What is EHS compliance?
What is EHS compliance and why is it important?
Environmental, health and safety (EHS) compliance is a blanket term that refers to all of the laws, rules, regulations, procedures, programs, roles, policies and efforts put in place to help protect the safety and health of your team, the public, and the environment from workplace-related hazards and dangers.
EHS compliance are the actions, activities, prohibitions and directives designed to reduce injuries, illnesses and contamination in the workplace and in the environment. There are many examples of why, going back to the dawn of labor (ever busted your knuckles trying to shape a piece of flint into a spear tip or slice your finger open skinning a woolly mammoth?) but let’s look at a few instances where proper EHS compliance could have really saved some lives, past and present.
The BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 killed 11 people instantly and went on to become the biggest oil spill in history. The Bhopal gas leak in India took place in 1984 and killed thousands of people and injured countless others when 45 tons of methyl isocyanate gas was accidentally released from a chemical plant. In 2018, Camp Fire was caused by a faulty electric transmission line being ignited. The fire originated above several communities and an east wind drove the fire downhill through developed areas, killing 85 people and burning over 153,000 thousand acres (about the area of Texas). These are some examples of extreme disasters, but going to work with ten fingers and coming home with 9 is a sensational disaster too, and that’s another reason why EHS compliance is so important.
How do those in compliance roles create, educate, and enforce the rules, regulations, laws, policies and procedures designed to keep us all safe?
EHS compliance for an organization means more than just following the minimum set by the law to avoid enforcement fines or being shut down. It’s embracing a culture that places the wellbeing of humans, communities and the environment ahead of everything else. Companies who prioritize EHS compliance and foster a positive safety culture may also experience greater employee satisfaction, higher productivity, consumer ratings, and more.
An EHS manager or individual in a similar role takes on the primary responsibility for making sure that the company or organization they represent is aware of, and successfully implementing and following all the rules and regulations that apply to their industry or area of practice. They take on (either alone or with a team or even an entire department) the assessment, mitigation, removal and prevention of workplace and environmental hazards, as well as the training, education, and the overall health of their company and workforce. Every worker has the right to work and live in an environment free of safety and health hazards.
