As the field of Safety and Health continues to mature in the 21st Century, the approaches to managing EHS and the professionalism of the SH&E practitioners will continue to dramatically increase with each passing year. There is a new wave of SH&E professionals coming into the field. These professionals will demand more meaningful business models and metrics to serve as benchmarks in managing their EHS efforts within their organizations. Leading the charge in this area will be the use of "management systems" approaches to organizing these efforts. Currently there are several management systems standards in use. But with the "internationalization" of the workplace the ISO 45001 Occupational Health and Safety Systems Standard will potentially become the benchmark for those organizations operating in an international arena.
Whether the ISO standard is employed or other systems standards such as ANSI Z10, it is important to note that all of the management systems standards are organized in a similar manner. Each promotes a radical departure from the traditional ways of managing EHS programs. These new standards promote a more systems oriented approach that is based on the concept of "Acceptable Risk" instead of the historical "elimination of all hazards" that has been the mantra of the safety profession. This new approach will change safety professionals view of the world when managing the safety, health and environmental issues within their organizations. The outcome will be a shift from emphasis on managing regulations and hazards to the management of the Acceptable Risk to which organizations are exposed.
This shift in thinking will challenge old concepts such as "Zero Accidents" and "Safety First", replacing them with the concepts of "Acceptable Risk" and "Residual Risk." Sacred cows and "drivers" such as obsession with regulatory compliance will be replaced with assessing an organization's risk exposures. In some instances these risk exposures will go beyond the traditional definitions of bodily injury. This new holistic approach to addressing workplace risk will change the look of EHS programs in the future.
