How Environmental Stewardship Benefits Dallas City Employees:
Because the City's Environmental Management System asks all City employees to assume new responsibilities for environmental elements of their work, it may seem as if this new idea will create more burdens than benefits. In the short term, as people become familiar with these innovations, there will be new concepts to study and new procedures to incorporate into work processes; however, not at the expense of the City's workforce.
Soon enough the EMS should make all municipal jobs better—and, experts say, more rewarding. How so? Because the EMS is founded on the idea of giving each employee not only more responsibility in the workplace, but also more power and more say in day-to-day affairs and long-term planning.
A good EMS expects more from everyone in the organization and, in exchange, it gives back rewards in the form of increased respect and personal power. It encourages everyone to become more of a leader in the workplace.
Although the idea was initially adopted and then implemented by the City's top managers, the EMS, once in place, is not a "top down" system. EMS works effectively because it empowers staff at all levels of the City's departments to do what they think is best. It is based on a truth that should be obvious; however, in far too many organizations, it is anything but: those who do a particular job will have the best ideas for doing it safer and more effectively.