Decentralization of EH&S
A common question on here and when speaking to other safety people is "How big is your department?" or "What's you EHS staff to employee ratio?"
I respond that we're a department of 8 for an organization of about 10,000. That includes a director, an industrial hygienist, a trainer, a haz waste/lab safety specialist, a hospital safety specialist, an ergonomist, and two fire marshals.
People are often surprised by the ratio, and I have to add the caveat that we have many many more people with safety as a part of their job description. We have radiation safety folks. Folks who specialize in safe patient handling. Folks who specialize in workplace violence, infection prevention, emergency management, electrical safety, etc. Each department has a safety champion and supervisors have safety roles in their job description.
I've noticed a trend with some of the companies I consult for towards decentralization as well. In some ways it's the natural progression of a safety management system with leadership engagement and employee participation and more folks getting formal safety training.
Has anyone else noticed this? What are your thoughts?
Comments (6)
I think it makes “sense” from a business perspective- lean out the workforce as much as they can (which I don’t necessarily agree with). I don’t think non-safety department folks picking up EHS responsibilities is a bad thing, but you still need a team to build and tweak the framework followed, which is still a huge task. Personally I think most companies are too lean on EHS specific people
I agree Tim. Over the 50 years I have been in Management the "Safety" role has expanded and expanded. I graduated from a huge Big Ten University and we had one and only one Safety Class called something brand new "OSHA". We certainly did mot have a major or minor in Safety or related. After being moved off the foundry floor (with 3500 employees) as a supervisor for 4 years I made it to Personnel. On my second day in Personnel I was given the "Safety" role, but also still had to do Personnel duties too. In 1980 I never heard of "Safety" being an independent role. By 2000 that seemed to have all changed. EHS was on its own and Personnel became HR. I remained a dinosaur in a huge corporation HR/H&S Manager till I retired in 2017.
Today I think it depends on the business and industry you are in. In heavy manufacturing in a large Corporation like mine, you usually need about 150-200 employees at a location for a sole EHS assigned employee. Under 150 the role is almost always a dual role with something else, in my experience HR or Ops, sometimes Engineering. The type of industry and the hazards affect all this too. In my old company we had anywhere from 5-15 plants in a "Division". There was a Divisional EHS Manager, with two or so EHS Coordinators at the largest plants.
We had a Corporate EHS Department that set general policies and directions. They also came around and did audits. For instance we had a Corporate Lockout Policy. I could have a plant policy and mold it to our plant's needs, but it had to meet the requirements of the Corporate Policy (which was usually a re-write of the OSHA Standard). So usually if I met OSHA standards I met Corporate requirements. There were exceptions the Corporation required PFAS systems in all Scissors Lifts and annual Authorized Lockout Training.
Subsidiarity where possible!