Whether your organization has facilities locally or globally, successfully managing environment, health, and safety (EHS) compliance is the minimum for EHS leaders. Compliance is not only rooted in keeping workers safe, but also in protecting your company’s reputation and bottom line.
But in order to drive compliance and manage risk, not to mention cover all your other core EHS responsibilities, you need the right people, with the right expertise, at the right time—and at the right price.
Oftentimes, an EHS consulting firm is asked to help meet a company’s needs by installing a full-time expert in the new role. However, in our experience, simply adding a full-time, in-house body doesn’t always provide the reach, flexibility, or technical expertise needed for your existing team to fill all the gaps. That’s why we often recommend a flexible EHS staffing model.
What does a flexible staffing model look like and what are the key benefits? Let’s dive in.
The Right Expertise
Every company’s goal is to hire employees that have it all—all the experience, all the skill, and all the ambition. Of course, that perfection is hard to come by, especially in the EHS sector.
From managing multiple facilities in different geographies to stakeholder engagement, an EHS professional’s role is multi-faceted. As a result, to successfully manage EHS compliance and other related initiatives, companies often need generalists with wide-ranging knowledge and senior leaders with specific subject matter expertise. And this is precisely why flexible staffing options are worth consideration.
The flexible staffing options offered by an EHS consulting firm like Antea Group brings a team of experts at multiple levels of expertise and niche skill to your organization. This means you have the right insight to tackle a range of opportunities or challenges. And this means you can create fit-for-purpose solutions.
Now, this is certainly not to say you don’t need any in-house EHS resources. Rather, it’s to say that flexible staffing can bring a team of unique experts into the fold to enhance your existing EHS function—and get you closer to having it all.
The Right Time & Place
Whether your organization has a local or global footprint, if your EHS department is tasked with managing more than one facility, time and location can be inconvenient constraints.
Full-time EHS personnel can’t successfully manage multiple facilities from afar. They need to dedicate face-to-face time with the facilities and on-the-ground employees to identify risks, address compliance issues, and ensure safety to drive EHS success. But do they have enough time to dedicate to each facility? And are you prepared to cover the travel costs?
Through flexible staffing, you can deploy the right expertise, at the right time, to the right place, freeing up any in-house folks to focus on other urgent matters.
How is this possible? For example, Antea Group has more than 3,100 employees across 80 offices and six continents. With on-the-ground personnel who are familiar with local regulations and cultures, as well as experienced in the EHS field, they are on-demand resources.
The Right Price
When you have the right resources when and where you need them, you can create more value for your organization. Not only do you gain efficiencies in terms of how and when work gets done, but with flexible staffing you only pay for the expertise you need.
More than likely, your needs are wide-ranging, but your budget isn’t. So, rather than having to choose between a generalist who lacks the experience to perform more strategic work, or a seasoned subject matter expert who’s experience and price point are wasted on smaller tasks, you can leverage multiple people, at varying levels of experience as needed.
All in all, creating a mix of full-time and flexible workers enables you to turn some of your fixed personnel costs into variable expenses. Plus, you can lower the costs associated with hiring and training new staff or paying overtime expenses, saving you time and money in the long-run.
The Total Package
Whether managing EHS global compliance is your major concern or you’re looking for targeted expertise in EHS stakeholder engagement, taking advantage of flexible staffing options can help your internal EHS team prioritize responsibilities and get you cost-effective expert insight to help to fill gaps and surface new opportunities.
How are other companies leveraging flexible, fit-for-purpose EHS solutions? Take a peek at our wide array of EHS case studies that cover a range of solutions.
