A significant aspect of environment, health and safety (EHS) activities involves striving for compliance with organizational and legislative requirements. While this is an important driver, it doesn’t reflect how a strong EHS culture can help improve an organization’s performance.
Organizations should look at how they can effectively and efficiently manage EHS outcomes through employee motivation. Often companies only tap into employees’ extrinsic motivations – their willingness to follow rules – leaving the more powerful and sustainable intrinsic motivations untapped. A more proactive culture could help improve employee engagement overall, and so performance as employees become more proactive.
How do business leaders create a step change toward an EHS future driven by employees’ intrinsic motivators? It starts with the way EHS maturity is assessed.