Designing Quality Safety, Environment, and Health Programs

Battelle has a long history of assisting clients in the development of Safety, Environment, and Health (SEH) management programs. These programs enable companies and agencies to streamline productivity and ensure employee safety. Battelle has assisted with SEH programs for international agricultural, oil and gas, and chemical manufacturing clients in Venezuela, Ireland, Germany, China, South Korea and Mexico.

Battelle uses a step-by-step process in the development of its SEH programs.

Step 1: Identify Stakeholders & Strategic Objectives
Understanding the drivers and concerns among stakeholders is key to developing a SEH program that allows clients to succeed, not only in the area of corporate SEH, but also in the area of public opinion.

Step 2: Develop Policies and Principles
The development of overall policies and principles guides the entire SEH organization. These policies and principles reflect the corporate strategic objectives and stakeholder interest. The policies are critical to developing the procedures that will guide personnel behavior.

Steps 3 and 4: Identify Important Aspects and Selecting Performance Indicators
Based on identified significant aspects and the stakeholder interest, a list of metrics must be developed, which can be used to monitor and check management system performance. A mix of both leading and lagging indicators to give the best indication of overall performance is then developed. An example of a leading indicator is number of in-process work orders. A high level of in-process work orders may indicate that preventive maintenance is not being performed and is a leading indicator of potential future equipment failure. Lagging indicators may be the number of spills or loss workday accidents.

Step 5: Implement Pilot System Based on existing procedures, a list of modifications, deletions, and additions is compiled through a gap analysis to match the stakeholder and strategic objectives. Corporate guidance documents that outline the common procedures and the guidance procedures for the specific business units must be developed.

Each business unit develops specific procedures for their operations based on the corporate guidance document. Once specific business unit procedures have been prepared, focus turns to training. Materials and processes are developed to enable trainers to train their staff. This approach promotes ownership among staff and helps achieve a higher level of success.

Subsequent Steps
Generally, the implementation step is used as an opportunity for system turnover. This enables client staff to take ownership and move the program through the stages of periodic evaluation and system modification. It is important that clients be at the front of implementing an evaluation process, evaluating performance, responding to changes in performance, and periodically re-evaluating the SEH organization to assure that it is in line with changing corporate and stakeholder objectives.

These steps are designed to methodically and systematically employ quality SEH programs which meet both employee and employer needs.

For more information contact Fred Leverenz at (614) 424-4623, leverenz@battelle.org.