, health, and safety (EHS) professionals are getting longer titles? In the past year I have participated in many conferences and workshops, including NAEM’s well-attended 2011 EHS Management Forum, “EHS & Sustainability Success in the New Economic Era” in Tucson last fall. Call it a qualitative trend, but more EHS professionals now have “Sustainability” as part of their professional title. This should come as no major surprise, particularly as companies, small and large, begin to formally address sustainability within their daily operations, strategic planning and management of their enterprise.
Sustainability is serious business and it is the new and in-vogue “big S” confronting stakeholder engagement, current affairs and future competitiveness of corporations. Understanding the business context of, and taking action on, sustainability, requires support and engagement from all corporate functions (i.e., C- suite, EHS, legal, marketing, HR, public affairs, finance, manufacturing, and so on). Corporations can gain or lose ground on the “big S” depending upon how they align internal resources and pursue sustainability as a business strategy.
While this is anecdotal, it seems as if more companies have added the “big S” of sustainability to their traditional EHS functions more rapidly in the past two years. This begs the questions: Are EHS organizations equipped and prepared to deliver upon the “big S”?, Is EHS the right corporate function to lead the “big S”?, Is the “big S” truly being addressed in the company, or is it simply an additional title to maintain appearances?
These questions are highly consequential, not only to the viability of addressing sustainability in a deliberate and strategic way, but also to the success of the EHS organization, and the long-term performance, reputation and impact of the corporation. Given the challenges of the global economic environment, and amid many internal-and-external stakeholder pressures, many organizations are facing resource and talent constraints in trying to address all issues or being all things to all people. And, another responsibility, albeit a very ambiguous one at that in the “big S”, can tax those already-constrained resources.
So what to do? The following questions provide a framework for initiating critical thinking behind whether the “big S” should be part of your EHS organization, and to what degree your organization is prepared to assume responsibility for sustainability within your traditional EHS framework.
- Strategic Orientation: Does your company have a sustainability strategy? How was the strategy initiated? Has the strategy been adopted? Who is responsible and accountable to ensuring the strategy is achieved? Have processes and metrics been established to monitor and measure the performance and impact of your strategy? How frequently is your sustainability performance reviewed? Is your sustainability strategy an integral part of your overall corporate strategy?
- Current State of Affairs: What stage of development are your sustainability efforts within your corporation? Are there formal strategies, programs, processes and people dedicated to your sustainability efforts?
- Accountability: Who is responsible and accountable for ensuring your sustainability strategy is enacted, measured and integrated throughout the company? What is the scope of influence of this individual? Do they have profit-and-loss responsibilities, or do they serve an enterprise service function? Is sustainability managed as a centralized, decentralized, or combination of both functions within your company?
- Leadership and Governance: Has your senior management embraced sustainability as a strategic priority? Has your sustainability effort been reactionary to market, shareholder, stakeholder, customer needs or issues? Has the corporate board discussed sustainability? Has sustainability been integrated into corporate governance procedures, policies or documentation?
- Engagement: Have people, policies and practices been aligned toward a sustainability strategy within your company? How has this evolution occurred? Who has led the evolution of sustainability within your company?
- Role of EHS: Is sustainability considered an extension or addition to the responsibilities within EHS? What role does or has EHS served in supporting sustainability within your company?
- Integration: Has your company defined sustainability goals and strategy within the context of its people, corporate culture, business, products, history and business strategy? What internal functional groups have participated in the sustainability dialogue and evolution? What is the role of these groups going forward?
- Enterprise Risk Management: Has your organization conducted risk mapping of emerging issues, internal and external stakeholder points-of-view and perceptions, and other factors that influence the sustainability context of your business?
- Customized Pursuit of Growth and Innovation: Are your sustainability strategy and goals customized to your business, products and corporate context? Or are they a “drop-down menu” of disparate programs, metrics and goals that “seem” to be what every other company uses? Is sustainability viewed and pursued as an opportunity for risk management, innovation and corporate growth? Or is sustainability the “extra thing” on your full plate?
EHS organizations have a great deal to offer to the sustainability agenda for business, and can serve as the center of excellence to help bring corporate functions together, facilitate discussion and support strategic planning for sustainability. Benchmarking what is being done in other companies, including assessing best practices on business sustainability, is another service EHS organizations can conduct to provide immediate value to the corporation. Corporate EHS and sustainability programs are currently, and will continue to be, compared against each other as much as your product portfolio and financial performance is evaluated by external organizations. Thus, benchmarking others programs can lead to greater understanding of how others are finding value in, and implementing sustainability, and can lead to a more strategic and purposeful advancement of the “big S” within your company.
Adding the “big S” to EHS titles needs to be a deliberate and strategic decision. And once that “S” is added, we need to be prepared to be accountable to the new title. What do you think the relative opportunities and risks are of adding sustainability to the EHS function? Should any one department have responsibility for the “big S” or should it be attached to everyone’s job title?
Mark C. Coleman manages the Clean Energy Incubator (CEI) at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and is a Senior Program Manager for the Center for Integrated Manufacturing Studies (CIMS) and the Golisano Institute for Sustainability (GIS). His first book, “The Sustainability Generation: The Politics of Change and Why Accountability is Essential NOW” will be published in September 2012.
Why You Should Attend NAEM’s EHS Management Forum
Thinking about attending or exhibiting at NAEM’s annual EHS Management Forum? Hear from some of last year’s attendees about why it’s worth the trip.
Adding EHS Bench Strength
Alex Pollock
I was recently approached by an environment, health and safety (EHS) colleague to suggest people who could possibly fill a staff vacancy. My colleague had little experience in hiring, since budget reductions and “ranking and yanking” had been all that was demanded over the last decade or so. To this point, replenishing the “bench” had remained a dream. I’d like to share the points I asked my colleague to consider and get your reaction.
- Ensure you have support for the budget increase: Your leader and your key clients must support the expenditure and accept your assessment of the value added. A solid business case exists for improving the value-added services provided to clients.
- Ensure your new hire advances your functional vision: Resist hiring to cover one-of-a-kind projects or cover temporary increases in workload. Seek temporary help to get you through. Also don’t hire to cover the inadequacies of a poor performer. Resolve any performance issues you have and keep this need separate from your hiring decision. Fill a position which momentum has already created and resist “staffing for growth” that is just around the bend.
- Think paradigm shift: Don’t rush. Step back. Dream a little. Resist the like-for-like option. What is the competency mix that increases your bench strength and allows you to advance your service offerings and better meet client needs?
- Be patient: Now you have the green light make a wise hiring decision. Take all the steps necessary to ensure you feel good about your hiring decision three years from now. Do your homework. Ensure you have the character, chemistry and competency boxes ticked.
What do you think? Your input to these points are welcomed and appreciated.
The Four Traits of Successful Managers
Kelvin Roth
Over the years, I have seen many lists of attributes of a good manager. I’ve read business articles with lists of the top 10-25 traits of a good manager and books that spend hundreds of pages describing qualities that a manager should have to be successful. While there is plenty of good information in all those sources, I believe we only need to look to successful sports managers to distill all those words into the four key qualities. The qualities that define a championship coach are the same attributes that can help EHS and business managers succeed. They are:
1. Recruiting: All successful managers choose good employees. They select employees that bring skills to advance the team. They not only hire good people, but they hire the right good people. Good managers learn the strengths and weaknesses of their teams, understand what is missing to achieve the organization’s goals, and bring in the right people.
2. Prioritizing: A good manager can see the “end zone” and prioritize the necessary steps to reach that goal. This means sorting through the busy work and identifying the key activities/programs that will lead to long-term success. Letting go of activities that may seem good but don’t advance the organization can be difficult. There will be things that won’t get done, and that’s okay because they weren’t the important ones. Think of this as your game plan.
3. Delegating: You can’t just hand out assignments and expect your organization to grow. Delegation is a plan agreed on by two parties that establishes expectations, activities, and timelines. It ensures that the strengths of the individual are used fully within the team, and allows all members to contribute to the success of the team. Employees need a sense of the importance of what they’re working on – its importance to the company, its importance to customers – and need to know their role in accomplishing the goal. Employees who understand these items are more easily empowered to succeed. This is your play book.
4. Coaching: You must develop your people to do their jobs better than you can. Inspire them to be the best and transfer your knowledge and skills to them. This is the only way that you will be able to take on new challenges yourself. Think about how many championship coaches have had assistants that have gone on to be champions. A good coach or manager is not afraid of his team succeeding. Trust me: There is an infinite amount of work to be done and good managers will always be in demand.
What do you think about this list? Do any of these traits resonate with your experience? What advice do you have for those who are trying to develop these attributes?
Kelvin Roth is Director of Environment, Health and Safety for AMCOL International Corp. and the President of NAEM’s Board of Directors. Follow him on Twitter at @Oenodog.
What is the value of water?
David Crisman
This week NAEM’s Upper Midwest Local Networking Group met to discuss regional water management challenges and to explore best practices from around the world. We caught up with speaker David Crisman, Principal of EHS Management Associate LLC, to learn about his research on water management approaches in Australia.
GT: Why did you begin research water management approaches in Australia?
DC: In the case of Australia, what has been the most fascinating to me is the Murray-Darling River Basin. It’s 14 percent of the country area-wide, six percent of the water that falls on Australia falls in the basin. It’s something like half of all the agriculture comes from the basin. Just to give you an idea, 44 percent of the water consumed in Australia goes to agriculture, so you’ve got fairly substantial land area, not so big of an input (because the only input is rain) and a huge water take. And now even in a good year less than half of the water makes it to the ocean. So it’s like our Colorado River.
In Australia, the individual states control resources, so the federal government said, “Wait a second. We’ve got three major states drawing water and as the federal government, we need to say what is the environmental water needed just so it makes it to the ocean so we have aquatic habitat, we have tourism, we have those benefits that we don’t normally think about, rather than throwing it on a rice field.
I thought this was a really good example to look at because as industry people, we don’t think of water coming in; our requirements are always on the water going out. And in the industry, I used to work in (specialty chemicals), water quality was important. If you start taking too much water out of this area, you start having saline problems, you start having acidification problems. Even if I had a plant in this area, you could be saying, “Is it drinkable?” but also, “Is it even useful in a manufacturing setting?” We don’t think of the upstream side. We think of the wastewater side.
So I was really trying to get into that particular issue by taking a look at Murray Darling. I think the cutting-edge thought was what they came up with, which was to create a water market. They said, “The Basin has a finite amount of water and we’ve got to balance this whole water usage and it doesn’t matter if you’re taking it from a well or you’re taking it directly from the river, we’ve got to figure out that balance. It’s a commodity, there’s going to be years it’s in surplus, years that it’s deficient, so how do we, as Australia, buy water to lower the allocation within the Basin so there’s enough water for fish, for flow and all those other things?”
It’s a good technical problem.
GT: What are some of the guidelines of the water market Australia established?
DC: There’s permanent trades that going on – I can actually sell you my rights as a property owner—and there are allocation trades—I can sell you my annual take because it’s low this year. So if the tomato farmer decides it’s more worth his while to sell his allocation this year, he can give it to the guy who owns the vineyard. So what is the value of water? There are also regulations in place to ensure that the way you use the water on your land doesn’t impact others. So the legal framework is critical, too.
GT: How can those lessons be applied to water management in the Upper Midwest region?
DC: Everything has a yin and a yang. So the fact that we have constant supply is really great. We may never think about water coming into a facility, but when we turn the tap, we will have water. The negative is ‘Have I really been thinking of the cost?’ And will that price for water increase? And will it become a variable cost for me? Meaning that one year I will pay x, but two years later it may be 5x or something more. For businesses, it’s probably easier to plan on price than to deal with a disruption. So that’s probably an overall positive.
The next thing is quality. If I can get to a consistent quality grade it’s going to mean less disruption, less upset for my manufacturing process. But that again boils down to price. And then you start to see intangible benefits and impacts. People can’t come to work because their neighborhood is on fire. If you can have consistent supply, you can perhaps deal with drought situations. And of course there are lifestyle impacts in Australia because if you look up Australian water restrictions online you’ll see pages of instructions of when you can water your lawn, do your laundry. That’s at a more personal level but it could reach industry as well.
GT: How close do you think we are to seeing some of the approaches being used in Australia to be applied to the U.S.?
DC: It’s hard to say because it sometimes seems like if we want to focus on an issue, we need to have a crisis. Last year we were dealing with too much water. I think the question of quantity has to be driven by a drought. And certainly the Texas situation if it continues may end up pushing a lot of buttons because those Great Lakes look awfully tempting.
David Crisman is the Principal at EHS Management Associate. As the former EHS Director for a global, specialty chemical company, he is well-aware of the challenges facing today’s EHS managers. He continues to study trends to deal with water supply and quality issues throughout the world.
To learn more about NAEM’s Upper Midwest Local Networking Group, please visit http://www.naem.org/?LNG_Upper_Midwest
Communication Lessons from a Global EHS Manager
By Jim Spahr
Global Environmental Manager
Solae LLC
As a college student in the early 90’s I thought I was in good shape as a communicator. I was pretty social for an engineer (nerd) and I wasn’t afraid to get up and speak in front of a large group. So, when I started my first job as an environmental engineer at a paper mill in the Deep South, I never expected communicating would be a problem. I was wrong. And I would learn some valuable lessons about cross-cultural communications.
First of all there was the language barrier. Yes they were speaking English but with that wonderful southern drawl. I love a southern accent but there’s a big difference between talking football and discussing a complex manufacturing process. I had to keep asking people to repeat themselves. Add to that the cultural differences and I was quickly developing a reputation as “that rude Yankee who don’t hear so well”. Luckily I gained a mentor who was both an engineer and a fellow northern transplant. Through him I learned the importance of learning the local culture, utilizing local resources and adapting for success.
My mentor explained the importance of small talk in the South. When you need data or information from someone you don’t dash off an email with: “Please provide x, y and z, by next Friday”. You walk down the hall to their office and you start off by asking them about their kid’s Little League team or how they hit the ball on the golf course last weekend. I was accustomed to the norms of the metro northeast; “Tell me what you need, tell me when you need it and I’ll get to you.” I could imagine how this new approach would have gone over when I was a co-op working in Pittsburgh.
Me: “Hi Bill, how’s your day going.”
Bill: “Peachy.”
Me: “How’s your son’s baseball team doing? Did they win on Saturday?”
Bill: “Why are you here and what the heck do you want?!?”
Yet it worked like a charm at the paper mill and although, as a Yankee, you can never be accepted as a true Southerner, at least I was considered a nice Yankee. I even starting using “y’all” every once in while.
Later in my career when I was tasked with supporting the construction and startup of a manufacturing plant in India this lesson in learning the culture would pay dividends. Before the project got underway I used the Internet to research Indian history, culture and business etiquette. I spoke with my Indian colleagues about the similarities and differences. I even boned up on the national sport, Cricket, and followed the performance of the local team. All of this paid off as I was able to develop good working relationships with the local staff and I avoided most of the pitfalls that tripped up some of my American colleagues on the project.
Now, as a Global Environment, Health and Safety (EHS) leader, I’m tasked with implementing corporate policies across multiple cultures. The lessons that I learned through my earlier experiences led me to three keys for success in working across cultures.
- Good translations: Google Translate might work well when you’re trying to decipher an email but don’t count on it for important documents. If you’re lucky, you may have an internal resource who is fluent in English and the local language but even this is risky. For important documents, always use a reputable translation service. They have multiple layers of verification to ensure your translations are accurate and complete. As an additional safeguard, even when I use a translation service, I always have an internal native speaker of the target language review the translated materials.
- Use local resources: While it’s important to do your homework, no amount of internet research can replace the insight to be gained from developing relationships within your business. Regions within a country and even business cultures from plant to plant can vary widely. Having a network of trusted colleagues across all locations will help you avoid mistakes. A good network can help you test ideas, develop local plans and facilitate projects.
- Adapt to the local culture: Different does not mean wrong. When working across cultures, a one-size-fits-all approach is a recipe for failure. Balancing the need for a consistent approach to EHS programs with the realities of local differences is critical to the success of your program. When developing global polices, standards and initiatives, I always try to leave as much flexibility as possible without compromising the imperatives of employee safety and environmental stewardship.
Utilizing these three keys to success is not always easy. This approach requires that you work with each region or site to develop their site-specific implementation plans. It also places greater importance on verification through internal auditing. But if you put in the effort the rewards will be many. Sites will take owner ship of their EHS systems. You will see faster adaptation to revised or new initiatives. Flexibility allows sites to develop creative best practices that can be shared across the organization. And in the long run you will see continuous improvement in your EHS performance.
At times it’s been difficult, but as I’ve gained experience and learned from my mistakes I‘ve come to treasure working in different cultures. It has enriched my personal life and has made me more effective as an EHS professional. I hope that when you encounter similar opportunities you will embrace them with open arms and an open mind.
Jim Spahr is an Operations EHS leader with 19 years of experience working across borders and across cultures to improve safety, health and environmental outcomes. His main areas of interest and expertise are Management Systems, Sustainability and International EHS Management. His passions are skiing, backpacking and spending time with his family (not necessarily in that order). You can reach him at jspahr@solae.com and connect with him at http://www.linkedin.com/in/jspahr
For more of Jim’s cross-cultural communication resources, please visit the Emerging Leaders group in NAEM’s online community.
How a New Design Revolution will Change Supply Chain Management
Howard Brown
Stories about Henry Ford’s genius with manufacturing abound, though it’s rarely clear which ones are actually true. One of my favorites is his insisting that parts manufacturers deliver their products to his plants in wooden crates of his design, which he then dismantled and used as floorboards in his cars.
Supply chain management has grown in sophistication and importance since Ford’s time. The quality movement, just-in-time manufacturing, corporate responsibility initiatives, enterprise-wide information systems, environmental impact analyses like life-cycle assessments, and growth in transparency and public access to information have all brought about major changes in supply change management. Now a new design revolution is about to create an even bigger change in supply chain thinking. The change will come both from new materials and products and from new manufacturing technologies.
Radical new materials and products (such as the ones we feature in the dMASS Insights newsletter) will themselves disrupt traditional supply chain relationships. For example, there are composite materials that exhibit behaviors with the potential to replace mechanical appliances, tools, and other machinery – even entire factories. There are materials that can be used to generate electricity by movement, temperature differences and solar energy conversion. Others have the ability to interfere with the growth of harmful bacteria, actively transfer heat or emit light with minimal energy subsidy. The cumulative effect of new materials and products will be shorter and simpler supply chains.
New manufacturing technologies will be at least as disruptive as the products themselves. Nano-scale manufacturing technologies such as Additive Layer Manufacturing (including 3D printing) and bio-manufacturing (the growing of products) stem from recent advances in the scientific understanding of how nature organizes itself at the most fundamental levels of matter and energy. Similarly, biomanufacturing stems from new discoveries in the fields of genetics and micro-organisms. The common thread among each of these technologies is a growing knowledge of nature’s tendency to self-organize, and an ability to leverage this knowledge.
Three-dimensional (3D)printing, in particular, has the potential to drastically cut resource demands, costs and dependence on resource-intensive supply chains, as well as pollution and waste. Advanced computer-aided design (CAD) systems bring design down to the level of individual molecules. The entire downstream supply chain for a 3D-printed product can be a set of printer cartridges containing different chemical elements. When laid down in precise proportions, the atoms arrange themselves into material structures with the desired characteristics. Printing can often be done in small shops, portable facilities, or even in the home. There is little or no need for high-temperature smelting in parts manufacturing, high-speed grinding or stamping that produces manufacturing scrap, or glues, adhesives, staples, rivets and other parts to hold separate pieces together.
Henry Ford’s tactic saved resources a century ago by creatively taking advantage of existing supply chain resources and harvesting value from waste. Nano- and bio-technologies will radically transform supply chain management in a new way. Business success will increasingly require understanding these technologies and taking advantage of the changes they will bring about.
What are your thoughts? Have you begun to experience supply chain changes due to commodity prices or supply problems, or due to the availability of new materials, products, or technologies?
Howard Brown is a noted entrepreneur and the founder of dMASS.net, an organization focused on helping businesses improve resource performance. For more than 20 years, he was CEO of the consultancy RPM Systems, Inc. (Resource Planning and Management), where he worked with companies such as International Paper, Mobil, BP, Duracell, Avery- Dennison, Whirlpool, SaraLee, and Wrigley, earning a worldwide reputation for developing practical strategies that merge environmental and business goals. To learn more about dMass, visit: http://www.dmass.net/wordpress/
