How To Benchmark Your Environmental Health And Safety Program

What’s benchmarking

Benchmarking is defined as a measure of quality in strategy, policy, programmes e.t.c of an organisation in comparison to those of its peers. It’s a highly important act with its benefits, by benchmarking the environmental health and safety program, the organisation is able to save on costs, increase its efficiency, gets to find exactly where the organisation lies, that is whether it’s the best or the worst, gives an organisation a competitive edge and it can also help to improve the organisations reputation. So how to benchmark you’re environmental health and safety program

Step 1

The procedure to benchmark your environmental health and safety program

Benchmarking can be achieved through slow but sure process, the environmental management system (EMS) is the basis for which the benchmarks are to be created and the process should start by identifying or choosing a team, the rest of the members are not to be left out, opportunity to raise their opinions should be availed to them. 

Step 2

Once you have a team it’s time to evaluate the organisations areas that could have impact on the environmental health and safety this could be like for example the organisations areas likely to cause pollution. Researching on the performance of other companies with similar objectives is a plus, or consults with the environmental protection track program where you can get a baseline data for creating benchmark. 

Step 3

Specific goal or the objectives are to be written. Specific is better than it being general since it will be much easier to measure the attainment of a specific goal. Once you have your goals in place then the procedure should be generated to attaining these goals set. 

Step 4

The program cannot run on its own that’s why a procedure to train the staff has to be put in place, and then ensure clear definition of staff roles to enable the effective implementation of the program. Document the whole plan, this is very important since the information becomes official and it can be used as a reference whenever it is needed then audit the environmental health and safety program periodically, if there is need for adjustments you can do them and finally review the plan.

Step 5

Challenges faced when benchmarking environmental health and safety program

It’s not easy to compare data, because of the vast amounts of data. This process is also resource constraining, since a lot of time, expertise and finances are used, there has also been chases of staff resistance which can cause major problems. 

Therefore it is important to care for environmental health and prevent all the health conditions that can be prevented. Create awareness about environmental health and its related issues.

Finally ignorance can be a problem because the process to be very effective, all members have to play their part well.

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