Organisations around the world are implementing Environmental Management Systems (EMS) as a crucial management tool for controlling their negative environmental impacts. An EMS is made of several crucial elements including an environmental policy, management procedures and plans, corrective actions, and measures for monitoring and continual improvement. All these elements are interrelated and ensuring them helps you to successfully control your environmental impacts and drive sustainability.
The EMS works on the basis of a continual learning and improvement cycle called PDCA i.e., Plan-Do-Check-Act. This model, also known as the process approach, is integrated into almost all ISO management standards including the ISO 14001 standard for environmental management. Therefore, implementing your EMS based on the process approach also makes your EMS eligible for the ISO 14001 certification.
Here is how the EMS works as a management tool to continuously improve the environmental performance of your business.
Plan
The first stage of the continuous cycle is to plan the scope and determine the objectives of your EMS. They must be in the context of your organisation’s environmental aspects. Therefore, you need to carefully assess your impacts and identify the possible environmental risks or challenges. Secondly, you need to define a suitable policy for your environmental management. It would state the procedures, practices, and achievable targets of environmental performance. The policy helps to establish the leadership commitment and employee roles in achieving the objectives.
Do
According to the proposed objectives and policy, you should establish the operational procedures and practices of the EMS. They should be implemented by initiating training and learning programs for the employees working at levels of the organisation. The correct implementation of all procedures and practices are necessary to reduce the impacts and bring sustainability to all spheres of your business.
Check
The third step is about evaluating the performance of the implemented actions by monitoring and measuring their impact on the organisation’s environmental policy. The performance is evaluated by deciding appropriate performance metrics. Those metrics or KPIs are checked from time to time to confirm whether the implemented procedures and practices are effective, and whether they cover the environmental objectives of your organisation. A key method to check performance is internal auditing. Internal auditors not only assess the EMS to assure its effectiveness but also verify whether it meets all requirements of the ISO 14001 standard. The stage for checking or performance evaluation is critical for ensuring improvement in the EMS.
Act
Any shortfalls, inefficiencies, and non-conformance issues identified in the EMS during performance evaluation should be rectified in this act stage. ‘Act’ here implies taking enough preventive and corrective actions to remove all flaws and nonconformities in the EMS. Simultaneously, the EMS is modified and improved which results in better fulfillment of the scope and objectives of your environmental policy.
Key Takeaway
The Plan-Do-Check-Act methodology is necessary to follow when implementing environmental management systems because it helps to foster improvements in the processes of your organisation while ensuring environmental safety. It hence acts as the best management tool to address all types of impacts and continually improve the EMS. As environmental management and sustainability have become a prime concern for most businesses today, there is an overwhelming increase in the number of ISO 14001 certifications everywhere. Following this PDCA approach for your EMS not only helps to improve your environmental performance but also makes your business ready for certification.
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