EHS programs are most successful when they’re embedded in company culture, where employees feel they have the knowledge and encouragement to play an active role in program initiatives.
You may be thinking: “What does company culture have to do with EHS performance?”
The short answer is: everything. Since employee behaviors and attitudes directly impact compliance, company culture is a critical driver of EHS and sustainability performance.
Of course, building EHS into company culture can be challenging as many EHS managers work hard to manage programs across multiple facilities on tight budgets and with limited resources. In addition, for global companies, corporate expectations may differ from some international cultural norms and regulations, making it difficult to understand the true nature of your company’s EHS culture across all operations.
To help companies manage this complexity, Antea Group designed a low-cost, fit-for-purpose solution to provide global EHS managers with the data and information they need to assess and improve EHS culture, ultimately driving performance and compliance. That solution is EHS FleX.
Below we dive into the key cultural benefits that EHS FleX brings to the table.
1. Enhances cultural insights
If you want to reshape your company culture to focus on EHS, you first need to understand how your EHS program is understood at the facility level.
Employee behaviors are often driven by the intangible aspects of your company’s culture—those items that aren’t found in policies, programs and procedures. EHS culture is created via a myriad of interactions of intentional and unintentional messages—and EHS FleX helps sort out what facilities are experiencing.
EHS FleX connects you with an objective, in-country consultant who has a comprehensive understanding of a region or country’s cultural EHS paradigms and regulatory environment. Through detailed conversations with your EHS management team, our consultant will determine your level of cultural maturity, how well your culture is defined, and whether messages are helping inform and engage employees in the right way.
2. Ensures teamwork
At its core, EHS FleX is a team building process that encourages individual facilities to communicate its compliance barriers and needs.
To facilitate this process, Antea Group uses a series of crucial conversations to roll out the program and get buy in from regional and facility-level personnel. These communications make it clear what information is being gathered, how it will be used, and how the facilities will engage with the process and results. The in-country consultants are primed with knowledge of the corporate EHS program and priorities and can help ensure facility personnel understand what resources they have available to tackle EHS requirements.
In addition, this process helps rally top-down support of what type culture the corporation is trying to create.
3. Identifies gaps
From program management to program analysis, EHS FleX identifies documentation, knowledge and training gaps in policies, programs and processes, prioritizes them by risk level and provides recommendations on how to resolve them. Gaps can be as simple as missing documents or more complex issues such as deep divides in employee training or comprehension.
EHS FleX works quickly to identify gaps, often taking just eight weeks to complete a full analysis. Armed with this information, you can then jumpstart your efforts to seize opportunities for improving programs, and enhancing employee know-how and engagement.
4. Uncovers trends across geographies and facility types
In addition to a gap analysis, EHS FleX includes a trends analysis to uncover the most prevalent practices or attitudes across geographies and facilities types.
This not only helps you understand specific risks and opportunities now, but also helps you manage them into the future to ensure cultural stability across the company. In addition, the trends analysis can also help you determine if budgets and priorities are aligned for what is needed to support daily operations at each facility.
5. Eliminates bias of self-audits
In our experience, EHS self-audits can become an internal power struggle, resulting in suspect data that is often a poor indicator of the true status of compliance and EHS culture maturation.
As mentioned above, EHS FleX matches you with an objective, third-party consultant who can provide immediate support, answer critical questions and help you navigate compliance and cultural nuances present at your facilities.
6. Delivers actionable recommendations
After surveying facility personnel, engaging your management team, and evaluating your programs, you will have a wealth of data at your fingertips—illuminating where cultural building needs to occur.
After analyzing that data, your EHS FleX consultant will deliver specific recommendations on how to tackle gaps and opportunities, prioritized by level of risk.
Driving Performance through Culture
Every company has a culture. But the question is whether your culture supports your EHS objectives. Recognizing and managing your company’s culture is critical to understanding and managing EHS performance. EHS FleX aims to help you do precisely that.
To see EHS FleX in action, read our case study to learn how it addressed the unique needs of three companies.
To learn more about how EHS FleX can give you the insights you need to enhance EHS culture, make resource allocation decisions, and gain baseline intel on building a global program, visit our EHS FleX service page.
