Why Do You Need Performance Indicators for Your Environmental Management System?
Performance Indicators are the measures that you put in place on your processes and business that provide you with the information that you need to see how well your ISO 14001 management system is performing. Each process could have a whole series of measures that will let you know how well it is performing financially, with regards to quality, H&S compliance and of course environmentally. After all, as the saying goes, “what gets measured gets done.”
Each process could potentially have many different measures that are important to it. Many of these measures will be monitored, and action taken at a local level. While others that are more important could be elevated to being Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the business. This ensures that those measures that are vital to your business or have a potential risk associated to them are highlighted.
What Performance Indicators Do You Need for Your ISO 14001 Management System?
Many businesses are used to implementing performance measures as part of their quality management system, however they are equally as important as part of your ISO 14001 management system. Your measures need to be selected with great care for each process within your business and only those that are truly important should be elevated as KPIs for management monitoring.
Each business is of course different as are each of your processes. Therefore, your indicators and measures will always be different to those employed by other businesses. However, some typical measures are detailed below to give you some idea as to what you should implement within your own business:
Use of Natural Resources:
- Water, electricity, and gas usage by the business
- The amount of paper used within the business
Discharges to Air, Land, and Water:
- Pollutant parts per million measures
- Weight to landfill
Incidents and Potential Incidents:
- Number of actual and potential incidents
- Time lost due to incidents
Proactive Measures:
- Risk reduction measures implemented
- Environmental audit scores
Learn about ISO 45001 and how Performance Indicators have changed since OHSAS 18001