We’ll conclude our discussion on Integrated Management Systems by looking at the supposed ‘Holy Grail’ of business management: a management system that goes many steps further than simply EHS and quality concerns, and is applied across all business lines, even those outside EHS and Quality realms. This would be a truly integrated management system that could cover areas such as corporate governance, sustainability…basically any business processes and activities.

For example, document control, Corporate Social Responsibility, auditing, and training could be governed along the same integrated management standards. According to Robert Pojasek’s 2006 article in Environment Quality Management, one synergistic or ‘umbrella’ system could enable an organization to ensure the quality of its products...and demonstrate that those products are consistent with the organization’s vision, mission, core values and objectives.”

This idea is based on the premise that, by some means or other, all business activities overlap with some other (if not all other) business activities, so rather than treating each consideration as a watertight compartment, apply the same form of a management system across all

The basic integration of ISHQ considerations could open the gateway to a holistic and synergistic approach to all business concerns, but this can be an ambitious and sometimes fruitless endeavour if the business in question is not of a size and scope necessary to warrant facing the logistical challenges demanded by such an organizational shift.

As mentioned, the essential message is that businesses shouldn’t integrate systems for the sake of integration, but rather when a clear business benefit of integration is identified. That said, if the end goal is a seamless, organization-wide management system, keep scalability at the top of your mind as you evaluate management system options, including software solutions.

For a company over-anxious to reconcile EHS and Quality processes and data, some complications may emerge.

For example, some integrated management opponents argue that strict adherence to one specific set of standards can be sacrificed in the name of integration. That is, in defining a broad-base of widely applicable standards to enforce across all EHS and Quality domains, some details are institutionally enabled to slip through the cracks.

Really, it all depends on what specifically a company is attempting to integrate. For example, getting managers across all departments to employ the same audit checklists and reports can be like mixing apples and oranges. However, leveraging the same auditing software that allows the importing of individual EHS and quality checklists can reduce costs.

The standards governing quality can be far removed from those governing environment, health and safety. However, this notion can be a very particular function of a particular corporate culture and which aspect (of EHS and Quality) has the greatest impact within that corporate culture.

Further, an old paradigm suggests some aspects of environment, health and safety are not tied intrinsically to aspects of quality, such as continual improvement in performance, legislative compliance and considerations of risks.

This has changed somewhat as businesses constantly try to improve their environment, health and safety performance. Historically these concerns have been dominated by legislation, and quality, by and large, has been customer-driven. Now environment, health and safety are being strongly influenced by brand impact, and quality is being influenced by new consumer protection legislation.

Some IMS critics a suggest integrated systems can actually make audits more complex. However, having an IMS places no demand on any company to fulfill a comprehensive EHS and Quality audit each time an audit is conducted. Rather, businesses need to asses where overlap exists and where it makes good business sense to combine elements. We'll discuss more about this in our conclusion.

A consideration of the relative advantages and disadvantages of an IMS is a sound starting point to evaluate whether the time has come to integrate management platforms, or whether integration would generate no immediate or long-term payoff.

• Cost efficiency: The aforementioned standards share several common requirements, including document control, auditing and training. An obvious cost-reduction arises when a business addresses each of these areas with shared software and processes. Also, registrars tend to provide discounts when they are able to audit two or more management systems together, as opposed to one at a time.
• Time efficiency: While the logistics of implementing an IMS may be complicated at the onset, the relative simplicity of managing EHSQ systems together on an ongoing basis will ultimately save time and frustration.
• Corporate Brand: Most Businesses understand that a negative EHSQ ‘event’ (for example, a spill, a product recall or an employee injury) can have a significant impact on corporate brand—and share price. Applying the same standards to each area by way of an IMS significantly curbs the risk of any such event.
• Collaboration: An IMS reduces the silos of information that typically haunt most organizations. Key data can be selectively shared across an organization thereby reducing risk (e.g., associated with the use of hazardous materials), while better capitalizing on opportunities.

While the likely benefits of EHS and quality management integration are substantial, an IMS is not for every business. In Monday's post, we'll look at some of the complications that can arise from IMS implementation, as well as the business benefits that arise from implementing the right IMS.

Though environment, health, safety (EHS) and quality management issues are often handled by individual management systems, the guiding principles behind each of these areas share a common link — W. Edwards Deming. The American quality guru is most commonly associated with the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle, an iterative problem-solving process used to resolve quality issues and improve business performance. But it is important to remember the foremost EHS and quality management standards — including ISO14001 (environment), OSHAS 18000 (health and safety) and ISO 9001 (quality) — are all rooted in the PDCA or Deming Cycle.

Businesses that encounter regular overlap between these areas ought to consider the potential benefits of an Integrated Management System (IMS). An IMS coordinates all of an organization's procedures, systems and processes within one complete framework and, in an ideal scenario, allows the organization to operate as a seamless whole, with unified objectives across all departments.

But a fulsome IMS is not for every company. Any business of any size does not necessarily stand to benefit from adopting an integrated management system. Instead, businesses should integrate management systems not just for the sake of integration, but where there is a clear business benefit that can be tied to integration. The principle benefits of integrated EHS and quality management include both cost-effectiveness and collaboration between intrinsically related EHSQ concerns.

Imagine a business that uses a hypothetical hazardous material in the manufacture of a product at one of its plants and consider how this hazardous material can create near equally significant issues within each EHS and quality realm:

• Environment: The hazardous material may be toxic to the environment at large and necessitate consideration within the organization’s air emissions monitoring.
• Health and Safety: The same hazardous material may compromise the health or directly endanger the lives of employees in the plant.
• Quality: The handling and use of the hazardous material may be governed explicitly by existing quality standards.

As an example, consider last year’s string of recalls associated with the cadmium content in children’s toys manufactured in China. The extended direct exposure of factory workers to the highly toxic heavy metal would necessitate an internal health and safety policy governing safe exposure and use. Also, given the targeted end user of the toys are children, quality management mechanisms would have to ensure the cadmium content of the toys did not exceed federally regulated maximums affecting the markets in which the product would be sold. But further, since improperly disposed cadmium is known to leech into and contaminate groundwater, provisions would have to be put into place to ensure proper disposal of the material at the plant level.

Tomorrow we’ll discuss the pros and cons of implementing an IMS.

Any student of W. Edwards Deming or quality management in general is no stranger to the term ‘Continuous Improvement’.

Over here at Intelex, we use the term an awful lot, as we believe that, though it is most frequently cited in conversations on quality management, it is more of a meta-process that can be applied to all aspects of business management: environment, health, safety, governance…anything!

But a bit of an internal conversation was struck up recently as we noticed some people prefer ‘continuous’, while others use ‘continual’. So we thought we would do a little research and find out which term was correct, or if they represented two ways of stating the same thing.

Here’s a comparison chart outlining what we found (with an albeit highly unscientific methodology):

So, it’s clear “Continuous Improvement” is far more widely used, and more accurately describes the premise.

But as Jon Miller points out in this blog post on the topic, "continual improvement" – that is, improvement in stages and marked by interruption – is a better description of what businesses actually practice. Even the Plan-Do-Check-Act approach, endemic of most management systems wherein continuous improvement is a central premise, is itself an iterative process, signified by stages and interruptions.

On the other hand, "continuous improvement" is a better description of what businesses ought to aspire to achieve. Is it possible? I believe so. I believe that when technology is leveraged, when real-time data is communicated seamlessly to operators, when trending and forecasting tools enable truly predictive, proactive management, then continuous improvement – in the true sense of the term – is achieved, or at least lies within reach.

Is your business considering sustainability or corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting? What will it be: CERES? GRI? CDP? FRP? A4S? WBCSD? Or IIRC?

Phew. That’s a lot of acronyms for what’s really a simple premise: reporting on sustainability and CSR data to stakeholders and the public at large. The above organizations are all associated with voluntary reporting frameworks that organizations can use to standardize sustainability and CSR reporting. While the frameworks differ in scope, to sort out any potential confusion, here’s a quick rundown of each:

Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP): Based in the UK, CDP brings together investors and works with large corporations around the world to develop effective carbon reduction strategies and disclose greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions data. Less a sustainability/CSR reporting framework than an emissions reporting organization, CDP’s scope is nonetheless broad: it publishes emissions data accounting for more than a quarter of global air emissions associated with human activity.
Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES): Founded in 1989 by a group of investors seeking to integrate sustainability into capital markets, CERES itself is not as focused on reporting and disclosure as it is on encouraging sustainability reporting. However, the organization has birthed a reporting framework known as GRI (see below).
Ceres and Tellus Institute Facility Reporting Project (FRP): Another CERES-based reporting framework, FRP is focused squarely on providing a generally accepted framework for facility- and site-specific environmental and social sustainability reporting.
World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD): This CEO-led association of companies pushes business to incorporate sustainable development into all business decisions. WBCSD is primarily concerned with advocacy and policy development, but asks members to report on environmental performance and urges them to “aspire” towards economic and social reporting.
Global Reporting Initiative (GRI): Formed in 1998 by CERES, GRI has become the standard-bearer on how organizations report on environmental, social and economic performance. Over 1,500 global organizations report in accordance with G3 guidelines (the most recent iteration of the GRI reporting framework).
The Prince’s Accounting for Sustainability Framework (A4S): Spearheaded by none other than Prince Charles, A4S brings advisory and accounting bodies as well as NGOs together to embed sustainability into decision-making and reporting processes.
International Integrated Reporting Committee (IIRC): This is the big one. Announced only earlier this month, IIRC is poised to become the everything-to-everyone reporting framework. IIRC is a collaborative project between GRI and A4S and essentially covers all bases: environmental, social, financial, governance—everything! If widely adopted, and if integrated reporting becomes popular enough, IIRC might erase the need for other reporting frameworks.

For the forward-thinking organization, IIRC is probably the best route. However, if you’re just beginning to consider sustainability and CSR reporting and don’t want to worry about stringent framework requirements yet, start by capturing, tracking, and reporting on environmental data and essential sustainability metrics. It’s a simple start that will make the leap to full-fledged reporting easier in the long run.

Intelex Technologies has released its latest software innovation, the Intelex OpenPass API, a revolutionary application programming interface that will enable its users to sync and report data between multiple business management systems.

The Intelex OpenPass API functions as a conduit for seamlessly feeding data between multiple software programs. This means that Intelex’s environment, quality, and health & safety, and business management Software can now share data with pre-existing business software applications; thereby, saving time and resources while maintaining a degree of accuracy that’s difficult to achieve when data is transmitted manually.

The City of Calgary and St. Gobain are the first Intelex clients to take advantage of the OpenPass API.  The City of Calgary used our OpenPass API to import employee and location data from their pre-existing HR system into their Intelex System. They also used the OpenPass API to export employee injury data (i.e., incident number with date and time stamp) from Intelex’s Master Incidents Module into their HR program.

St. Gobain used the OpenPass API to import training courses, employee lists, and employee workgroup data from Lotus Notes into the Intelex System and Training Management Module. By using the OpenPass API St. Gobain was able to quickly populate their new Intelex System with historical data that will be a key factor in reporting accuracy and trending.

If you think that your organization could use the Intelex OpenPass API to import, export, and sync data between a pre-existing management program and your Intelex System, send an email to client.relations@intelex.com or call 416.599.6009 for more details.

Free Management Review Scorecards and Configurable Reports are now available on the Intelex-Exchange.  Learn how to import them directly into your Intelex System for effective Management Review Meeting reporting. 

SCORECARDS
Management Review - Overdue Scheduled Reviews
Management Review - Overdue Follow Ups
Management Review - Current Year Scheduled vs. Completed Meetings by Type
Management Review - Current Year Completed vs. Scheduled Meetings by Month

CONFIGURABLE REPORTS
Management Review - Current Year Scheduled Reviews by Meeting Type
Management Review - Previous Year Reviews
Management Review - Follow Up History
Management Review - Current Year Follow Ups by Meeting
Management Review - Follow Ups Next 90 Days
Management Review - Completed Follow Ups Last 30 Days

The topic of managing environment, quality, and safety business processes under a single management program has become a popular topic in 2008. More and more, organizations are recognizing the reciprocal relationship that each of these business areas has on the other. In a 2008 whitepaper entitled Gaining Competitive Advantage Through Environmental, Health, Safety, and Quality Programs the author uses the following example to illustrate this point:

"… changing a process or procedure in one area without considering the impact on all areas could improve performance where the change is made but actually harm performance in other areas. For instance, replacing a chemical sanitizer in the laundry processes at a hospital with a less-toxic organic alternative might win points in the environmental category, but if the alternative is less effective at sterilizing linens and a spike in infections results, then quality has been diminished"

Simply put, environment, quality, and safety business processes should never be addressed in isolation of one another. Every organization, regardless of whether it manufactures a product or provides a service, works toward the goal of continuous improvement.  Each business decision presents an opportunity to replace inefficiency with productivity, waste with value, and status quo with leadership.  One of the surest ways to achieve this goal is by implementing an integrated management system specifically designed to drive continual improvement and improve your bottom line across all areas of your business.

You can obtain a copy of the whitepaper mentioned in this post by submitting a request to Intelex.

Dashboards have become virtually indispensible to workers and managers. They provide graphical information in the form of charts and graphs as opposed to spreadsheets and reports, thereby enabling a big-picture view of an enterprise.

Despite the obvious benefits, dashboards can tend to become counterproductive if not properly deployed. There is a risk of information overload if care is not taken to select only the necessary indicators.  Privacy concerns and employee morale issues can also arise if details of individual worker performance are widely accessible.

Here are a few suggestions for successful dashboard implementation:

1. Keep it Simple. Avoid overloading your dashboards with every conceivable metric related to your business.  Information overload will lead to distractions and keep the focus away from your organization’s vital stats. 
2. Participate in the Development. The design and implementation of dashboards is often left to consultants and IT personnel. It is important to include the managers and employees who will be using the system in the development cycle. 
3. Don't micromanage. One of the dangers of being able to instantly track every facet of a business’ operation is a tendency to micromanage.  Managers obsessed with the minutiae of their employees activities can be tempted into micromanagement which then reduces productivity and places unprecedented pressure on workers.