Image Credit: Getty Images / CurvaBezier

After Georgi Popov, PhD, CSP, FAIHA, completed his education and 10 years as an army chemical officer, he started working for a mid-sized environmental management company. This position gave him access to company decision-makers, including the CEO. But he soon realized that the language he spoke—the language of occupational health and safety—was not the language of company leadership—that of business and risk.

“It was an interesting conversation when I started quoting our OSHA standards. 29 CFR 1910—the CEOs and the decision-makers didn't understand that,” Popov said. The company executives asked him what would happen if they didn’t comply with OSHA standards. He told them they would likely be fined roughly $7,200 per violation. “I was shocked when they told me that's cost of doing business. We have more important things to do. $7,200, that's peanuts. We're looking at millions of dollars here.”

Popov realized that in order to convince company leadership of the need to implement health and safety controls, he would need to learn how to communicate in terms they understood. “And then it just clicked for me,” he related. “And I said, ‘Well, maybe I have to justify every investment in the environmental, health, and safety initiatives.’”

But like many occupational and environmental health and safety professionals, he didn’t have an MBA or other business education. He would need to turn to sources other than his OEHS training to learn how to develop a business case.

Speaking the Language of Executives

At the time—during the early 2000s—AIHA and a few other organizations had developed resources on business for industrial hygienists. Popov used these documents to develop Excel tools. He drew on OSHA’s occupational illness and injury cost estimator tool and reached out to his employer’s accounting department. He learned how to calculate the amount of money the company lost directly and indirectly due to occupational illnesses and injuries. “The financial formulas are not that difficult,” Popov said. “The formulas that we have in the industrial hygiene profession are more complicated than the financial formulas.”

Showing executives the financial cost of neglecting health and safety helped Popov convince them of the benefits of OEHS programs. “When you present that case to them, and you show them how much money we're losing, and how much money we can save based on our investments in environmental health and safety,” Popov said, “they quickly realize that the investment makes perfect sense.”

He learned business vocabulary—how to use terms executives understand, such as net present value, return on investment, payback period, and internal rate of return. And he started highlighting the non-financial benefits of investing in health and safety, such as improvements to the company’s reputation and operational efficiency. When he tried to convince decision-makers to support the company’s ISO 14001 certification, they were initially reluctant, believing it would cost too much money. That changed when the company won contracts for projects because of the reputational boost provided by ISO 14001 certification. “Essentially, that investment was justified with the supplemental, non-financial benefits,” Popov said.

Once he learned how to communicate effectively with company leadership, Popov found they were eager to invite him to meetings. The company even began to use some of the financial tools Popov had developed.

Teaching Business Skills

Many OEHS professionals find themselves in situations similar to the one Popov encountered about 20 years ago. “What I'm hearing from some of my colleagues is ‘Decision-makers don't want to hear about occupational health and safety. We're not invited when they make decisions,’” he said. “Well, you have to speak their language and invite yourself. And after that, you'll be invited to every decision-making meeting, once they see the value we bring.”

Popov helped develop AIHA’s technical framework The Keys to Effective Presentation of Your Business Case, a resource intended to help OEHS professionals create business cases for health and safety programs. “It addresses process. It addresses skills,” Popov said. “It will help us develop skills and the knowledge of how to develop a business case.”

To start with, the technical framework guides readers in establishing the context, scope, and objectives of their business case. “We have to identify the key business objectives because we want to actually align our environmental, health, and safety objectives with the key business objectives for the organization,” Popov explained.

The technical framework then outlines assessing and reducing health and safety risks. OEHS professionals are likely already familiar with this aspect of their work, but from there, the framework explains how to communicate risk in business terms. This gives OEHS professionals justification for requesting funding for their projects. After that, the document helps readers identify non-financial benefits and communicate the impact of health and safety programs from the perspective of enterprise risk management. Popov explained that this requires the OEHS professional to convey how the program “is going to contribute to occupational health and safety risk reduction, how that's going to contribute to operational efficiencies, how that's going to contribute to the financial risk and financial benefits, and how that's going to contribute to strategic risk.”

In addition to the technical framework on developing business cases, AIHA has created a business case tool that walks users through the process of justifying programs in business terms. AIHA has also produced two instructional videos, accessible through YouTube and the business tool webpage. Although the practical example covered in the videos focuses on the mining industry, Popov explained that the business case tool can be applied to any industry. “It's a simple tool. There are more complicated tools out there that some global companies can use,” he said, “but as far as learning the process and the methodology, that should be sufficient.”

The business case technical framework is aligned with two other AIHA publications: the white paper Hierarchy of Controls and the strategic framework Enterprise Risk Management.

Expanding the OEHS Skill Set

Popov added that it’s imperative for OEHS professionals to overcome organizational silos and adopt new skills, including business skills, to meet executives’ evolving expectations. The language that OEHS professionals need to use with executives is very different from the language they will use with line workers or operators. When Popov started meeting with organizational decision-makers, they told him, “Translate that to me in English, but my English,” he related. “And you quickly realize that their English is business management and risk reduction. So that's all they wanted to know.”

“In other words,” he continued, “these days, we need broad knowledge and skills and abilities to communicate properly.”

Related: Read “The Business Case for EHS” in The Synergist.