Environment Health and Safety Center: Inspiring A Change

Category: Education

Given the rapid economic growth and industrial progress in our country, it is equally important to be responsible stewards of the environment, create safe and healthy work places, and ensure worker safety in the factories. However, with emphasis being laid on profits, environment, health and safety aspects get the least priority. It is with the rise in the number of worker fatalities and injuries every year that the significance of the problem is being realized. The single largest barrier to EHS compliance – particularly in small- and medium-sized factories – is a lack of trained practitioners with the technical skills and management expertise to address EHS priorities. India Environment Health and Safety Center India EHS+ Center is a part of a larger EHS network of training Centers operating in other Asian countries. The EHS+ Center aims to provide factory managers with training and tools to improve environment, health and safety conditions for workers and surrounding communities. These training's focus on increasing resource efficiency, enhancing gender equity and empowerment, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Impact of EHS+ Centers EHS Centers have been providing training to factory managers in the skills needed to ensure a safe and healthy workplace. By training workers at the factory level, EHS Centers continuously move industry standards from basic EHS compliance to more proactive and holistically sustainable practices. Customized intensive training focus on fire and worker safety measures, workplace hazards, and electrical safety, in addition to GHG reduction, energy consumption and water usage. EHS+ Centers specialize in conducting industrial safety training that help in building the capacity of factories. These training programs are designed and delivered by industry experts. The training courses are tailoring to address the gaps and challenges of the manufacturing sectors. EHS+ Center has trained over 18,000 factory managers to date – over 88% of whom have made positive changes in their EHS practices, including improvements in worker injury rates, and have established a routine and transparent system for reporting EHS problems. EHS managers trained through the EHS Centers represent over 1,500 suppliers and more than 150 brands from a large range of industries including automobile, heavy and light engineering, apparel and textile, electronics, food & beverage, http://paper, chemical, transportation, cosmetics, cleaning products, pharmaceutical, mechanical, metalwork, plastic & rubber, furniture, ceramics, and packaging. Collaborative, industry driven EHS training's Center The EHS+ Center works with a locally renowned university to develop a industry driven EHS training center.Companies like GE, Honeywell , Pfizer, Wal-Mart and other multinational companies have provided training materials for the center, a combination of local regulatory requirements and international best practices. In India, EHS+ Center is a joint collaboration between Symbiosis Institute of International Business and the Institute for Sustainable Communities(ISC), based in Vermont, U.S.A. Importance of EHS+ Center There are only a few independent training institutions that offer courses in the area of environment, health and safety management. These institutions offer a mix of long term (one year or more) and short term training courses (less than one month). Most of these training's are held as regular classroom training's and are offered for workforce with technical functions like safety officers, HSE managers, fire officers, health officers etc. It will be challenging for these independent institutions to address the existing capacity gap in the industrial workforce. It was therefore important that an Indian owned, EHS+ Center be established to provide holistic training on environment, health, and safety best practices. The EHS+ center curriculum is designed and developed by industry experts and vetted by the industry partners of EHS+ Center. The curriculum continues to evolve to ensure it is always relevant to the industries. Which ultimately contributes towards building the capacity of manufacturing sector on a whole. How to apply? To apply for a EHS course, please visit http://ehs.siib.ac.in About the trainers EHS+ Center engages qualified experts and industry practitioners to deliver these training's. Expert faculties from Symbiosis Institute of International Business and Symbiosis Institute of Health Sciences also deliver training's in EHS to help participants understand the importance of EHS in ensuring sustainable industrial growth.