Natural hazards are becoming a frequent cause of risk to businesses around the globe. Factors like more severe hurricanes and tornadoes, extreme temperatures, and uncontainable wildfires are more common today than ever. These types of natural hazards can cause huge interruptions to business operations leading to damage to major infrastructure and unplanned downtime.
You can look back to the summer of 2022 to get an idea of the risks these changes bring with them. A massive drought in China cause part of the Yangtze River to dry up, which had an impact on drinking water, shipping routes, and hydropower. This is unfortunately not an isolated situation. Many rivers are at low levels due to extreme heat, which has shown how fragile human life and infrastructure actually are.
EHS functions will have a big part in strategies for decarbonization, but the consequences of increasing temperatures are new and creating additional challenges. For instance, the three-year average of heat deaths by workers in the United States has doubled since the 1990s. Now is the time to be aware of the problem and start looking at strategic risk management as an EHS leader.
A risk assessment is an ideal way to find health, environmental, and safety hazards related to your organization’s operations. Conducting the assessments gives you information on what risks have the greatest threat and how to control risks to create less of a threat. The assessment can be conducted anytime hazards are identified or operations change and introduce potential new risks.
Hazards are any items that may cause harm to processes, properties, and people. This means everything from climate change to chemicals, driving, or working alone. Many hazards can be identified by walking through a workplace. However, others may be more challenging to observe. Asking questions, doing research, and more can play into this first step in the process.
Once you know the hazards, think about what each of their consequences could be. However, you have to think beyond your employees. Anyone who could be impacted by the problem should be considered. This can include the environment, the community, visitors, customers, maintenance personnel, and subcontractors. Consider who would experience harm from each of the hazards and make a note of that.
You know what the hazards are but which are the most problematic? For instance, chemical explosions are high risk but very unlikely to occur. Other risks might cause less harm but are more likely to happen. It’s impossible to place controls on every risk so you need to focus on risks that are most severe and most likely to happen.
Risk scoring is a common method of handling this step. You assign a numerical value to the risk based on how likely it will occur and how severe it would be if it does. This lets you be objective and prioritize risks based on facts rather than emotions.
Once you know which risks have the most threat, you have to consider how to reduce or eliminate the risk. Controls include things like training, procedures, policies, and tools that help you manage risk. Each control measure needs to be specific. Being vague leaves too much to chance and may not have any impact on making things safer for workers.
After controls are in place for a specific risk, monitor and review them regularly. This ensures all changes are working correctly and the risk is being mitigated through your actions. It also gives insight into what may have changed that impacts the controls and can uncover things that went unnoticed.
When you have a modern EHS department, it’s much easier to look at the risks of new problems like climate change and determine how to move forward. Data is captured digitally and you have access to it in real time. There’s no need to take notes, put data in spreadsheets, and handle the calculations yourself. You can see the largest picture to make strategic decisions that benefit your organization as a whole.
As an EHS leader, it’s important to manage the hazards of climate change. This may involve putting in place new safety protocols, and climate risk strategies, monitoring these new risks as they are identified, disseminating vital health information, and tracking the location and status of workers. A robust risk management program is the key to all of these things.
Having a strategic plan for risk management can help you make it through new challenges, both related to climate change and other factors. Identifying hazards, knowing who may be harmed, evaluating and prioritizing, implementing controls, and reviewing and monitoring the situation are the five basic steps you want to incorporate to move forward.
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