Tag: career

Elevating EHS Professionals: Mastering Soft Skills in a Tech-Driven Era

I read with interest an article in Harvard Busienss Review, “How to Improve your Soft skills as a remote worker”. I felt EHS professionals need to improve their Soft Skills in this modern age of AI/Tech despite not being a remote worker for they focus too much on Technical Skills.

Introduction:

In today’s fast-evolving landscape, the realm of Environment, Health, and Safety (EHS) is undergoing a profound transformation. Technological advancements and the rise of artificial intelligence have revolutionized how we approach safety and sustainability. However, alongside technical expertise, there’s an increasing demand for EHS professionals to cultivate and demonstrate refined soft skills.

The Shift in EHS Expectations:

Traditionally, the EHS domain relied heavily on technical prowess. However, the script is changing. Organizations now expect behavioral traits and interpersonal skills to accompany technical acumen. This paradigm shift necessitates a reevaluation of the skills essential for success in our field.

The Crucial Need for Soft Skills:

Technical skills undoubtedly remain a cornerstone, but they are no longer the sole determinants of success. Today’s EHS professionals must also possess robust soft skills to effectively communicate, collaborate, and adapt in a dynamic environment.

Key Soft Skills for Modern EHS Professionals:

  1. Communication and Collaboration: Effective communication with stakeholders and the ability to collaborate across multidisciplinary teams are paramount in driving impactful EHS initiatives.
  2. Adaptability and Resilience: The capacity to adapt to technological advancements and resiliently navigate complexities is indispensable.
  3. Leadership and Decision-making: EHS professionals are increasingly playing leadership roles, making critical decisions that influence organizational strategies and safety culture.
  4. Empathy and Stakeholder Engagement: Empathy fosters meaningful engagement with employees and communities, ensuring that EHS initiatives resonate with diverse stakeholders.

Strategies to Develop Soft Skills:

To bolster soft skills, consider:

  • Investing in comprehensive training programs focusing on communication, leadership, and emotional intelligence.
  • Encouraging cross-functional collaborations and exposure to diverse projects.
  • Seeking mentorship or coaching tailored to enhance specific soft skills.

Embracing a Holistic Approach:

Success in the modern EHS landscape necessitates a holistic approach. While technical expertise forms the foundation, the fortification of soft skills creates a more resilient and impactful EHS professional.

Conclusion:

In this era of transformative technology, EHS professionals stand at the nexus of innovation and responsibility. As the landscape evolves, the integration of robust soft skills with technical proficiency becomes the linchpin for success. It’s incumbent upon us to continuously hone our abilities, evolving as versatile and adept professionals poised to navigate the ever-changing EHS terrain.

Call to Action:

Share your experiences or strategies for honing soft skills in the EHS domain. Let’s engage in discussions to further explore and refine the importance of soft skills in our professional journey.

Annexure- Soft Skills self Inventory and Evaluation.

Evaluating soft skills is vital for personal and professional growth. Here’s an elaborate checklist to assess various soft skills:

Communication Skills:

  1. Verbal Communication: How effectively do you express yourself verbally?
  2. Listening Skills: Are you attentive and responsive when others speak?
  3. Non-verbal Communication: Assess body language and gestures during interactions.
  4. Clarity and Conciseness: Can you convey information clearly and succinctly?
  5. Adaptability in Communication: How well do you tailor your communication to different audiences?

Interpersonal Skills:

  1. Empathy: Can you understand and relate to others’ emotions and perspectives?
  2. Conflict Resolution: Assess your ability to resolve conflicts and handle disagreements.
  3. Networking: How skilled are you at building and maintaining professional relationships?
  4. Collaboration: Evaluate your effectiveness in working within teams.

Emotional Intelligence:

  1. Self-awareness: How well do you understand your own emotions and behaviors?
  2. Self-regulation: Can you manage and control your emotions in different situations?
  3. Motivation: Assess your drive, determination, and resilience in achieving goals.
  4. Empathy and Social Skills: Evaluate your ability to understand and navigate social dynamics.

Leadership Skills:

  1. Decision-making: Assess the quality and timeliness of your decisions.
  2. Delegation: How effectively do you assign tasks and responsibilities?
  3. Inspiration and Influence: Evaluate your ability to motivate and influence others.
  4. Conflict Management: Assess your approach to handling conflicts within a team or organization.

Adaptability and Flexibility:

  1. Open-mindedness: How receptive are you to new ideas and change?
  2. Problem-solving: Assess your approach to addressing challenges and finding solutions.
  3. Resilience: How do you handle setbacks and adapt to unforeseen circumstances?
  4. Learning Agility: Evaluate how quickly you can learn and apply new information or skills.

Time Management and Organization:

  1. Prioritization: How well do you prioritize tasks and manage your time?
  2. Planning and Goal Setting: Assess your ability to set and achieve short-term and long-term goals.
  3. Organization: How well do you manage your workload and resources?
  4. Adherence to Deadlines: Evaluate your consistency in meeting deadlines.

Assessing these areas can provide insights into your strengths and areas for improvement. You might consider seeking feedback from peers or using self-assessment tools to further evaluate your soft skills.

Karthik

9th Jan 24. 1300 Hrs.

EHS Dashboard.

An EHS (Environment, Health, and Safety) dashboard serves several crucial purposes:

  1. Visibility and Transparency: It provides a clear, visual representation of EHS performance across an organization, offering stakeholders a comprehensive view of safety and environmental aspects.
  2. Decision-Making Support: Helps in making informed decisions by presenting real-time and historical data, enabling quick responses to emerging risks and trends.
  3. Risk Management: Identifies potential hazards, trends in incidents, and areas of non-compliance, allowing for proactive risk mitigation strategies.
  4. Compliance Monitoring: Tracks adherence to regulatory requirements, ensuring that the organization meets legal obligations in terms of safety and environmental regulations.
  5. Continuous Improvement: Allows for the monitoring of progress towards EHS goals and targets, facilitating continuous improvement initiatives.
  6. Communication and Accountability: Serves as a communication tool, fostering accountability among stakeholders by showcasing responsibilities and performance against set objectives.
  7. Resource Allocation: Helps in allocating resources effectively by highlighting areas needing immediate attention or investment.
  8. Engagement and Culture: Encourages a culture of safety and environmental awareness by engaging employees at all levels through data-driven insights and encouraging participation in improvement initiatives.

Overall, an EHS dashboard acts as a strategic tool, aligning EHS efforts with broader organizational goals, enhancing performance, and ensuring a safer, healthier work environment while supporting sustainable practices.

Creating an effective EHS dashboard involves a few key ingredients:

  1. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Select relevant metrics like incident rates, near-miss reports, compliance status, training completion, etc. Tailor these to suit different levels:
    • Executive Level: Focus on high-level trends, compliance status, and overall performance summaries.
    • Managerial Level: Drill down into specific areas—department-wise incidents, training needs, or process compliance.
    • Operational Level: Real-time data, incidents, safety checks, and actionable insights for immediate response.
  2. Data Visualization: Use graphs, charts, and infographics for easy comprehension. Pie charts for incident types, trend lines for safety performance, and bar graphs for compliance rates are helpful.
  3. Trends and Analysis: Highlight trends over time to identify patterns, areas of improvement, or potential risks. (Data Analytics)
  4. User-Friendly Interface: Ensure it’s intuitive and user-friendly, allowing stakeholders to navigate and extract relevant information easily.
  5. Customization: Enable customization based on user roles or preferences. Executives might prefer an overview, while managers may need specifics.
  6. Real-Time Updates: Where feasible, integrate systems to provide real-time updates for immediate action.
  7. Ecosystems: (Please move away from MS-EXCEL)
    • Technological Integration: Link with existing EHS management systems for data input and extraction.
    • Training & Awareness: Integrate a section for training schedules, completion rates, and upcoming sessions.
    • Feedback Mechanism: Include a platform for incident reporting and feedback from employees.
    • Risk Assessment Tools: Incorporate tools for risk assessment, allowing for dynamic adjustments in safety protocols.

Remember, the dashboard should align with the company’s EHS goals, be adaptable, and evolve with changing needs. Tailoring information presentation to suit different levels ensures its relevance and effectiveness.

Here are some key metrics typically included in an EHS dashboard:

  1. Incident Rates: Number of incidents, including injuries, illnesses, near misses, and fatalities. % Investigations completed. 
  2. Safety Compliance: Percentage compliance with safety regulations and standards.
  3. Training Completion: Percentage of employees who have completed required safety training.
  4. Risk Assessments: Number and status of conducted risk assessments.
  5. Corrective Action Closure: % of items closed on time, with due verifications % corrective actions open. (> 180 Days, > 365 days).
  6. Audits and Inspections: Number and status of completed audits/inspections. Conditions Monitoring.
  7. Safety Culture Surveys: Leadership Engagement, Communication etc.
  8. Safety Observations: Number of safety observations made by employees. (% Safe Behaviours)
  9. Near Miss Reporting: Number and trends in near-miss incidents reported.
  10. Emergency Preparedness: Status of emergency response plans and drills.
  11. Environmental Metrics: Such as waste generation, emissions, energy consumption, etc. (ESG–> PL see below)
  12. Worker Participation: Employee engagement in safety programs and initiatives.

These metrics help in tracking the overall EHS performance, identifying areas for improvement, and ensuring compliance with regulations and safety standards.

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Integrating sustainability and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) metrics into an EHS dashboard is becoming increasingly vital for comprehensive corporate reporting and responsible business practices. Here are some key metrics related to sustainability and ESG that could be included:

  1. Environmental Metrics:
    1. Carbon Footprint: Greenhouse gas emissions (Scope 1, 2, and 3).
    2. Energy Consumption: Total energy used or energy consumption per unit of output.
    3. Water Usage: Total water consumption or water usage per unit of output.
    4. Waste Generation: Total waste generated or waste-to-production ratio.
    5. Biodiversity Impact: Measures to protect or enhance biodiversity.
  2. Social Metrics:
    1. Diversity and Inclusion: Employee demographics, diversity ratios, and inclusion initiatives.
    2. Community Engagement: Contributions to local communities, philanthropic activities, volunteering hours, etc.
    3. Labor Practices: Employee welfare, health and safety provisions, fair labor practices, etc.
    4. Human Rights: Policies and adherence to human rights principles within the company and supply chain.
  3. Governance Metrics:
    1. Board Diversity: Diversity metrics among the board of directors.
    2. Ethical Business Practices: Measures to ensure transparency, anti-corruption, and ethical conduct.
    3. Risk Management: Assessment and management of ESG-related risks.
    4. Compliance and Ethics: Adherence to laws, regulations, and ethical standards.

Integrating these metrics into the EHS dashboard aligns sustainability efforts with core business operations, allowing stakeholders to monitor, track progress, and communicate the company’s commitment to responsible business practices.

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Difference between EHS DashBoard and EHS Balance Score Card.

Both the EHS Dashboard and EHS Balanced Scorecard are tools used in the realm of Environment, Health, and Safety (EHS) management, but they serve different purposes and offer distinct perspectives:

Similarities:

  1. Performance Measurement: Both tools involve measuring and monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) related to EHS aspects within an organization.
  2. Strategic Alignment: They aim to align EHS goals and activities with the overall organizational strategy, ensuring that EHS initiatives support the company’s broader objectives.

Differences:

  1. Focus:
    • EHS Dashboard: Primarily focuses on providing a visual representation of real-time or historical EHS data and performance metrics. It offers a snapshot view of current performance across various EHS parameters.
    • EHS Balanced Scorecard: Takes a more strategic approach by integrating EHS metrics into a broader framework that aligns EHS objectives with the organization’s overall balanced scorecard, including financial, customer, internal processes, and learning/growth perspectives.
  2. Scope:
    • EHS Dashboard: Typically concentrates on EHS-specific metrics such as incident rates, compliance status, training completion, etc., offering a detailed view of EHS performance.
    • EHS Balanced Scorecard: Incorporates EHS metrics as part of a comprehensive balanced scorecard approach, ensuring that EHS objectives are integrated into the overall organizational strategy and performance metrics.
  3. Usage:
    • EHS Dashboard: Used for real-time monitoring, immediate decision-making, and day-to-day management of EHS activities and performance.
    • EHS Balanced Scorecard: More strategic and long-term in nature, used for strategic planning, setting long-term goals, and aligning EHS initiatives with the broader organizational vision.

While both tools are valuable in managing EHS aspects, the dashboard focuses on detailed performance metrics and immediate monitoring, whereas the balanced scorecard integrates EHS objectives into the broader organizational strategy, considering long-term goals and alignment with other business perspectives.

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Here are some key axioms or guiding principles for designing an effective EHS dashboard:

  1. Single Source of Truth: Ensure that the dashboard consolidates data from various sources into one unified platform, creating a single reliable source for EHS information.
  2. Minimize Manual Efforts: Automate data collection and reporting processes as much as possible to reduce human error and save time, allowing personnel to focus on analysis and action rather than data entry.
  3. Accuracy and Reliability: Emphasize data accuracy and reliability by implementing quality checks and validation processes to ensure the information presented is trustworthy.
  4. Customization for Target Audience: Tailor the dashboard to suit different stakeholders’ needs and preferences, presenting information relevant to executives, managers, operational staff, and specific business functions.
  5. Real-Time Updates: Where feasible, enable real-time or near-real-time data updates to provide timely insights and support quick decision-making.
  6. Visual Clarity and Simplicity: Use intuitive and visually appealing representations (graphs, charts, etc.) to convey complex data effectively, ensuring easy comprehension across all levels of the organization.
  7. Actionable Insights: Focus on providing actionable insights rather than overwhelming data, enabling users to identify trends, prioritize actions, and drive improvements.
  8. Alignment with Objectives: Align the dashboard metrics with the organization’s EHS objectives and broader business goals to demonstrate how EHS performance contributes to overall success.

By adhering to these axioms, an EHS dashboard becomes a powerful tool for driving informed decision-making, fostering a culture of safety, and supporting continuous improvement in EHS performance within the organization.

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Several software platforms specialize in hosting EHS dashboards, offering user-friendly interfaces and comprehensive features. Here are some major platforms known for their EHS dashboard capabilities:

  1. Enablon: Provides a robust EHS management software with customizable dashboards for tracking incidents, audits, compliance, and more.
  2. Intelex: Offers EHSQ (Environment, Health, Safety, and Quality) management solutions with configurable dashboards for monitoring performance, compliance, and risks.
  3. Cority (formerly Medgate): Provides EHS software with dashboards focusing on incident management, safety observations, compliance, and occupational health.
  4. SAP EHS Management: Part of SAP’s suite, it offers modules for environmental compliance, safety, and risk management with dashboard functionalities.
  5. VelocityEHS: Offers a cloud-based EHS software with customizable dashboards for incident management, audits, compliance, and risk assessment.
  6. EcoOnline: Provides EHS software solutions with dashboards for managing risks, incidents, audits, and compliance.
  7. SafetyCulture iAuditor: Focuses on mobile-based inspections and audits with dashboard capabilities for real-time insights and corrective actions.
  8. Gensuite: Offers EHS management software with customizable dashboards for tracking compliance, incidents, audits, and risk management.

When selecting a software platform, it’s essential to consider factors like ease of use, scalability, integration capabilities with existing systems, customization options, data security, and the ability to generate actionable insights from the dashboard. Assessing specific organizational needs and aligning them with the platform’s features is crucial for effective use.

Summary:-

Key Must haves for an Effective EHS Dashboard:

  1. Accurate, Timely, Complete Data.
  2. Meets all end users needs for interpreations / actions.
  3. Metrics that drive to action and align to traffic Light (Red, Yellow, Green- Actions/ Non Actions / Good to go).
  4. Visual Management. 
  5. Keep it as Simple as Possible. 

Karthik

12/12/23. 11am.