Embracing Change: EHS, Sustainability, and Leadership

Episode Transcript:-

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Hilary Framke: You are back for another episode of the Elevate EHS podcast. I’m your host, Hilary Framke. I have a really fun guest today. I have a name twin Hillary Sencer. Hi Hillary. I love that both of our names are Hilary. So it’s the Hilary squared podcast today. And we’re just going to jump right into it.

Hillary, tell our listeners about your EHS journey so far. What drives your passion for EHS as a career? 

Hillary Sencer: Thanks, Hilary. Passion. I think I’m one of those that was truly an environmentalist at heart and love the outdoors. And I think my parents thought I was going to become a tree hugger.

And starved to death, doing something natural. But really I’ve had one of those crazy journeys where, you start doing one thing and you just keep saying yes and other things happen. I was working for a small engineering firm. They sent me to a client a couple of days a week.

Client said, come in-house. I said, sure. That sounds fun. Then the world changed and they sold that business and I went with the sale and the person who was handling safety said, Oh I’m taking another job with the company. Can you take this too? And you just quivering your boots a little bit, but then say, yeah, I guess so.

And figured it out. And I became EH&S. Fast forward a lot of years, a lot of jobs, a lot of cool things. And I’m really back to the environmental roots with sustainability and driving some of the water reduction projects and things like that, that I started doing as an intern way back.

So it’s been a fun journey. I think, people always drive you in this environment, whether you’re working with engineers or R&D scientists or helping a corporate team figure out strategy, you just get to work with so many fun people. So that’s really what drives my passion. 

Hilary Framke: Oh, that’s amazing. I love your story. I haven’t heard this that much with my guests, where they started an environmental and actually got health and safety added. I feel like that’s such a different journey than the opposite, right? Because so many of the guests that I just have happened to have on the episode so far, started in health and safety and have gotten this environmental kind of tacked on and then sustainability, obviously, everything accelerated.

What did you do to get those skill sets? Because I feel like health and safety has a lot larger regulatory burden, more diverse topics across the health and safety realm. How did you get the training that you needed to be successful for those? 

Hillary Sencer: That’s a great question and I think a lot of trial by fire.

A lot of being okay to fail because you do stumble. I found that the health and safety was really easy from the regulatory aspect. But I had no experience from the people side. I got fortunate enough to find some mentors along the way that could really help me on the people side, on the organizational behavior. How to drive change management is such a huge part of EHS and most of us are not comfortable with it.

We don’t do it. Conflict is frightening. And we’re not very well trained to handle all of those difficult conversations. So I think finding those people that have maybe an HR background or more of a business background, and that have been doing this long enough, they can help you, were really critical to my success. And they’re really critical to really anyone starting out. 

Hilary Framke: I love that. And I think that you’re right. A big differentiator between environmental and the health and safety is that people are so unpredictable, you can get a meter to read your usage, and you can record on it.

And it’s very structured and finite. But people so unpredictable, right? And you’re dealing with the people element and failures and behaviors that you’re trying to change and the cultural aspects that are impacting, choices in the workplace. Wow. Thank you for sharing that.

I’m sure we have a ton of listeners who that’s been their journey as well. Drop into the comments, your experience, any ideas that you have to help those who are making that transition. I think we all at EHS are struggling with the seven hundred hats. Where we’ve come from and what we’ve had to pick up as new skills varies person to person.

So I appreciate that. Let’s talk a little bit about sustainability. What do you think about it overall, as a topic? I think what I hear like rumors in the market, it’s a passing trend, it might go away, it might be something that’s a big deal for shareholders and industry now, it could change. So what do you think? Is it here to stay?

Hillary Sencer: It’s super trendy, right? It’s so trendy to be green and to drive an electric car and all of that. But at the end of the day the SEC, which affects every publicly traded company that trades in the United States made this really accountable. By making it accountable and things like financial records for trading requirements with a European rule called CSRD, there’s accountability and honesty that has to come with it. You don’t make those rules and then abandon them two minutes later. So we know that a lot of these things are going to be here to stay for at least five to ten year future, if not beyond that. And at the end of the day we have to look at what’s under it. We have a problem with climate change. We have a problem with rising sea level. If we don’t get that under control, flash forward to a sci-fi novel but we are going to have a problem as global environment. Not just the United States, Great Britain or China but everyone is going to have a problem and we can reverse that. So I think it’s really big but it’s also really small. It’s all the little incremental changes that every one of us can make that are going to make the biggest difference, I think will be sustained. We may not sustain our electric car, we may wind up with something that’s hydrogen. We’re gonna drive innovation, but we’re not gonna lose sight. I think of why we’re doing this because science is now really solid to show us why it matters and how we can affect it.

Hilary Framke: Such an interesting point of view. I agree. I think what was shocking to me as I moved up in my career. I started out in the US, it was just site based roles, moved into a regional US then I got Canada, Mexico. I didn’t notice it as much but once I went global and had European sites and Asia Pacific sites, it was like whoa there’s a lot of environmental regulation over here that’s a lot different than what the US has and they have moved and far surpassed us in the environmental realm, going landfill free, already for most European countries. They don’t even have landfills to be able to send it to. Having set the tone already for some fifty-sixty years of environmental protections. Out of those sites, I’m getting a big push for sustainability. They have great numbers and great performance and I’m seeing for the first time whoa this isn’t new, it’s maybe newer to the US and moving to this very public view out of corporate social responsibility. Then like you said everything that’s happening in the SEC and science based targets and moving to the forefront from a financial perspective and incorporating environmental results into taxes and other things. I think those things are new burdens but this is not a new topic. We’re just newer to this party. 

Hillary Sencer: I think the thing that you say to all the naysayers is that we naysay things, it was too hard, it’ll be too expensive, it’ll drive us in the wrong direction, we’re gonna kill business. It’s just wrong. We can absolutely spawn innovation. Innovation brings good and bad always but it brings a lot of change and a lot of really cool things to the market. I think we’re finally at that point where we accept the idea that if we put a really strong universal requirement out there  then everyone struggles to meet the same thing but that struggle is what’s going to drive the improvements, the fun stuff, the cool things.

Hilary Framke: It’s almost like that tension pushes you over to the next level.

Hillary Sencer: Exactly. 

Hilary Framke: That’s so cool

Let’s talk a little bit about sustainability in the EHS realm. It’s not that EHS practitioners aren’t on board about sustainability. We all are in it, right? To protect the planet, to protect our people.

I think the morality is there. But the struggle might be, I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know how to calculate carbon emissions. I don’t know how to do VOCs. I don’t know how to get my hands around waste streams and life cycle management. And that might be creating some of the hesitation for EHS practitioners to get on board and take on some responsibility in their organizations because they feel like I might screw up. Or it might be revealed as an imposter who doesn’t know everything about environmental.

 What advice would you give someone maybe in this position and and what practical steps can EHS practitioners take to start to participate in this strategy? 

Hillary Sencer: I think it’s really important to start small and leverage what you do know because we’re all working from this is the Wild West. Everything’s new. All these requirements are new. How am I ever going to possibly do all this reporting? But we’re all there together. The first thing is, what do I know? And what do I have? Do I have recycling? Yes, check. Then I have waste minimization. Then I can build on that. Do I care about my water?

Does it cost too much money? Have I done efficiency projects? Check. Then I can find a way to track that or guess what? My finance people are probably already tracking that. Let me go have a conversation. I think the other really important thing is to find your friends. Because none of us is doing this by ourselves.

Especially when something’s new, you don’t have all the answers. You’re sort of crowdsourcing. Where does everybody fall out on X or Y? So this is where conferences and professional organizations and even the people that you knew 30 years ago, on LinkedIn are doing something so cool.

Reach out and say, Hey, how did you get there? And more than likely they want to tell their story. And if you’ve done enough research before you reach out that you’re not just tell me everything. But what do you think about something pretty specific, people will give you great feedback.

And to think that we could do this alone, we can’t, right? We have to leverage every little bit of knowledge from all the different great people doing wonderful things. And I think that’s really a big piece of this. And then the final, important piece is that you don’t have to do it all tomorrow.

You have to set a path to try to get there. Be prepared for it to take on a life of its own. If you introduce people to energy hunts, someone in that group of people is going to come up with something cool that is going to be applicable to your industry that everybody can do. Don’t think you have to have all the answers.

Bring the energy. Bring the spark. Challenge the people and somebody will help you get to the next step. I think sometimes we all think we have to be the expert in everything, and it shuts us down when we get stumped. But use your team, set them on a path, and look for those incremental changes because you don’t have to have that life altering change tomorrow. You have to put one foot in front of the other and just get there. 

Hilary Framke: I so agree. And I think too often we think, Oh, I’ve got to go out and find a fancy consultant and get this going and get materiality assessments and start to gather all this. But frankly, much of this data can be collected first by you.

So get your hands around what data you need to start collecting start to put that together because that’s what they’re going to want to review. Sometimes there’s a time and a place for that, right? And if you are in a way where you don’t have an expert in house, there’s great sustainability consultants who can help you to strategically plan and set up roadmaps.

But guess what? They’re going to want to see your data. So there’s some upfront work that you can be doing tomorrow to start to collect all of those impacts. And you’ll know that out of your environmental protection program. I always used to say, a nice way to think about environmental protection and sustainability is they’re all around the same topics.

Environmental is what we have to do. Sustainability is what we want to do. 

Hillary Sencer: It’s interesting that you say that, because I think sometimes sustainability becomes such a buzzword sort of at the C suite, so far away from the people doing the compliance work, that it seems so pie in the sky, overwhelming.

Go to your floor. Go talk to the environmental engineer that is already tracking your waste and say, what reports do you have? Because they do. They have to. Especially if it’s the US or Canada or anywhere in Europe. They’ve been tracking this for years. Maybe their system needs an update. Maybe it’s not good enough for financial assurance. But you’re gonna have a good starting place. 

Hilary Framke: Oh, I love that. And we so often underestimate how much all of the best answers are just laying with our frontline employees, right? Talk about passion. This is what they do every single day. I bet they’ll have just a well of ideas to go and get this started, so go back out to them and find out what their thoughts are, where they think we should go. Like you said, crowdsource in your own facility, you’d be surprised what you find out. 

Hillary Sencer: Yeah. 

Hilary Framke: You know, we talked a little bit in our prep call about engagement. Always such a big struggle in EHS and everyone’s got a different formula for how they build this out.

How do you intertwine fun and engagement in your EHS initiatives? I’d love for you to share some specific activities if you would.

Hillary Sencer: I think the first thing is you’ve got to be true and authentic. If it looks like a sham nobody wants to do it nobody’s going to get on board.

The first thing is whatever you say you want to do whatever data you want to collect, make sure you’re showing the folks how you’re using it and what you’re doing with it. So if it’s Oh, I want everybody to find safety improvements. Then come back and show them what you actually improved, what got done, why it got done and then check that it actually worked.

 I think when you’re true and you’re authentic you follow through that really goes a long way to getting folks to buy in. The other thing is it’s got to be fun, right? Nobody wants to read safety reports and nobody wants to read them when bad things are happening, even less, when you’re sitting at zero you’re like Ooh ok, quality report, here’s all our struggles, productivity report, and now safety report. You have nothing to say, you got to talk about the things that are making a difference and how you get there. Talk about your safety committees and who’s doing what. Talk about the ideas that folks are generating.

Nothing fuels more engagement than reward and recognition. But not always the recognition or the reward you think. Not everyone wants to come up to the front of the room. Not everyone wants to see their name in lights. So you have to get in touch with the pulse of your organization. But some of the best things that I think we’ve ever done have been videos. The funny thing about that is everybody’s camera shy till they’re not but filming something like a visitor safety video or an environmental energy hunt video with an employee population brings you so much joy. Such a remarkable experience to get out there, cast it, give folks roles, things to do and they feel so included. I did this at a facility a couple years ago. We needed a safety video that could be a good way to start our international visitors. So something that we could easily put transcription and translation on, something that would show more than just tell.

We said, if we made a video and we showed the proper uniform procedures and what we want for hand washing. It was a medical facility and they needed really high sanitary requirements. You’re not just talking at them you’re really walking them through the steps.

But I did this with the employees themselves. They were all the actors for our video. Then we kept a bloopers reel. So when we previewed the video to everybody we did it Academy Award style and handed out awards, then showed the blooper reel had that whole fun time. It was such an incredible experience and that video would get shown and somebody would walk by the lobby and say, I’m in that! And that recognition is so huge. I was a part of something, made a difference. I think you can have so much fun just doing the basic things that you need in a way that’s just fun for the employees that you work with.

Hilary Framke: It’s amazing. I think videos is a format that we’re not using enough of. I’ve seen though some organizations start to build out like learning videos and pulling in leaders, to do certain intros or adding in a little bit of humor.

Not trying to hit compliance requirements but more to build on some of these organizational goals maybe in human and organizational performance, lean management, continuous improvement, sustainability. Some of those topics that we’re trying to chase as a business and we’re trying to change the way that we do business, not trying to hit a compliance requirement. Using videos for that format, which I think so creative, such a good idea. Like you said, people are so excited to see those. It really doesn’t take that much time but it takes a little bit of creativity to get started. 

Hillary Sencer: It’s funny because I did as well with the ones who were like Oh, I would never go on screen. What do you like to do? With my buddy, I like to put music in the back of videos. Okay can you help us with that? Oh, I’m the props dude. Oh, I just want to be part of the crew.

People have an idea when they hear about things sometimes they could be convinced to get involved as long as you don’t give them something too scary. And I hate the camera. But sometimes when you realize at the end the ability to leave a message that will last for more than a day is so important and such a gift. You force yourself to do it and then it’s not as bad but I just enjoy bringing those people in and getting everybody involved because it just is so rewarding and so much fun.

Hilary Framke: Back to your point about authenticity, I think that there’s an opportunity here as well and wish I had done more of this, when I go back to my EHS career. There are so many amazing employee stories, especially around EHS.

Finding out that the person who sat across from me in the office, her dad had lost his arm in a work related incident. Totally changed their life and his livelihood and she remembers and almost carries some of that trauma with her. It’s given her this attention and passion for EHS over the years, and she was in logistics. She had nothing to do with our team but just a champion because of her experience. If they would be willing to get on camera and to tell the story and then to drop those stories. We always have TV screens and the lunch and break rooms, lobbies, to play those and to talk about and show how EHS is in the fabric of our business.

If you don’t have an EHS program that has heart, it’s not going to take you there. 

Hillary Sencer: That’s it and I think one of the coolest things I saw fairly recently, one of my facilities did an art contest with the employees kids about safety. But then they made it into a calendar and you go and you say okay so not only did whoever entered, some of them won and got awards or prizes but this family now sees this hanging on the wall.

Every family of this employee got one of these and that’s their kid or grandkid or niece or nephew whose art got reflected. So I think that really does pull it apart but it pulls in the whole family and developing that next generation of folks to say this really does matter because it affects not just am I safe at work. Do I have outlets when I’m feeling pain. I think that’s becoming a really big piece of our whole workforce that need to really feel that my employer sees me as a person that I’m able to be not just respected but helped.

Hilary Framke: Yeah, like they say think global, act local. So take these actions and push it across and take the best out of the world put it all down and up. I think I saw this other campaign extremely moving. They asked each employee to bring in a picture of who they stay safe for and then they put all the pictures up and a huge mural on the wall. You see that and like you said sometimes it’s grandkids, it’s partners, it’s parents. But it’s hard, at least for me, not to tear up and be moved when you walk by and see that and you see how loved each of our employees are. I don’t care if it’s just a laceration that’s an event they did not need to go through. I don’t care how minor it is. Our goal, every single facility’s goal should be zero harm. We should be working towards that and seeing that one injury is too many. One loss to the environment is too many. That changes the landscape of our culture, it changes trust in the organization. If we’re not working hard to impact that and to reduce the risk we’re pursuing the wrong things.

Hillary Sencer: Absolutely. 

Hilary Framke: What advice would you give to them in navigating the present EHS domain? 

Hillary Sencer: Say yes. The analytical side of us wants to have all the risk based reasons why we’re not going to do something or why something might be a problem and that all bubbles to the top really fast. When somebody needs you to take on a new project or something that’s different or you’re going to go down the sustainability road and it’s all scary and brand new, you don’t have to let all the issues and problems and potential roadblocks float to the surface.

Say yes, then go figure out how you’re going to make it work. I think that’s really important. I think we sometimes limit our own potential by really throwing up roadblocks that aren’t really there. We’re just afraid of the change or the challenge a little bit. I think it’s so important, trust in your skills.

You definitely want to get a good technical base because what’s going to let you do the calculations with ease. Figure out the excel pieces of the puzzle or the air emissions piece. If you don’t have the technical skills, it’s really hard to go back and learn them.

But as important as the technical is, so are the people skills. I think one of the hardest things starting out is to think you have to have all the answers, and to become a safety cop or an environmental cop, instead of a problem solver. So when you don’t know, put a group of people together. Use your team. You’ve got smart people working in every business. So you really have to leverage those folks to say, how could we solve this? What ideas do we have? Is there a way to bring this in faster or less expensive? And people have ways to do that, you don’t have to have all the answers. So I think that’s really important. The last thing, you have to accept that it’s not if, it’s when you’re going to fail. Something is not going to work. Get used to it. Put on your big girl pants and say okay, I failed at that and now I’m going to regroup and I’m going to pick myself up and I’m going to dust myself off and I’m going to keep on going.

So you almost have to not fear the failure. You have to say, if I’m not failing, I’m probably not pushing hard enough. I’m not trying to go far enough. Things don’t always work and that’s okay but we learn from that and I think that telling my 24 year old self that as opposed to my current self was really important because we all viewed failure is just the worst possible thing ever but we all know as you get further down your career that you learn more from the failure than the success. I would say just don’t be afraid of it. 

Hilary Framke: Oh, I love that. I was very popular in my career for pushing boundaries. I would say some people might say too many disruptive, right? Always look with the best intentions.

 I wasn’t a classically trained EHS leader. I never went to school for it. I really didn’t know what it was. I learned all boots on the ground, out in the field, talking to employees, seeing the risk, doing the investigations, doing the trainings myself, seeing people fall asleep, like wondering why people don’t show, trying to understand this. I’m biased because that’s the way that I learned but I do think there is a ton of value in getting out on the floor and it’s my biggest point of complaint with EHS practitioners that I’ve seen when I start with a new employer. We’re not out on the floor enough, way too much time in meetings, way too much time doing administrative tasks.

Out on the floor is where the risk is. It’s where the people are. It’s where the activity is. That’s where you’re going to learn about how to be the most successful in EHS. So even just that one change, get yourself out on the floor. Even if you just do that, make that one goal to spend more time out on the floor.

I promise you that if you’re consistent, you stick with that you will become a better EHS leader over time because you will have more business acumen. You will understand your process. You’ll understand the risks, the controls, the matchup, where you have inadequacies and you can start to build in. Technology is offering so many opportunities to start to correlate, aggregate, analyze data and we don’t need to do that anymore. That can be done by technology. So find those levers to go out and get away from the administrative obstacles, that are keeping you from your people and the environmental process.

And like you said, just don’t be afraid to fail. I really love that Hillary. I think that was to my experience, I was so afraid to fail. It kept me from delegating, it kept me from being the type of leader that I wanted to be because I was so afraid that it would go poorly but the fact is like you said, you learned so much.

Hillary Sencer: Yeah, absolutely. 

Hilary Framke: It’s been such a pleasure. Hillary, thank you for being on the podcast today for all of your insights. I love that we got to chat about sustainability. I think there’s much more to come as we move down that pathway and things become more clear. 

Thank you for your suggestions on practical steps to get started and for what you shared about engagement and making the people aspect a priority in order to push your programs forward. So it was great to have you on the episode. Wish you the best of continued success in your role and in EHS. 

Hillary Sencer: Thanks so much. It was great to be here.