The COVID-19 pandemic has had devastating effects on our healthcare systems, businesses, schools, and economies. Organizations have faced challenges for sustainability, business continuity, and resilience, including employee absenteeism, disruptions to supply chains, sub-optimal environmental, health and safety cultures and insufficient emergency preparedness measures. Environmental, health, and safety (EHS) managers have sought to protect employees, the environment, and critical business operations through effective risk-based planning and management strategies, while improving their organization’s overall level of preparedness when faced with disruption and crisis. This research explored the role of EHS leadership during the pandemic, how risk management activities were carried out across EHS management systems, and the implications for business continuity and organizational resilience. The research included an exploratory survey and follow-up interviews with EHS professionals in a range of industries, including healthcare.
The study provides insights into effective risk management and emergency preparedness to improve organizational resilience, from an EHS systems perspective. The results suggest that EHS managers play an integral role in business continuity and organizational resilience in the midst of a global pandemic, and beyond. Working with top management in their respective organizations, EHS managers demonstrated leadership in establishing a robust environmental, health and safety culture; integrating EHS and business objectives into risk-based planning; identifying and implementing controls to reduce the risk of virus transmission among essential employees; and monitoring performance to identify opportunities for improvement. Survey and interview responses were analyzed to map the impacts of COVID-19 preparedness and response across EHS management systems, offering insights for EHS managers and other leaders in relation to future disruption and crisis situations to promote sustainability and organizational resilience.
