EHS Risk Management: All You Need to Know

EHS, i.e., Environmental Health and Safety, is among the most crucial factors for any organization. But let’s delve a little deeper and focus on a subset of this function — EHS risk management. The concept alludes to the method of determining hazards and then eliminating or minimizing their impact on the organization. Sounds simple enough, yes? Unfortunately, in reality, EHS risk management is a tad more complicated than that. And unless it is done and executed in a proper, strategized manner, the scope for dangerous situations is massive, including injuries to staff, shutdowns, and more.

But before we can get around to understanding how one can do EHS risk management right, it is imperative to understand the basics that drive it. Let’s start with why it is essential.

Importance of EHS risk management

No matter how pure a record an organization may have in regards to compliance with regulations such as OSHA, EPA, and more, adapting to changes in laws and rules, and top-notch implementation, the truth is that accidents will still happen and so will the injuries sustained by employees. Why does that happen? The simple answer is that even though the relevant laws and regulations serve to ensure safety at the workplace and more, they are only doing the bare minimum. Allow us to clarify — see; these regulations only stipulate the minimum when it comes to environmental standards as well as that for safety.

But since situations continue to arise, nonetheless, EHS risk management is the most widely accepted solution. Don’t believe us? Well, studies have shown that as many as 78 percent of the top brass in EHS believes that risk management is critical for the success of their endeavors. Here are some of the benefits that will help explain why is that:

• It allows companies to not only consistently ensure compliance with all the requisite regulations, but also improve in the context of existing rules and more.
• EHS risk management helps companies determine ‘hidden’ risks to the business quickly and efficiently.

EHS risk management categories

Contrary to popular belief, EHS risk management is about so much more than just risks associated with safety. And for any such endeavor to be successful, it is vital that all aspects are covered and adequately tended to. To help you out with that, we compiled a list of some of the prevalent types of risks observed across organizations and departments.

• Environmental risk
• Compliance risk
• Climate risk

Now that we have covered the rudimentary aspects of EHS risk management, it is time to take a look at how companies can do it better.

How to use technology for better EHS risk management

Thanks to EHS management systems, automated EHS solutions, and more, it has become wildly easy to deal with the entire risk management process. Some of the most popular ways include:

• Big data: Owing to the prevalence of this technology, one can usually integrate it into their EHS systems without a fuss and then use this combination to bring together EHS data with tools for business intelligence.
• Keeping an eye on top indicators: Manual tracking methods are often subject to errors, which can make it incredibly hard to determine risk effectively. But leading EHS systems now offer companies the ability to focus their efforts in this context on things like injury costs, incidence rates, and more. It, in turn, fortifies the company’s predictive analysis.
• Yet another novel way technology has now come to play a massively crucial role in EHS risk management is advanced modeling. Thanks to the wonder that is modern technology, EHS systems and solutions now can put together solid sets of data to facilitate advanced modeling.

As you can see, EHS risk management is integral to any business’s efforts when it comes to EHS. So, we highly recommend getting in touch with a reliable vendor who can deliver robust software for OHS for your organization.