Striving to “do the right thing” can help environmental and health & safety (EHS) professionals create sustainable EHS programs that also have a positive impact on a company’s economic strength. EHS professionals must go beyond regulatory compliance and consider ethics in order to build successful programs that also boost the bottom line. While laws and regulations inform individuals and companies what they cannot do, ethics instruct individuals and companies as to what they should do. In other words, ethics is about doing the right thing, not about simply avoiding the wrong thing.
I support an “EHS management systems approach” in the workplace, which recognizes that unsafe acts, unsafe conditions and accidents are symptoms of problems in the organizational management system. In this philosophy, senior management is ultimately responsible for building an ethical system that effectively analyzes and controls workplace conditions and hazards. This means that EHS is no longer a “sunk cost,” but an integral function of doing business, just like quality.
Perhaps the greatest economic reason to support an ethics-based approach to EHS management within a capitalistic system is that prosperity generates an environment where continuing improvement and reduced risk are affordable.
EHS professionals must promote a more ethical approach to managing their own profession. This strategy requires moral courage, conviction and professional unity, including a bottom-up approach at their facilities and through professional organizations, and understanding the need to look out for workers, the environment, and the public despite culture, pressure and misdirection from management and peers.