The United States is renowned for its “litigation centric” culture. This in some way has not
only fueled but forged the development of EHS
management in the U.S., which has evolved to
As a result the services sold to US clients,
versus those sold to companies in the rest of
the world are noticeably different. US companies tend to veer towards Enhesa’s EHS compliance scorecards or checklists. In Europe this
service is also popular, but clients tend to also
want a more Management System ’legal register’ type approach.
It will be interesting to see how, with the
revisions undertaken to all ISO Standards, the
on-going review of ISO 14001 and the imminent creation of ISO 45001 to replace OHSAS
18001 these different approaches will be impacted. US companies are less inclined to go
for these management systems. This is a fact
backed up by numbers. In 2012 just under
6,000 ISO 14001 certificates were held in the
US, compared to over 15,000 in the UK and
over 90,000 in China.
In Europe EHS managers will
tend to have lower budgets than
their US counterparts and take
a different, more dialogue-based
approach to non-compliance
findings.
being heavily compliance focused. Managers
in the U.S. want/need to ensure that they are
in compliance. They don’t want lawyers or the
authorities knocking on their door if something
goes wrong, especially when non-compliance
fines are so high in comparison to the rest of
the world.
Yet, nobody in Europe is fond of fine-wielding inspectors. However, this is where the story
is different. EHS managers in Europe tend to
have lower budgets than their U.S. counterparts
and take a more dialogue-based approach to
non-compliance findings. Europe based companies often get a chance to respond to/correct
issues, which is not the case in the U.S.
Enhesa Flash May/June 2014
However, what we hear about the new and
revised versions of the EHS standards is that
there is going to be a renewed focus on being
able to demonstrate compliance with your legal
obligations on an on-going basis. Is the rest of
the world also going more down the legal compliance assurance route?
The costs-of non-compliance more than just fines.
“Money, money, money, must be funny, in a
rich man’s world”. So sang ABBA. ABBA probably don’t have any money concerns and probably find that hilarious. Most of us don’t think
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