March 5th, 2024 by Dakota Software Staff
Legal compliance is a constantly moving target for Environment, Health, and Safety (EHS) professionals. The larger the organization, the more complex and compounding a company’s obligations can become, and this makes efficient EHS compliance management increasingly important. EHS legal registers can provide a pathway to this efficiency, and they should be a cornerstone of your compliance program.
While the concepts behind them are relatively simple, EHS legal registers must be tailored to the specific needs of an enterprise, and this means there are many potential paths to successful implementation. Let’s take a closer look at what EHS legal registers are, why they’re important, and how you can go about creating and maintaining them.
Given how customizable they are, there is no single, unifying template for EHS legal registers—and, perhaps ironically, they are not specifically defined or mandated under the law. They aren’t even directly referred to in voluntary standards such as ISO 14001 or ISO 45001 by this exact verbiage (although they can be critical to achieving certification). However, an EHS legal register can be generally defined as an evolving, up-to-date list of all the regulatory requirements that must be met to achieve EHS legal compliance at a given site within the organization.
Naturally, this list of requirements will differ in size and complexity depending on a variety of factors, including:
The industry within which the organization operates,
The overall size of the organization (both in terms of number of employees and expansiveness of geographic locations),
The specific location of the site(s) within the organization, and
An individual site’s unique operations and processes.
Creating and maintaining such a comprehensive list can seem like a formidable (and potentially tedious) undertaking. But the benefits are well worth the work.
Regardless of how you choose to manage the list of regulatory obligations that comprises your EHS legal register, it should contain at least the following two items of information:
The name of the particular legal authority (whether statute, regulation, code, or ordinance) that applies to a particular set of operations.
Access to the full text of the law or regulation, which sometimes (but not always) can be easily linked to within the context of your register.
However, a comprehensive legal register should go beyond this to include the following information and features (keep in mind this is not an all-inclusive list, and you may think of other items that could benefit your organization):
A clearly stated, concise summary of what the law requires
A note of what jurisdictions are covered (i.e., is it a federal, state, or local requirement)
A summary of how this requirement applies to your site’s operations
A summary and/or link to a compliance calendar outlining the what, how, and when of actions necessary to maintain compliance
Certain relevant or important dates, such as the effective date of the requirements, the dates of any revisions or amendments, dates (and high-level results) of compliance audits, and the date the register was last updated
A record of who is responsible for updating the register to maintain accountability
The primary purpose of EHS legal registers is to better ensure regulatory compliance, not only for an individual site, but companywide. While this a benefit in and of itself, confident compliance leads to a number of larger benefits to the company, including:
Financial benefits. Companies that maintain compliance obligations are less likely to incur fines and penalties if they are inspected by regulatory agencies. Strong EHS compliance also decreases the risk of costly injuries and illnesses among the workforce (as well as any resulting legal actions).
Reputational benefits. Perhaps now more than ever, organizations are expected to take sustainability and environmental protection seriously, and they are also judged by their efforts to protect worker health and safety. Demonstrating effective compliance can help companies project an image of conscientiousness, trustworthiness, and caring, which in turn is good for business.
Cultural benefits. It’s not just the public that takes notice when an organization disregards health and safety—workers notice, too. By implementing EHS legal registers as part of a larger compliance program, your organization demonstrates a commitment to EHS at all levels of the company. This commitment is then mirrored back by the workforce, creating a cycle of continuous improvement and a strong safety culture.
Now that you know the what and the why of EHS legal registers, it’s time for the tricky part—the how. When done effectively, your regulatory preparedness can become an important leading indicator of EHS success.
Remember, creating an EHS legal register is not a one-and-done task. It is a constant process of evaluating your operations, monitoring applicable regulatory developments, and reviewing the company’s compliance status in an effort to ensure the organization’s actions are consistently in harmony with its EHS obligations.
Here are some key steps for creating an EHS legal register:
First, consider a top-down approach. For those managing nationwide or global companies, a top-down approach can ensure that leadership is engaged with an EHS compliance strategy. With buy-in, a standardized companywide approach to EHS legal registers can make it easier to establish a cultural imperative for all subsidiary sites.
Take inventory of operations and identify all applicable compliance obligations. This can be a heavy lift when first creating a register. Start with a thorough understanding of all operations at a given site, then determine what laws and regulations apply, and then know what actions, permitting, and/or safeguards are necessary to be in compliance.
Create a register format that suits your needs. Many companies turn to the tried-and-true spreadsheet to track all of the information in an EHS legal register. As we’ve seen, however, these registers can contain a great deal of information, making for a very unruly (and potentially incomprehensible) spreadsheet. Consider ease of use at every turn when creating your EHS legal register—could an EHS manager new to the company take your document, absorb its contents, and take action with a reasonable amount of attention and effort with minimal confusion? If the answer is no, your formatting may need some work.
Maintain, maintain, maintain. Regular reviews of the legal register are a must, and these reviews should follow a standard protocol and frequency. Some organizations rely on internal teams or consultants to track changes, others rely on free services, like Dakota Software’s EHS Regulatory Alerts, to stay informed. It can be a lot for one person—or even a team of people—to handle, which is why EHS leaders are increasingly turning to EHS software platforms.
With its ability to automate routine tasks, streamline workflows, and simplify reporting, EHS software has become an indispensable tool for every organization with significant operations. Where many EHS platforms fail, however, is with their ability to manage legal registers and related compliance activities. Between constantly changing regulations and operational changes within the organization, EHS teams can spend significant time updating their compliance plans within the software. This is not the case with Dakota Software.
Dakota’s ProActivity Suite features a constantly updated regulatory database that helps ensure your EHS legal registers are accurate and always up-to-date. It guides users in the creation and maintenance of site-specific compliance profiles, centralizing regulatory obligations and automating EHS compliance assurance programs. In short, our solutions work for you, not the other way around.
While knowing all the ins and outs of your compliance obligations can be extremely difficult, ignorance of the law is no excuse. Dakota Software can help you manage it all with confidence and certainty. View our demo library to see how.
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