Implementing an Environmental Health and Safety System (EH&S) has many benefits, and ISO 14001:2015 is the most recognized certification in the world when it comes to EH&S. IT was developed in order to help organizations have better management systems and reduce their environmental impact. It also improves performance and has many economic benefits including higher conformance with legislative and regulatory requirements, by adopting the ISO 14001 standard.
An EH&S that meets the requirements of ISO 14001 is a very beneficial management tool to the organization. It will enable the company to control the environmental impact of its activities, improve its environmental performance continually, have a systematic approach to setting environmental objectives and achieving them, and ensure legal compliance.
Environmental benefits:
Adopting ISO 14001 is mainly to reduce environmental impact. This certificate serves as a reminder that everyone is responsible for the protection of the environment, by contributing to waste reduction, and preventing pollution while continually improving the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the earth we inhabit. And reducing your environmental impact will also benefit your organization by reducing the amount of waste and resource consumption which will lower operating costs. You can improve your environmental performance by adopting better controls as ISO 14001 requires and becoming more efficient.
Legislative and regulatory benefits:
By meeting ISO 14001 requirements you will be meeting all legislative and regulatory requirements, which will reduce the probability of paying any fees and will improve your organization’s efficiency. For businesses operating in multiple locations across the globe, elevating their conformance to ISO 14001, allows them to eliminate the need for multiple registrations or certifications.
Customer satisfaction:
Customer satisfaction is key in order to become certified with ISO 14001. Implementing ISO 14001 leads to improving public perception and giving organizations a competitive advantage in the international marketplace. Moreover, gives the impression that your organization is dedicated to innovative and forward-thinking approaches to customers and employees. It can also increase a business’s access to new customers and partners.
Improvement in cost control:
By using your system to identify, control and reduce environmental incidents, which can cost your company through liability expenses of fines and reparations, you will be reducing costs. You can also use the improvement aspect of the EH&S to help reduce costs, by working towards conserving energy and input materials required by your company processes.
Higher rate of success when implementing changes:
When you are trying to make improvements in your company, it is important to make sure you are working with accurate data, which is another key element of the ISO 14001 standard. And when putting the upgrades in place, you can increase the chances of making it successful the first time by tracking improvements through good data collection. And even if the initiative goes out of track, you will be able to find this out quickly and correct problems and recover faster, which will save you more time and money.
Quicker improvement of processes:
Continual improvement is an element of ISO 14001 that will help your company move from making small improvements to great enhancements in the organizational processes. Through these improvements, you will better build your public image and reduce your costs as we already explained above. Applying this continuously can help your employees find new and better ways to reduce environmental impact and save time and resources when they improve the processes. Because when people are involved in a culture that encourages them to work towards common goals of improvement, they will be more engaged.
Reduce employees turnover:
As stated, employees who are involved in a company’s improvements are more engaged in other aspects of the company. When you give an employee the choice between working for a company that cares for the environment around it, and one that does not, most people would prefer the first one. Engaged employees working as a team on reducing the company’s environmental footprint will increase their focus and retention. And it is less expensive and easier to retain an employee than to recruit and train a new one. So basically, spending some money on helping employees become more engaged is better than spending on training and recruitment.
In conclusion, you will hear the question “Why should we implement ISO 14001 in our organization” especially if the organization is new to environmental management. Obviously, the main reason to implement an EH&S using the ISO 14001 requirements is to help the environment by causing less negative impact and reducing environmental footprints. Even though this is true, some companies will find it difficult to accept the expenses required to implement this change. Therefore, it is important to justify the cost of making these improvements by focusing on the benefits that we already stated will have advantages in the long term.
