Why Values Matter When Selecting an EHS&S Consultant
"You want to hire a company that ‘gets' you," he said. "This has always been true in a business sense but it's also being reflected in sustainability.
"As sustainability becomes more of a real value in companies, that aspect becomes bigger. Not necessarily because you're screening on sustainability but because you see a bigger alignment with your values and goals," Mr. Roth said.
This values orientation is important, he says, because it speaks to how well the two companies may work together. It also may be an informal indicator for how the consultant thinks about the business problems it is hired to solve.
"For me, it would be systemic thinking—systemically thinking about impact to the other parts of the business and I think balancing the long-term and short-term impacts," Mr. Roth said.
A potential consultant's internal values are also important to James Van Langen, Vice President of Management Systems, Maritime Policy at Carnival Corp. While he formally screens firms based on technical qualifications and experience, how a consulting firm stacks up on sustainability is still implicit in his final decision-making.
"I believe behavior is driven by values and it applies at the corporate level as well as at the individual level," he said. "You can have that conversation with consultants as well as with individuals that you're going to hire, whether temporarily or permanently. What is their belief system? And does it align with your belief system?"
How well a consulting firm incorporates sustainability into its own business might also reflect on its ability to do so for others, Mr. Van Langen said.
"You'd like a company to be practicing what they're preaching," he said. "If they're going to advise us on energy consumption, for example, are they instituting energy conservation practices within their own organization?"
Indeed, it was for both values reasons and for client service that Golder Associates, a consulting, design and construction firm, first developed its internal environmental management and sustainability programs seven years ago, according to HSE Specialist Catherine Pefhany.
"Taking a strong position on the sustainability of our operations was a critical component to our key values as a corporation and was also important to help us serve our clients in the way that we and they wanted in the future," Ms. Pefhany said.
Today the Toronto-based firm has eight health, safety and environment leaders dedicated to ensuring that EHS considerations are woven into the entire project planning and implementation process.
What started as an opportunity to improve internally, though, has started to deliver value for the business, Ms. Pefhany said. Since developing its programs, the company has started to see an increase in the number of environment, social and governance inquiries from potential clients.
"Progressively over the last couple of years, inquiries about our environmental and sustainability processes have been increasing," she said. "I think it's part and parcel with the clients expanding their own internal focus on EHS and sustainability management."
While Mr. Roth said few companies are making decisions based entirely on a consultant's sustainability program, he agrees that the inquiries will likely continue.
"Everyone is under the assumption that as programs continue to mature that data will start to be used," he said.
For Ms. Pefhany, though, having a good story to tell on the sustainability side is still a good way to demonstrate competitive advantage.
"Any edge that you can get with winning a job is a great edge," she said. "If this can help along with our technical excellence… we want to take advantage of that."
To learn more about the criteria your peers are using to select consultants, join Kelvin Roth at NAEM's upcoming "Advancing Compliance Assurance and EHS Management Systems" conference on August 5-6 in Auburn Hills, Michigan.
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Sustainability
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NAEM Staff
The National Association for Environmental, Health and Safety, and Sustainability (EHS&S) Management (NAEM) empowers corporate leaders to advance environmental stewardship, create safe and healthy workplaces and promote global sustainability. As the leading business community for EHS&S decision-makers, we provide engaging forums, a curated network, peer benchmarking, research insights and tools for solving today’s corporate EHS&S management challenges. Visit us online at naem.org.