EHS Compliance Management
The term EHS compliance basically means ensuring law-abidance. A Country’s citizens have laws and regulation they have to abide by, businesses and organizations have rules and legal regulations they need to follow to help them, their employees and stakeholders to safely navigate their environment, this procedure is known as compliance.
EHS Compliance is a prevalent business concern because of an ever increasing number of regulations that require companies to be vigilant about maintaining a full understanding of their regulatory compliance requirements.
EHS Compliance management is the process by which managers, plan, organize, control and lead activities that ensure EHS compliance with laws and standards.
It provides you a consistent approach to manage and streamline processes across standards, legislation or internal procedures that are relevant to your organization – so you can be more effective and have confidence in your compliance program.
With user friendly features, dashboards and reports you’ll be able to:
• Schedule, plan and conduct audits
• Identify non-conformances and observations
• Easily track, close and/or escalate compliance actions
• Get real-time reports on audit and compliance
The company and its members are committed to provide a safe and healthy working environment and comply with all regulations for the preservation of the environment of the territory it operates in during its operation. The company as a responsible corporate citizen shall consider its obligation to maintain highest standards of the environment, safety & health management and ensure for all its members, consultants, contractors and customers a safe and healthy environment. Senior management should ensure that organization manages its compliance policies, procedures and standards, through an established compliance function.
A well planned and implemented compliance program prevents or reduces regulatory violations. It protects from non-compliance and harms. It shields your organization from the risk of litigation, which negatively impact on revenue, operational focus and brand reputation.
EHS Compliance management is important
As governments clamp down on business laws, the possibility of fines and penalties have prompted companies to take compliance more seriously and hire the right talent to ensure they remain within the law. Ensuring an organization is compliant can be a costly process. Compliance management is very important for running the business. As it is the part of an organization’s duties to its stakeholders and community. Non-compliance with laws may result in: Litigation, monetary penalties, and other formal enforcement action.
Avoidance of Criminal Charges:
This is perhaps, the most beneficial importance of compliance in a business. No business wants to face criminal charges for not adhering to the law. There are so many different regulations and laws in regards to how a business should manage its staff, how stock is handles, how advertising is handles, the rules of engagement when buying and selling, rules on negotiating with customers, on employee salary, safety rules, and so many others. With a proper compliance kit and proper compliance management a company can stay on the right side of the law.
To keep track of all these different compliance requirements, it is important for a business to have two different things. First it must have personals for compliance management and this department will monitor all of the compliance guidelines, issues, cases, and projects. Secondly the company must have a compliance kit. These kits are extensive software and databases that will automatically keep track of all the information and will help audit court cases, compliance risk management factors, performance management, and others.
Building Positive Reputation:
The success of business pretty much depends on its public image. When a company starts facing several court cases, the general public will lose their trust in the company and sales in products and services will eventually drop. Compliance will ensure that a company can uphold a positive image and build consumer trust. This also helps build consumer loyalty, since customers are more likely going to return to a service or product from a company they identify as trustworthy.
This also helps a business with sponsors, advertisers, and government requirements. A business that fulfills regulatory business compliance through successful corporate compliance management generally gets signed quickly and easily whenever needed. They also pull through incidents like individual court cases discreetly before it grows into a public concern.
Higher Productivity in the Company:
Internal compliance to safety, wages, employee benefits, compensations, and employee protection will create a positive environment in the work area. Employees are more fervent to work when they feel that that they are well compensated for their efforts and that they are safe within the business’ reach. It is important that internal compliance is adhered to, since it will ensure that employees are satisfied and that all complains or issues are monitored and addressed properly before they grow and affect the entire corporation.
There will always be set rules to make sure everything is fair and safe for the company, its staff, its consumers, and even its competitors.
• Without a compliance function, you cannot reliably build or maintain trust with others.
• If you have no compliance function, you may invite a reputational damage.
• Compliance can serve as a driver of change and innovation.
• Compliance enhances consistency.
• Compliance can reduce unforced errors.
While the laws and standards specific to your business may vary depending on the size of your company, the jurisdiction, and the industry you are in, there are certain key factors relevant to the role of compliance management as a whole:
• Compliance managers need to understand their compliance responsibilities and company’s process in order to know whether there are any new legislation affecting their industry.
• Ensure employees understand how to adhere to compliance.
• Align the business functions with compliant procedures.
• Review processes and operations to make sure compliance requirements are met in all business tasks and activities.
• Correct and update violations where necessary and relevant.
EHS Compliance Management Approach
There are generally two core approaches to compliance management managers can adopt, and both find application in different circumstances.
Rigid Approach
A rigid approach usually entails little to no deviance from the rules put in place by compliance management and taking a tough stance when there are violations. This approach to compliance is usually more applicable to large corporations where extensive research and effort goes into formulating a policy for the company or departments within the company to follow. It would be impractical and inefficient for Compliance Managers to manage company policy purely on a circumstantial basis. Where the system would fail or the company would risk crossing legal boundaries, this type of approach to compliance may be necessary.
Flexible Approach
Although you can’t take a flexible stance to the law, there are other regulations within a company where a flexible approach may be more appropriate. Often relaxing certain standards can help productivity or improve workflow if the regulation does not directly impact the ethical or legal principles of a business. It is generally accepted that not every rule can be followed in every circumstance, and exceptions can be made where it is reasonable. Although this model might be more suited to smaller companies as they can assess situations on a case to case basis, this approach can also find application in larger organizations. Where multiple compliance policies are in place, some may come into conflict with each other and propose contradictory standards. In this instance, taking a more flexible approach and judging the situation based on their specific or unique facts might promise a better outcome.
Phases of Compliance Management (PDCA Cycle)
Phase 1: Plan
This is where we establish the compliance management intent and goals. In this phase management creates “Legislative Requirement Register” i.e. Create a manual register of rules and regulation which abide by an organization in a shorter format.
What do we intend to accomplish here?
Compliance with consumer laws?
Compliance with EHS laws?
Compliance with Company laws?
What does success look like? When there’s a systematic process in place?
When clear and effective communication happens?
When all employees understand their roles and responsibilities in regard to compliance?
When continuous improvement is happening?
Take the time to define your resources. Who will audit? What technical resources are needed? The Plan phase is where we assess our risks, ranked from the greatest to least. Written policies and procedures should be developed here that are directly tied to any identified risks from your Risk Assessment. Board and Management involvement is critical during the planning phase, to help establish the “tone of compliance” and to be involved throughout the process.
Phase 2: Do
The implementation and operation of a Compliance Management takes place during the “Do” phase. During this phase, Management should provide full support throughout the process. All employees should be trained on policies and procedures that you have developed and documentation of these policies and procedures should be easily accessible to all employees.
Compliance training is also a big part of deterrence. Employees need to be trained about new policies and regulations, and reminded about current policies, practices, and regulations. Training should also occur when new employees are on-boarded, or when employees change job functions. Make compliance a standing agenda item on human resource’s first day check list for new employees. This will give compliance the opportunity to speak about the firm’s ethical culture and to set the expectations for compliance with firm policies.
Phase 3: Check
Monitoring and reviewing what we are doing to maintain compliance within organization should be a regular and integral part of ensuring that we are doing what we say we are doing. An Internal Audit is a great way to determine this by looking at what our policies and procedures say we are supposed to be doing versus what we are actually doing. Are there any gaps? Are there any areas of our Compliance management software that need to be improved upon? Are we meeting our pre-established compliance goals? After the internal audit has taken place, Management should review the audit, identify where any action is needed, and provide direction when necessary.
Phase 4: Act
The fourth and final phase of implementing and maintaining “robust and effective Compliance management software” is all about improving upon what we are doing and taking any corrective and preventative action that is deemed necessary throughout the process. Be sure to document any areas of non-compliance. Don’t be discouraged by findings! Good Compliance management software will find areas of non-compliance, but this is to be considered a good “quality test” and will only further strengthen your Compliance management software. Next, develop an action plan. Write down any preventative and corrective actions that need to take place. Be sure to document in your follow-up that these actions have been completed.
Non-Compliance Issues
The output of phase 3 check is known as noncompliance issues. During internal or external audit, non-compliance issues find out. The consequences of non-compliance can affect a company negatively. Non-compliance in the workplace can be a major issue, jeopardizing both professionalism and safety. Non compliant behavior can lead to health and safety risks, HR struggles, and government fines.
Following are some of the consequences:
Penalties: Each non compliance has some monetary penalty attached with it which a company has to pay. Some non compliance can be very costly for an organization.
The reputation of the company: A non compliance issue can put a company in trouble and show it in a bad light. The brand value and reputation can take a serious hit based on the severity of non compliance.
Increased Audits: Audits may have to be conducted to uncover the reason for non compliance. Conducting these audits can be time consuming and require a lot of efforts.
Imprisonment: In some cases, when critical compliances are violated, the business owners may be imprisoned.
These non-compliance should be taken seriously and dealt in timely manner.
Simplified approach for EHS Compliance
We have discussed the PDCA cycle of compliance management in above sections. However, in field this process is normally simplified in following steps-
• Identify the EHS regulations applicable to your organization
• Collect the latest EHS regulations and study them.
• Identify requirements from applicable EHS regulations and develop Legislative Requirement Register (LRR).
• Develop annual/monthly compliance management plan with identified responsibility and due date for all project type requirements identified in LRR.
• Develop audit/inspection checklist to cover all ensure type requirements identified in LRR.
• Develop annual/monthly audit/Inspection plan.
• Communicate and train all employees for compliance management requirements especially to their functions.
• Track the completion of compliance management plan and inspection plan to ensure completion of all activities on time.
• Make corrective and preventive actions for all identified non-compliance and track them to time of completion.
• Improve your compliance management system incase of new regulations, new amendments in regulations, notice from regulatory agencies, compliant from public, ISO audits.
Software solutions for EHS compliance Management
There are number of compliance management software solutions in market to help you in developing and maintaining robust compliance culture in organization.
These software solutions can help you to track compliance actions, plant compliance audits and track corrective and preventive actions. For large organization and also for small organization with time the compliance management data become enormous and maintain them in excel sheet is impossible.
Tracking compliance actions and their reporting is also cumbersome and time consuming. These solutions can do them automatically and provide you with concise statistics with dashboard, charts and reporting functionalities.