Total Quality Practitioner

SUSTAINABLE ENVIRONMENTAL CAREERS AND INDUSTRIES IN THE Check *o REENGINEERING/EMS ERA

Chris FitzGeraZd

Environmental business and environmental professionals within industry will face unprecedented challenges in the late 1990s. The strategies of3usiness Process Reengineering (BPR) and Environmental Management Systems (EMSs) will require integrating environmental processes into mainstream business systems and reducing the role for ‘yure” environmental processes. This article describes some of the newskills that employees and consultants will need to learn in order to provide value to the customer’s core business.

Chris FiFitzCeraId is editor-in-chief of Total Quality Environmental Management and president of Environmental Management Information Services in Oakland, California. Mi. FitzGerald consults with industry and service providers on EMIS requirements analysis, design, and implementation, and is completing (z book on Environmental Management Information Services. He can be reached by E-mail a t chris@em is. com.

BPR and EMS: Good News and Bad News The last half of the 1990s looks extremely promising for achieving

the TQEM objectives of integrating environmental goals and processes with business systems. The growing sophistication of Business Process Reengineering (BPR) efforts opens a forum for mapping environmental business processes to the rest of the business, and IS0 14000 provides a high-level template for Environmental Management Systems (EMSs) that can be referenced even by firms that are not planning to seek certification in the short term.

Organizations implementing BPR and EMSs should expect to achieve higher environmental performance, cost savings, and competitive advantage over organizations that continue to manage environmental issues as external, regulatory-driven cost centers. But one of the costs for this progress will be the demise of traditional environmental career paths and industries. Just as the elimination of “quality departments” marked the acceptance of quality parameters throughout the organiza- tion, thorough integration of environmental parameters in business processes will result in many instances of the word “environmental” in job titles and business names.

Who will be the winners and losers in this transformation? The answer depends in part on what kind of “reengineering” is taking place.

Reengineering and Sustainable Business: BPR or ‘Yuicing the Stock?“

”Reengineering” is a dreaded word for many American workers, where it is equated with job loss through head-count reduction or

0 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. CCC 1055-75 71/96/0502067-07

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“reduction in force’’ (RIF). The hostile takeovers and leveraged buyouts (LBOs) of the 1980s put tremendous pressure on corporations to maximize stock price in order to defend the company from LBOs. It is difficult to dramatically enhance stock price in the short term through increases in productivity or market share. The easiest ways to boost stock price (or “juice the stock”) are to sell assets and announce major RIFs. Market analysts respond eagerly and immediately to these an- nouncements, even though the proof that the sales or RIFs will increase company value may be years off. These tactics are usually characterized as elements of a “corporate reengineering program,” which has pro- duced the popular equation of reengineering with job losses. If cuts are the only tactics, the impacts on the organization are often uncertainty, anxiety, and paralysis, as employees wait to see if they will be “reengineered” out of a job in the next reorganization.

We differentiate these tactics of division-selling and job-cutting from the strategies and processes involved in BPR. There is no single definition of BPR, but there are characteristics that distinguish cost- cutting tactics from BPR strategies (Exhibit 1 .)

Our perspectives on environmental work in the new era are based on the assumption that in the long term, BPR firms will survive while cost- cutting firms will eventually wither in the face of global competition from high-performance BPR organizations. At present, there are prob- ably many more “cost cutters” than BPR firms, which will extend the life span of traditional environmental careers and businesses somewhat.

~ ~ ~ ~ _ _ _ _ ~

Exhibit 1. Cost-Cutting versus BPR

Cost-Cutting Tactics

Business for sale or disposal at the right price or tax break Short-term planning based on debt management and return on equity Top management and insider consultants know the plan Outsourcing to reduce head count Local or traditional market perspective Increase market share of existing products and services Compete through low prices Stock analyst is the customer Data processing a cost center

Business Process Reengineering Strategies

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Commitment to sustaining and growing the business Strategic planning: vision, core competency, partnering Employee involvement and communications in planning, analysis, and deployment Outsourcing based on core competencies and partnering strategies Global market perspective: “We can sell anywhere and so can competitors” Create new market through development of new products and services Compete through high quality, competitive prices, and unique solutions Customer, product, and process analysis Information engineering mission critical

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SUSTAINABLE ENVIRONMENTAL CAREERS AND INDUSTRIES IN THE REENGINEERING/EMS ERA

mong the BPR A organizations, career prospects are more complex and somewhat more promising.

The Role ofEMS in BPR While the development of Environmental Management Systems is

not today an essential characteristic of BPR organizations, EMSs are very consistent with the process-driven perspective of BPR and will provide a logical migration path for environmental business processes to the organizational mainstream. Many BPR firms that have achieved or are pursuing I S 0 9000 certification in order to participate in global markets will pursue I S 0 14000 certification for the same reasons. Many more firms that have no short-term plans for I S 0 9000 or I S 0 14000 certifi- cation will recognize that EMS standards such as those outlined in I S 0 14000 provide a high-level template for analyzing, documenting, standardizing, and measuring environmental processes. Often the quality systems professionals (in-house and consulting) who led the IS0 9000 efforts are now taking the lead in EMS development. It is often easier to apply their systems analysis expertise and business knowledge against environmental processes than it would be to develop those capabilities in the environmental professionals, which leads to the question: Where will jobs be gained and lost in the new era?

Sustainable Environmental Careers

Winners and Losers Who will win and who will lose as BPR and EMS gain ground in

corporate environmental management? In the short term, employees of cost-cutting organizations face the most risk. Their organizations may be willing to increase their long-term environmental risk exposure in order to boost short-term stock prices by cutting head-count. These companies may also outsource some of the environmental work once handled by employees, but this is unlikely to balance the employment accounts because the environmental industries are also trying to handle more work with fewer people.

Among the BPR organizations, career prospects are more complex and somewhat more promising. These companies are more likely to account for their environmental capabilities in core competency assess- ment and find ways to retrain and/or redeploy environmental profes- sionals in other job roles that require environmental knowledge.

Prospects may vary widely depending on where these profession- als are in their work-life and career paths. Senior managers may be in the best positions, as they are likely to have work experience (e.g., personnel management, budgeting, program planning) and qualifi- cations that make them key assets in BPR. Many senior environmen- tal managers worked earlier in areas such as plant management, chemical engineering, and manufacturing and expect to take on new areas of responsibility throughout their careers. Finally, expe- rienced senior managers who take early or planned retirement from the organization will have the option of consulting with many industries that have new demands for practical environmental management experience as a core competency.

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Middle managers could be most at risk, since BPR usually tries to increase productivity by reducing the number of management layers required to make and implement decisions. Engineers who have been educated and trained exclusively in environmental specialty fields should pursue opportunities to develop and demonstrate a broader range of business skills such as financial analysis, systems analysis, information systems, product design, and decision support.

Young professionals also face some difficult choices in this most uncertain career-planning era. Their immediate need is to quickly learn and demonstrate competence in their environmental responsibilities, but they also need to look ahead to a future where much environmental work will be executed within other job categories. In many companies, the ranks of potential mentors in middle and top management are thinning, and few environmental consulting firms train and mentor their young recruits at all. Companies committed to BPR will need to make special efforts to demonstrate commitment by investing in training and guiding their young professionals, or face a critical gap in their capabilities five years from now.

consulting firms train and mentor their young remits at ail.

New Environmental Career Paths What will the new environmental career paths look like? The biggest

opportunities will be for nonenvironmental professionals and manag- ers who add environmental knowledge and experience to their skill portfolios. A few of the work areas that are currently adding environ- mental parameters to job performance measurement include:

Accounting Maintenance Information Systems Purchasing Parts and Equipment Management Marketing Product Design Process Control

The other major source of increased opportunity will be for environ- mental managers who recognize the changing character of their work and develop process improvements to make the transition easier and more productive. Some of these transitions might include:

From Auditor to Issue Manager There will be a much smaller demand for traditional environ- mental auditors in the BPR/EMS era. The periodic inspection to identify performance shortfalls or critical mistakes will be replaced by continuous commitment tracking and exception notification based on identified business process rules; EMSs will be largely self-inspecting and self-documenting. But there will be a need for issue managers who will develop and update

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the system’s rules by tracking changes in regulations, tech- nologies, and solutions and by developing guidelines for systems responding to these changes.

From Clerk to Knowledgeflechnology Distributor Most environmental managers spend a third or more of their time doing “clerking” tasks: inventorying chemicals and equip- ment; reading, distributing, and filing regulations; and filling out reports based on standard procedures. Most of this work will be handled within other jobs and/or by automated sys- tems. Environmental professionals should be happy to lose this work if they can spend their time identifying knowledge and technological solutions and transferring it to the people and/or systems that will use it.

From Specialist to Cross Trainer Exclusive expertise in a narrow environmental specialty will be a risky proposition; if the expertise does not require informa- tion exchange with the rest of the business, it may make sense for the organization to outsource the work to consultants, foundations, or industry associations. But specialists who continuously deploy their expertise for mission-critical busi- ness functions will not have to go outside the corporation to pursue their careers. Toxicologists, for example, may spend part of their time working in teams such as product steward- ship, life-cycle analysis, risk management, purchasing, ac- counting, and marketing.

Sustainable Environmental Industries Which environmental industries will be most affected by the

growth of BPR and EMS? In the short term, most of the currently thriving industries will continue to prosper due to outsourcing by cost- cutting businesses. They may see their margins drop because many of their product lines are becoming commodities, and remediation-based businesses will be driven by factors outside the scope of BPR. But by the year 2000, many of today‘s environmental industries will be in decline while new industries arise. And in the United States, at least, the lawyers will continue to legislate and litigate work for themselves.

ut by the year 2000, many of B

today’s environmental industries will be in decline while new industries arise.

Environmental Consulting Environmental consulting is probably the industry most threatened

by the growth of BPR and EMSs. Both of these strategies require perspective, experience, and expertise across all areas of the client organizations. The major environmental consulting firms today are managed chiefly by environmental engineers and scientists who rose to partnership on the basis of their environmental knowledge and market- ing skills. In most cases, they lack experience in any of the business activities that will absorb the environmental business processes (e.g.,

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lants that can P demonstrate a consistent relationship between operating conditions and emission rates will be allowed to forgo new CEM investments that would otherwise be required by CAA 1990.

strategic planning, accounting, marketing, product design, plant man- agement, manufacturing, purchasing). In short, the customers know more than their consultants when it comes to integrated management strategies and programs.

Customer dissatisfaction with environmental consulting firms is increasingly evident. In a recent survey of over 500 waste generators, 67 percent said they would not recommend their existing consultants to their peers.l How will consultants respond to changing customer requirements? A decade ago, “quality systems” consulting firms faced similar challenges as their prime customers internalized quality systems capabilities, and few survived without adding capabilities and expertise to meet their customers’ new requirements. Some of the survivors of that shakeout prospered with the spread of I S 0 9000 and are now poised to play in the I S 0 14000 market.

We believe that the markets will split along two lines: a cost- sensitive market for “commodity” environmental services, and a smaller high-value decision support business in which environmental consult- ants partner with the best of the BPR firms. Even these survivors will continuously face the challenge of demonstrating why they know more about BPR than their clients.

PoZZution Monitoring and ControZ Equipment While the overall prosperity of this industry will depend on regula-

tory requirements for monitoring and control, some firms will gain a critical advantage by integrating this business with process monitor- ing and control equipment and systems. The process manufacturing industries are currently implementing a major generational change in distributed control systems (DCS), creating an opportunity to plug environmental parameters directly into the process control loop. Prod- ucts that are designed for “plug-and-play” integration with this genera- tion of DCS will have a huge price and performance advantage over stand-alone systems. Continuous emission monitoring (CEM) systems also face a challenge from new DCS systems; in many cases, plants that can demonstrate a consistent relationship between operating condi- tions and emission rates will be allowed to forgo new CEM investments that would otherwise be required by CAA 1990.

Environmental Information Systems and Sewices The market for Environmental Management Information Systems

(EMIS) (including planning, software, databases, and implementation) will be severely impacted by the migration to BPR and EMS. The current pattern of many isolated systems will not fit the bill, and customers will not have time or money for “flavor of the year” solutions that respond to the most immediately pressing regulatory requirements but do not reflect the ongoing needs of the business.

Industrial customers are ready to buy good packages rather than build their own, but they need the systems to integrate with other systems being deployed for BPR. If the EMIS packages do not provide

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such integration capabilities, the work will be handled by extensions of enterprise systems such as financial, human resources, workflow man- agement, materials resource planning, maintenance, inventory, and shipping. The EMIS industry will need to refocus on its core competen- cies in identifying the requirements of environmental business pro- cesses and translating them into data structures, knowledge bases, and rules agents that will work with the core business systems.

Conclusion: Beginning Again So, is this the end for environmental professionals? On sharing the

draft of this article with some of my peers, I was surprised to find that they thought I was bleak about the career prospects for environmental professionals. On the contrary, I think that we’ve achieved great things and I am very excited about what we’ll be doing in the next era of environmental work. In the mid 1970s, I speculated about the future of environmental protection for my undergraduate thesis. I did not think that the biggest impacts of NEPA and CEQA would derive from the work products they generated EIAs, EISs, and EIRs (Environmental Impact Assessments, Environmental Impact Studies, and Environmental Im- pact Reports). I thought that the most significant impacts would be on the corporate culture as industrial firms began to hire biologists, geologists, toxicologists, and other environmental professionals. The “greenness” of environmental staffers has indeed seemed to rub off- most companies realize that their employees are very demanding environmental customers. After 20 years of corporate environmen- talism, we have made our impact on business; now it’s our turn to learn the wider skill sets our customers require from us to increase our effectiveness.

I am interested to hear your reactions to these assessments and predictions. Feel free to write me c/o this journal or E-mail me at chris@emis.com. Rebuttals will be valued as much or more than agree- ments, and if there is sufficient interest, J will follow up this piece with specific articles on the future of EMIS, environmental consulting services, and career paths for environmental professionals. + Note 1. James D. Snyder, “Consultants, EHS Managers Share Common Challenges. The Biggest OneIs LearningTo Make theMarriage Work,” 6Environrnent Today6 (July 1995).

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