Environment, Health, and Safety (EHS)

EHS stands for Environment, Health, and Safety. Many companies have an EHS program where EHS leaders formulate appropriate practices to comply with OSHA laws that ultimately keep employees and the public safe from various hazards. EHS is a discipline rather than an authority like OSHA, for this reason, there have been quite a few renditions of its acronym to reflect other safety priorities. Some include SHE, HSE, ESH, SHEQ, etc.

Environment

This involves the company coming up with a strategy to minimize its carbon footprint, control the amount of waste that is emitted into natural water systems, and control air emissions. The environmental concerns for companies extend even more, as you might guess, but these are a few.

Health

Companies are to strive towards creating the safest workplace for its employees as possible. This includes the development of high quality, work friendly, and environmentally conscious processes. Health encompasses everyone and everything due to the cascading line of consequences or, more favorably, positive outcomes at the workplace.

Safety

EHS standards prioritizes safety of the workers while performing essential tasks (some often are dangerous). This means the proper training, PPE knowledge, and SDS information are available at all times. The employee must also be versatile not only in emergency response but also emergency preparedness. All of this is required for the employer to provide.

EHS requirements and regulations are mainly found in the CFR documents 29, 40, and, 49.

However, EHS management is not restricted to the bare minimum of legal compliance. Companies are in fact encouraged to do more than necessary to make their work environment more effective and safer from hazards. Overall, it leads to a happier workforce since they know that their wellbeing is a priority.