Environmental Health and Safety

Make sure your business meets environmental health and safety regulations
By Catherine Holm, Writer, Life Coach, Yoga Instructor Catherine Holm The environmental health and safety of your business impacts your company's bottom line. Employees who work in a healthy and safe environment are ultimately more productive and can improve business for you. Meeting environmental health and safety standards is an investment that will improve your business and benefit your customers.

Take these steps to comply with environmental health and safety regulations and to implement a useful health and safety program that will remain relevant and evergreen:

1. Determine what needs to be addressed regarding your business's environmental health and safety.
2. Locate resources and organizations that provide environmental health and safety consulting services.
3. Use environmental health and safety consulting services to develop and implement a plan to ensure a safe and healthy environment in your workplace.

Conduct an environmental health and safety assessment

Begin by learning which environmental health and safety regulations your business needs to comply with. Carry out an in-house assessment, or use environmental health and safety consulting services.
Try:  The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) are good places to begin learning about required standards for environmental health and safety on the job. Take advantage of OSHA’s free On-Site Consultation Service for small and medium-sized businesses.

Train employees on environmental health and safety on the job

Training resources include free environmental safety videos, ehs software, or on-site, in-person training. Many online training solutions are also available, depending upon your company needs.
Try:  Vendors like Safety Services Company offer a number of customized training programs for environmental health and safety compliance. Skillsoft has an online collection of white papers, webinars, and case studies pertaining to environmental health and safety for your business. 

Implement required environmental health and safety initiatives

Put a plan into place that identifies health and safety initiatives, identifies a completion date (or progress milestone), and assigns accountable parties to carry out these initiatives. Utilize EHS software packages, databases, and other environmental, health and safety interactive information resources, to help your company meet its objectives for a healthy and safe environment.
Try:  Environmental Health Safety offers freeware specifically to help your business develop and implement an environmental health and safety program. Trackwise from Sparta Systems, Inc. is software that will track your implementation and compliance to environmental health and safety standards. EHSsoftserve hosts a searchable directory of electronic resources for environmental health and safety management, compliance, remediation, and more.

• Be sure to put a plan in place for regular monitoring and evaluation once you've completed any employee training and made any needed changes in the company environment or processes.
• Your environmental health and safety assessment should ideally include suggested training for any affected employees. Training recommendations should consider the employee's role in the company and the nature of their job responsibilities.