Situation

The Environment, Health and Safety (EH&S) senior management team of a global, integrated petrochemical company decided to develop a business strategy because of the need to manage its business strategically. EH&S needed to position itself differently to provide services to meet the needs of diverse and changing customers. The strategy's focus for EH&S was on value creation, rather than serving only as a cost center. The fundamental business issues facing the function were: Where do we want to take the business? Who are our customers? What are the best services and service delivery? How about joint venture alliances? How should we manage partnering? How do we resolve our current role and service responsibilities?

A business strategy, developed to address fundamental issues facing the EH&S function, included these strategic elements: building customer relationships; expanding the customer base; reducing total environment, health and safety costs; improving service delivery; and maintaining shared responsibility for regulatory compliance and risk management.

Solution

The core strategy team, consisting of the Strategy Sponsor, Strategic Process Leader, Communication & Project Coordinator, and Organizational Development consultant produced a communication plan for the strategy development phase.

Results

The core strategy team served in an advisory role to the Vice-President and senior management team to develop a promotional campaign for the business strategy and communicate to 1,000 key employees, in support of the program valued at $2 million:

• Authored and published communications for employees and leadership team on managing total EH&S costs affecting company facilities, contributing to cost savings of $70 million
• Guided leadership team in creating and executing a new business strategy. Close to 100 managers and professionals participated in this year long strategy
• Developed and executed communication plan to facilitate management's role in generating employee acceptance and commitment

Note: If you would like specific references to the companies we've mentioned, we'd be happy to provide them.

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