The importance of excellence in SH&E

By Sue Watt, senior Health, Safety & Environment consultant, SAI Global

While SH&E may be considered administratively onerous because of the sheer number of SH&E obligations to meet (up to 10,000), means it is imperative that SH&E professionals implement a model that delivers governance excellence to protect businesses and their directors.
SH&E professionals need to cover the gamut – from a comprehensive and complete knowledge of the relevant laws and other legal obligations, to managing a consistent communications framework both vertically and horizontally, to ensuring compliance and reporting on the SH&E program. Increasingly, as business leaders become personally liable for breaches and corporate reputations hang in the balance, SH&E professionals will be required to step up to the Board and executive management and prove that obligations are being met and that the SH&E systems will stand up to scrutiny.
But with so many obligations to be aware of and usually limited resources, what can a SH&E professional do to implement a model that will protect a business and increase productivity? A key challenge for the SH&E professional is to maintain a clear line of sight to the Board and executive management of the business, and to play a significant role in influencing a business's risk policy. Until SH&E risks are considered material risks at the Board level, SH&E won't have the prominence or resources it needs to lead excellence in the business.
The key elements to any effective and integrated approach to SH&E are leadership, culture, assurance and improvement, framework and system and finally, and most importantly, a comprehensive and up to date obligations register. The SH&E professional needs to be across all of the business's obligations, but also able to step back from the detail so they can engage with senior management.
How can we ensure that SH&E professionals have a line of sight to the board and are able to influence risk policy? There are some key elements to leadership that the SH&E practitioner aiming for governance excellence can manage:
. develop Key Risk Indicators (KRIs) and engage with the board to ensure these are considered business critical (by going beyond personal risk and emphasising the effects on productivity, reputation and the risk of prosecution)
. influence risk policy
. help set short and medium term performance objectives
. drive a culture of open communication from the top down and bottom up.
A culture of open communication may already be part of the collective beliefs and values that operate within a business – but it also needs to be part of the safety sub-culture on a behavioural level. Open communications that encourage and reward reporting of risks and incidents will allow a practitioner to drive risk down to an individual level which should be supported by effective training and assessment of staff. This can help maintain a positive SH&E culture and drive performance against the business's KRIs. Open communications will also demonstrate to staff that reports will be acted on and changes made where necessary – so that openness in communication engenders continuous improvement in practice.
As we saw from the Longford gas explosion (where Esso was sued for failing to meet several obligations under the Work Health and Safety Act 1985, even though the Victorian Workcover Authority had conducted an audit and made no recommendations), external audits are no guarantee of compliance. Even internal audits rarely look beyond the business's procedures and policies and into the maintenance and standard of the obligations register. The SH&E professional has a vital role in assurance and improvement – by knowing all the legal obligations and having an effective management system, they can ensure a change from framework into behaviour and a move away from reliance on simple certification.
An obligations register is the cornerstone of a successful SH&E governance system and helps a practitioner keep track of Acts and regulations, Standards, Statutory Codes and Policies and other documents – but it's a living document that must be managed. Knowing the relevant legislation, and maintaining a system the complies with certification standards is the key to completeness – just knowing black letter law, or just complying with standards, won't meet the needs of the business. Both are necessary, together with managing compliance, as part of an excellent management system.
How does a SH&E professional make sure that the obligations register is translated into positive actions and instructions for task owners? Obligations need to have owners, and those owners need to have business processes and behaviours that make sure those obligations are fulfilled. At the very least, SH&E obligations should be broken down into 140 process elements – each process and each task is therefore incorporating the relevant black letter law.
But keeping an obligations register up to date is a daunting task, with up to 1,500 changes a year that need to be actioned and the need to maintain currency across the entire register.
This brings us back to the question of how a practitioner, who does after all need to know in detail the legal obligations of the business, can step back from the detail to gain the necessary exposure at board level. Traditionally, an SH&E practitioner would communicate with hundreds, if not thousands, of employees and end up with a jumble of documents and reports – certainly no model for governance excellence.
Is there a better option? An enterprise-wide technology solution – a truly enterprise-wide solution that is – will enable a practitioner to deliver communications and responsive reporting and will span KRIs, incidents, identification of new risks and audits. A system and framework supported by technology lays the groundwork, while the SH&E professional's knowledge of obligations makes the system fully integrated.
A SH&E professional has to play a role in positive cultural change, and aim for acceptance at all levels to really achieve governance excellence. A strong system supported by a technological solution to the administrative aspects of managing risk will ultimately reduce losses to businesses, decrease the personal risk to directors and enhance productivity – delivering a model of governance excellence.
You can request a copy of the white paper, SH&E Governance Excellence: From Worker to Boardroom from SAI Global by emailing: enquiry.asiapac@saiglobal.com