Regulatory Registers: Your Guide to Navigating Diverse EHS Environments

As our world becomes increasingly connected, companies will continue to seize opportunities for expanding their businesses to new geographies. However, many challenges remain when it comes to understanding local regulations, cultural nuances, and legal applicability considerations. To overcome these challenges, EHS leaders need to gain in-depth knowledge and understanding of the regulatory environment and cultural landscape.  

For an EHS manager or even a small EHS team, building and maintaining this knowledge can overwhelm your time and resources. This is where utilizing an EHS regulatory register can change the game. Not only can a register help save time, but it can also ensure accurate, up-to-date information all in one place. If your organization is considering an expansion into new territory, a register to understand the organization’s compliance obligations should be the first task for a smooth, successful operation expansion.  

What is the Value of a Register?

EHS regulations and requirements can vary greatly by region and even by city. Having a regulatory register will help remove time and language barriers, allowing you to better understand your local EHS ecosystem and keep your business running safely and smoothly. A register acts as a resource that EHS leaders throughout the company can use as a decision-making tool and to better justify budget allocations. They can be used across the corporate, regional, and even facility levels to help see the complete EHS picture through a clear lens.  

• Facility Level: at the facility level, a good register offers specific, actionable requirements. For example, it provides any site-specific permit conditions.  
• Regional Level: at the regional level, managers can utilize registers to understand each country's programs. For example, they will show where specific training is needed for chemical labels and storage practices that are universal and can be provided to fill a compliance element versus where there is a site-specific requirement that will result in a unique solution.  
• Corporate Level: at the corporate level, registers provide a tool to consistently see the entire organization through one lens. They can help identify potential EHS burdens – which leads to setting budgets, priorities of actions to maintain compliance (e.g., more focus on higher risk countries), and help establish a cadence of global audits to ensure compliance.  

In some cases, keeping an updated register may be a critical requirement of your management system. They can prove that you not only have all the right programs in place and provide EHS insights, but also have a process to manage changing regulations prior to their finalization. 

Leveraging Local Resources 

Regulatory registers can be a great asset when you operate in or are considering expanding to new countries. A register will provide you with a full understanding of EHS requirements and cultural nuances in the new region and help navigate the language barriers. Through Inogen Alliance, we have the benefit of utilizing our trusted partnerships with over 70 Associate companies globally to create accurate and detailed registers.  

With more than 200 offices located on every continent, we provide you with an enhanced global capacity and geographic reach. Through one point of contact we unlock global capacity with local EHS professionals who will tailor content to provide you with a customized EHS register. This partnership can ensure that the knowledge and data are specific to the region and will offer a greater understanding of the EHS environment.

Gaining region-specific insight enables the register to be scaled down to the facility, meaning you can take the large pool of EHS data and sort out only the necessary and applicable information, making the final register more manageable.  

To find out more read the full blog from our associate Antea Group USA, check out our services or contact us.

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