Leveraging Your EHS Software System to Drive Culture Change

Today’s best practices in EHS and Sustainability management strive to influence the culture at all levels of an organization to foster awareness and shared accountability for workplace safety and health and environmental stewardship. The implementation of an EHS software system does not tend to correlate directly to this goal, however it can have a tremendous impact if embraced as an opportunity to drive desired culture changes. With this end goal in mind, the decisions made during implementation planning focus on end user engagement. The best part? With user engagement achieved everything else falls into place.

For example, your EHS software system can do more than collect data about incidents at each location, it can empower all employees to directly report incidents, or better yet, report hazards before they result in incidents. Similarly, your system can do more than track compliance with EHS training requirements, it can empower employees with awareness about training opportunities that go beyond compliance. Also, why settle for ensuring compliance with process safety management when implementing change instead of empowering employees to suggest changes that optimize processes, reduce costs and improve safety? When a system is implemented with these engagement goals in mind employees are given a voice – that voice becomes the culture change that promotes the behaviors that achieve your ultimate goals. Suddenly business process adoption, collection of consistent data for easy rollup reporting, and improved EHS and sustainability performance happen naturally.

If you’re attending NAEM’s 2015 EHS and Sustainability Software Conference, participate in this session to look at best practices in software implementations through the lens of culture change. Hear examples from other companies’ successes and challenges and learn proven techniques for leveraging your system to drive culture change.