EHS Resource Guide

From business risk to potential employee exposure to human health or ecological risk—EHS risk can be defined in a wide variety of ways and represent different implications for every business. As a result, there’s no one-size-fits-all risk management approach.

Environment, Health, and Safety 

Low Risk is Not No Risk 

As an Environment, Health, and Safety (EHS) Manager, your job is to understand the top hazards found within your business and put plans in place to avoid them. This includes office work environments. While offices might be “low risk” when compared to industrial workplaces, it doesn’t mean that they are “no risk,” and should be managed accordingly.  

People are your company’s most important asset. Keep them happy and comfortable in your office by following these three tips: 

1. Know-How: Make your workplace safe, which results in productive and comfortable employees. Be an expert in the EHS challenges that come with hybrid workspaces including ergonomic set-up for employees with unassigned seats in the office and varied home office set-ups, emergency management approaches when you have an inconsistent workforce in the office, and overall employee well-being balancing hybrid work demands. 
2. Helping Hands: Equip yourself with the right resources to fully implement and support your EHS programs. Bring in support to act as an extension of your internal teams. 
3. Prevent Larger Issues: Foster an open and collaborative culture of safety in the workplace. Deliver people-first safety policies to protect your employees and your brand reputation.

Common Myths About EHS Risk 

Today’s EHS professional wears several hats, with responsibilities spanning from compliance and risk management to helping drive overall business value. To help you achieve your objectives, we’ve outlined some of the common myths that can easily undermine your efforts, as well as tips for tackling them. 

1. Compliance equals prevention: Prevention and risk management requires consistent action to identify, evaluate and implement controls to both sustain compliance and protect employees. 
2. “Low risk” means “no risk”: When programs are running smoothly, and incidents are few and far between, it can be tempting to assume the trend will continue. But the reality is that every workplace comes with its own unique risks.
3. Long-time employees don’t need more training: Their knowledge and understanding of relevant EHS topics may be outdated or non-existent. 
4. Supervisors are the only employees with the authority to stop work: There are no laws or regulations barring non-supervisors from stopping work due to safety concerns. 
5. Being safe requires a lot of time and money: While investing in a safe and empowered workforce certainly requires time, money, and resources, not investing can prove far more costly. 

EHS Due Diligence Checklist 

Assessing the EHS risks and implications of an owned or leased building is critical in assuring a safe work environment for all employees, contractors, visitors, and the public. And while EHS may not always have a seat at the table during the transaction itself, we certainly have a responsibility to understand and manage EHS risks that come with an acquisition, move, or expansion and a role to play in integrating the new property into the company’s EHS culture. 

Particularly in low-risk environments, EHS can fly under the radar in all the busyness of a transition, emerging only when the organization is surprised with an unforeseen risk or problem. We’ve seen companies uncover hazardous materials used in a building’s original construction during renovation (leading to lost business when the facility had to temporarily halt operations), struggle to implement critical life safety systems in developing countries and discover that the HVAC system spreads noxious fumes throughout the building every time the roof is re-tarred, quickly sending everyone home and stopping business for the day (or week). 

As the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and being able to quickly identify and mitigate EHS risks can be the key to a successful, incident-free property transition or integration.

Expect the Unexpected

Preparing for the unknown as a business can be daunting. With emergencies, you never know what could happen that could lead to downtime, lost profit, injury, or even data loss. Everything from natural disasters, which are becoming more common due to our warming planet, oil spills, security breaches, stormwater pollution, and even on-the-job injuries fall under the category of emergencies you need to plan for. Creating a comprehensive business continuity plan is vital to staying open after an emergency.

But, it’s something many businesses fail to follow through with, which can lead to serious consequences, including business closure. In fact, according to FEMA, 25% of companies don’t reopen after an emergency. So, how do you know what plans to have in place for your specific type of facility? We’ll break down what plans are available to you, what they do, and which ones you should use in your facility – focusing on low-risk and high-risk facilities.   

Climate Change 

Climate Resiliency 

Across every sector, businesses are coming under increased pressure from regulators, investors and customers to think more seriously about their exposure to climate risk—both the physical risks of climate change, and the transition risks associated with the shift to a low carbon economy. 

The business community is taking significant action to mitigate its effects on climate change by committing to Science Based and net-zero targets for greenhouse gas emissions as well as preparing facilities, supply chains, and employees for a more uncertain world.   

That said, much more needs to be done. 

A robust risk analysis is a good first step; but the harder step involves taking action and building a more resilient business. Resiliency cannot be built alone; facilities are not islands, and efforts to decarbonize and strengthen infrastructure involve coalitions of community partners and other businesses.  

• Develop a Climate Resiliency Toolkit: Have a toolkit for your facilities that lays out mitigation options based on exposure to physical risks.  
• Engage With Your Communities: Fighting climate change is an all-hands-on-deck operation. Building robust engagement with communities to ensure that shared infrastructure is being designed to reduce future risk.  
• Utilize Science-Based Targets: Ensuring that the organization’s decarbonization strategy is in line with the latest climate science, by submitting and validating targets through the Science Based Targets Initiative. Setting Science Based Targets helps to shift the decision-making process within a business and leads to long-term, meaningful change.   

Water Risk 

Climate change impacts also have many businesses beginning to wonder how this will impact their water risk. The United Nations water scarcity factsheet shows that by 2025, as many as 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, and that two-thirds of the population could be living in conditions that are considered water-stressed. Whether business operations are located within a watershed that has sufficient supply to meet demand or not, companies should investigate more into their water requirements and sources to determine the risks that need to be addressed. 

Identifying PFAS Risk in Drinking Water

A study found rainwater contained levels of the class of chemicals known as PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) deemed out of bounds per safety guidelines published by the EPA and other global organizations. 

Ian Cousins, the lead author of the study and professor at the Department of Environmental Science, Stockholm University, concluded, “Based on the latest U.S. guidelines for PFOA in drinking water, rainwater everywhere would be judged unsafe to drink.”  

Rainwater feeds many of the world’s municipal and unconfined groundwater supplies. Since PFAS has entered the water cycle, an increasing number of municipalities are now grappling with how to mitigate PFAS in their drinking water. 

While there are thousands of chemicals classified as PFAS, a handful have been linked to potentially serious health consequences. The presence of these PFAS chemicals in water supplies has led to a number of emergency situations in communities served both by private wells and municipal water supply.  

Since the study of health effects linked with PFAS is still relatively new, the full impact of these chemicals on the human body has yet to be realized. 

Proactive engagement in PFAS education, risk assessment, and remediation is the best way to approach PFAS contamination.  

These are the steps we recommend. 

1. Learn About the Risks: there is a lot more to learn about PFAS and associated business risks
2. Screen Your Business for Risks: With an increase in regulations regarding the use and disposal of PFAS chemicals, due diligence is a must. 
3. Stay Informed: Make sure you turn to trusted sources to stay up-to-date on changes to regulations and other significant announcements around PFAS use, disposal, and remediation.