Is chemical safety the new PR tool?
MSDS-Europe – Compass to Chemical Safety – Is chemical safety the new PR tool?
Every company has areas where existing legal obligations can easily be turned into business opportunities. Chemical safety is one of these areas – we only need the right mindset to recognize the communication potential in it.
Because of our consumers’ growing health and environmental awareness and our business partners’ increasing burdens related to chemical safety, we need to present our company as a reliable, law-abiding partner to market players. And yes, this is already the world of PR…
Whom do we have to – and want to – satisfy?
The destructive effect of “compliance pressure” is evident in chemical safety as well, especially when we cannot clearly define for ourselves whom and what we must or want to comply with.
Let’s start with the most obvious approach, which focuses on the expectations of the authorities. We can call this the “No fine, no problem” attitude. Indeed, the company will have no problem (for a while) as long as it only deals with that inspector whose expectations its chemical safety system was built to meet. It’s easy to see why this path is wrong.
A much more advanced approach – since it already shows some understanding of the REACH communication obligation – is the concept of meeting our customers’ expectations. In practice this usually means that what the partner doesn’t mention must be fine, and we somehow try to “handle” or simply deflect what they ask for. Keep in mind that the request is likely aimed at solving a real problem, and they need the necessary data/information from us, as their supplier, to fulfill their own chemical safety obligations. At the same time our business partners are often not experts in chemical safety either, and many times – based on half-information – they burden our valuable resources with irrelevant requests.
They don’t understand, we don’t understand. But at least we talked about it for a long time…
Let’s have no illusions: despite all our efforts, this type of communication will not increase our brand value in the eyes of the client. Our partner will feel that we are also laypersons in chemical safety and cannot effectively help when a problem arises. The balance of this approach will be a lot of energy spent and a negative communication outcome.
The solution to the dilemma is simple. We have to comply with the legislation. With the current legislation. If we achieve and continuously maintain this, it is not hard to see that we will simultaneously comply with both the authority and our clients’ expectations. Legal compliance also means that we at least basically understand the requirements imposed on our company – and of course on our buyers. We proactively provide the necessary documents and information, preferably even before our partners ask for them. Later, this approach will become the basis of our competitive advantage.
Communication obligation in the supply chain – an unrecognized opportunity
Those affected by chemical safety have most likely heard of the REACH Regulation, or at least one of its provisions. We will not go into the nature and system of requirements of the regulation now. For our PR-oriented approach it’s enough to know that this was the first piece of legislation that created the information provision obligation and the liability relationship within the supply chain – which we will now turn to our advantage.
If we pay minimal attention to this information obligation and have adequate professional preparedness, it will indirectly communicate our company’s reliability.
However, we need to understand the term “communication” in a broader sense than above. Our communication also includes the safety data sheet and the labelling of our products. In other words, everything that is “visible from the outside” in relation to our company’s chemical safety tasks.
We will return to this train of thought when presenting our external communication opportunities – once we have enough self-confidence in chemical safety.
If we don’t believe it, no one else will
Ideally, our company meets (at least at a basic level – it surely does, otherwise it could not operate with chemical products) the requirements of chemical safety. Then why doesn’t it communicate this to its environment? The answer is simple: because it does not have enough self-confidence in this area to exploit the communication advantages.
The primary cause of this lack of self-confidence is lack of information. Without proper professional control and feedback, we are not convinced that we are up-to-date with the provisions of the rapidly changing legislation governing chemical safety, or that the documents we provide to partners (e.g. safety data sheet, product label) are professionally impeccable.
Usually the basic documents and notifications are prepared by the company when starting the activity, but it cannot adapt to the rapidly changing legal environment. This quickly leads to the practice of giving “something” to the partner that used to be good once – and hoping it might still be good now. Yes, this is indeed not something we should shout about…
To gain proper self-confidence, chemical safety must be integrated into the company’s operation at a system level; we must regard it as part of corporate culture.
First, we must ensure – with our own employee, an external service provider or a combination of the two – the necessary expertise and the operational/administrative human resources needed for practical implementation. Expert feedback on our legal compliance and the assurance of up-to-dateness will provide the self-confidence that can form the basis of successful communication.
Our internal consumers are our employees
After creating up-to-date chemical safety, let’s target our most important audience – our employees and subcontractors, i.e. our internal consumers. A company’s success always depends on them, why should it be different now?
All employers are aware of the current characteristics of the labour market – and that employee motivation is one of the pillars of a company’s success. Although there is never enough money, it is already insufficient alone to maintain motivation. Employees must feel important and appreciated. Use company meetings and team-building events to present our efforts and achievements in chemical safety to our employees. Make them understand that creating a healthy and safe working environment is important to the management. These are no longer empty words – take them seriously!
Also keep in mind that all of our employees will directly or indirectly participate in communication with our clients. It will not be the corporate brochure or the slogans on our website that convey our values, but our colleagues. Let’s make our employees commit to chemical safety and understand its importance. Let them be proud of their company!
Now that chemical safety is part of our corporate culture, the opportunity for truly credible external communication has opened up.
Communication towards external consumers
Take an active role and show your partners what you have achieved!
Our external consumers form a rather diverse group. It includes authorities, our buyers (business), our consumers (retail), and even our competitors. And everyone is watching us! Fortunately.
To understand successful external communication, let’s first present a few negative examples.
We already mentioned our communication obligations set (also) by the REACH Regulation.
Summarizing the essence of communication obligations – which are important to us now – without details: whatever our supplier did not do, we will have to. Of course, this is not always the case, but through a couple of simple examples we will see that dealing with such artificially generated problems can consume significant energy.
Let’s assume we do not get information on SVHC content from the supplier of the articles we market. Our customer installs the article into a finished product and, as an assembler and distributor of an article, they are naturally subject to a similar obligation to provide information about SVHC content. How will they react when a request comes from their own customer? Yes, they will contact us and ask for information – provided there is someone in our company who understands and can deal with the request.
It would have been simpler to send our customer an information letter when new substances were added to the candidate list and, in one sentence, inform them that the article in question still does not contain SVHC. Our partner could have immediately replied to their own customer with that information, sparing us a query. After such a situation our partner will surely consider our company a reliable supplier in the future. Simple, isn’t it?
We can look at an even more general example, for instance regarding the safety data sheet.
How many distributors are aware that downstream users can be held accountable during on-site inspections regarding the content of the safety data sheet, even though the regulation does not primarily designate them as responsible for preparing the SDS?
Obviously, the customer (downstream user) – for whom we caused difficulties by handing over an inadequate safety data sheet – will likely choose another distributor’s product next time.
We could give many more examples where inadequate or poor-quality information transfer consumes significant energy unnecessarily or causes frustration, thereby damaging business relationships.
From the above examples it is clear that we do not necessarily need to create new communication platforms to emphasize our preparedness to customers. The quality and up-to-dateness of our product labelling, packaging, and the safety data sheets we provide already “communicate” by themselves and contribute to our brand perception.
And if we also informed our clients about changes when legislation changes…
Finally, let’s say a few words about our retail consumers and our competitors as well.
We already mentioned the environmental and health awareness of our consumers. Those marketing hazardous chemical products have the task of making consumers understand through proper communication that the provisions of chemical safety are intended to guarantee the safe use of these products – and that their company complies with these provisions. Chemical products are indispensable accessories of our everyday lives. We don’t need to fear them – we just need to use them correctly.
Our competitors are perhaps the least important target group; presumably they also only meet the minimum level in chemical safety. But what if they recognize the PR opportunities hidden in chemical safety before we do?
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