Higg FEM 2025: Get to know the Environmental Management Systems (EMS) section webinar video (1hr 21m)

Hello, and welcome to today's Higg FEM, get to know the EMS section session. My name is Leah Jaggars, and I am the senior education manager here at Worldly. Today, we're going to discuss the environmental management systems section or EMS section and how to develop systems and report your data. Before we get started, here are some logistics for the session. All attendees are muted for the duration of the webinar. There will be time for questions at the end of the presentation, so please submit your questions into the Q and A box as you think of them so that they are captured. Any questions that I cannot get to during the session will be answered in a follow-up email as long as they are submitted through the q and a box. This session is being recorded, and I will share the recording as well as the presentation with all registrants afterwards along with the Q and A report. We have simultaneous interpretation available in Chinese and Vietnamese today, so please select your preferred language through the interpretation icon. There are also machine generated closed captions in multiple languages available through the CC icon. Here is the agenda for today. First, we will review a quick overview of the Higg FEM. Then we'll review key definitions in the EMS section. Then we'll go over some best practices for collecting data in preparation for filling out the assessment. Next, we'll go over the top missed questions in the EMS section last year. And finally, we'll review additional resources available to you and have time for a demonstration as well as questions and answers. And I see there's a few, raised hands. If you're having, technical difficulties, do let me know, either through the chat or the Q and A. If you have a general question, feel free to submit that into the Q and A box. And with that, let's get into it. Before we get into the details of the Higg FEM and the EMS section, it's helpful to understand who Cascale and Worldly are and their relationship to the Higg Index, which includes the Higg FEM assessment. Cascale is the global nonprofit alliance for the consumer goods industry who owns and develops the Higg Index, which is exclusively available on the Worldly platform, the industry's leading sustainability data insights platform. The Higg Index is a set of tools that assess social and environmental performance across various aspects such as water use, carbon emissions, and labor conditions. There is a network of over forty thousand Higg index users today, which includes brands, retailers, manufacturers, governments, and NGOs. Together, Cascale and Worldly provide regular updates to the Higg index to ensure that they involve to meet your needs. In short, Cascale develops the underpinning logic and questions of the Higg FEM, and Worldly is the software platform that supports data collection and analysis for the assessment. Before we get into the details of the Higg FEM, I'd like to do a quick poll, so I can better understand who we have in this virtual space. And it's just a really quick single question poll. I just launched it. How many times have you completed the Higg FEM assessment? And this will help me kind of calibrate our session today. So I'll just left leave that open for a few seconds just to get a sense, And, hopefully, I'll be able to, you know, get everybody some new information today no matter where you are in your journey. Alright. So as folks are answering, it's kind of tied for all of the options. Looks like most people are currently falling into the one to two times. So some familiarity as well as some in the three to four and five plus as well as a lot of folks in the I haven't yet, and this is the first time. So thank you so much for submitting that. Let me go ahead and share those results so you can kind of see who we have in the space today. So a variety of experiences. So, hopefully, we'll educate everybody today, but do let me know in the survey afterwards how we did today. Alright. So let's go ahead and move on. Thank you so much for responding. So now let's review the FEM overall briefly before we dive into the EMS section. The Higg FEM is a transformative tool developed by our partners at Cascale used to assess the environmental impact of product manufacturing at facilities. The Higg FEM paints a clear picture of a facility's environmental impacts. It not only uncovers hotspot areas for improvement, but also reduces redundancy, mitigates risk, and creates a common language to communicate sustainability to stakeholders. The Higg FEM is an assessment or questionnaire that covers the following topics, environmental management systems, which we're going to talk about today, energy use and greenhouse gas, water use, wastewater, air emissions, waste management, and chemical management. Cascale provides detailed guidance on each section and questions in the assessment where you can learn more. Each of these sections help you understand how your facility impacts your environment and also provides ideas for improvements and different programs that you can implement or participate in to improve your performance and engagement with sustainable practices. And I'm sharing the updated PDF. Let me actually pull up a new window. Alright. And let me get you that link as well. And I'll show you how to navigate to this during the presentation as well so you can always access it at another time. But let me just grab this really quick. Alright. So this is the direct link, but always know that you can go to HowtoHigg directly as well. And I'll show you how you can navigate to it. But this is the direct link to the PDF guidance, that long form guidance that has all of the questions, all of the methodology information, etcetera. So go ahead and check that out. And it also has all of the translated guidance as well. The Higg FEM is a combination of qualitative and quantitative data for a comprehensive overview of your environmental performance. Qualitative data in the FEM includes the environmental management systems and chemicals management sections along with qualitative questions in the other sections. Quantitative data includes numerical values for energy, water, waste, wastewater, and air emissions, and baselines and targets that you might have. Within each section of the FEM, there are three levels. Level one contains questions around awareness and basic systems. Level two contains questions around baselines, targets, and improvements. Level three contains questions around leading aspirational practices. Levels are not equally weighted when it comes to scoring. The Higg FEM weighs level two higher than the other levels because the questions in this level are driving key performance improvement measures. Now that we've learned a little bit more about what the FEM contains and the general components of the assessment, here is an overview of the FEM process. First, you will review the assessment questions and gather data from various sources. This is something you can start now, especially if this is your first time completing the assessment. Also, during this time, you can identify any gaps in data or processes that you can mitigate and optionally arrange additional training. And I'm sharing a link in the chat now to a list of FEM approved trainer bodies. So if you do want to arrange additional training, that's a great place to start. Then step two is collecting or completing the self assessment in the Worldly platform. If you have previously completed an FEM, you can roll forward previous responses to questions that don't really change such as your site information. If you use Facility Data Manager, you can also import twelve months of your quantitative data into your FEM to save time. Either way, you can review your data for accuracy and update anything that you import if you identify any errors. Once you have completed the assessment, you will post it in the platform. Please note that posting is not available until January as you need the full twelve months of data from twenty twenty five. The next step would be if you are getting your assessment verified to arrange verification with an approved verification body. I'm sharing the link to the approved verification body list now in the chat. Then you can share your self assessment or verified assessment with your business partners on the platform. Check with your business partners for requirements and deadlines. And finally, use Insights Hub to understand where your facility is doing well and where you can improve. Then during the year, you can use this information and analysis to plan changes and improvements and repeat the cycle. Now that we have reviewed what the Higg FEM includes generally, let's review the EMS section. The Environmental Management Systems, or EMS, section is divided into three levels. Level one has eleven questions and focuses on the basics policies, procedures, environmental impacts, etcetera, at the facility. Level two has three question and asks you about engagement with management, technical competence, and strategy awareness. Level three has three questions and asks about engagement with subcontractors, upstream suppliers, and the local community. All questions may have additional sub questions associated with them. We will get into more into what the levels contain further on in the session. So first, what is an environmental management system? It is a holistic strategy and process to identify, track, and manage the environmental impacts of your facility over time. The EMS section of the Higg FEM evaluates how well a facility has implemented an environmental management system to ensure ongoing improvements in its environmental performance. A strong EMS leads to better operational efficiency, cost savings, and most importantly, a better environmental footprint. A well implemented EMS is a powerful tool to help your facility achieve sustainability goals and meet the growing expectations of stakeholders, consumers, and regulators. The EMS section of the Higg FEM encourages you to assign staff with the right qualifications to manage environmental activities, identify key environmental impacts related to your facility's operations, create a long term strategy for environmental management, develop a system to make sure your facility follows all laws and regulations, ensure all staff know the environmental strategy and how they can help, work with subcontractors and suppliers to improve environmental performance, And finally, engage with the local communities on environmental improvements. Now that we have reviewed what the EMS section includes, let's discuss some key concepts and definitions in this section that will help you understand some different frameworks available to you. First is the ISO or International Organization for Standardization. ISO brings global experts together to agree on the best way of doing things for anything from making a product to managing a process. As one of the oldest nongovernmental international organizations, ISO has enabled trade and cooperation between people and companies all over the world since nineteen forty six. The international standards published by ISO serve to make lives easier, safer, and better. ISO fourteen thousand and one specifically is the internationally recognized standard for environmental management systems, or EMS. It provides a framework for organizations to design and implement an EMS and continually improve their environmental performance. By adhering to this standard, organizations can ensure that they are taking proactive measures to minimize their environmental footprint, comply with relevant legal requirements, and achieve their environmental objectives. The framework encompasses various aspects from resource usage and waste management to monitoring environmental performance and involving stakeholders in environmental commitments. And I'm sharing a link in the chat now to that specific standard if you would like to take a look. Also, one thing that might be helpful is if you know that your facility is ISO certified under this standard, that documentation may help you answer a lot of the questions in this specific section. So something to be aware of. Next is the eco management and audit scheme, also known as EMAS. EMAS is a voluntary environmental management scheme instrument designed by the European Commission. It is a tool available to any organization active in any economic sector within or outside the EU who wants to take responsibility for its environmental and economic impact, improve its environmental performance, and inform the public and stakeholders about that performance. EMOS enables organizations to systematically identify and record their environmental impacts so that they can develop a strategy to improve their environmental sustainability. With EMOS' help, a company can answer the following three questions. What is our environmental impact today? How can we improve our environmental performance? And how will we achieve that goal? And I'm sharing a bunch of links actually, in the chat now, on. There's, different case studies, and things of that nature. Also, I do want to mention, if you miss a link, don't worry. I'll be sharing all of those in a follow-up email as well. And next is an environmental impact assessment or EIA. An EIA is a comprehensive review of all inputs and outputs of facility operations and production processes to identify potential impact areas. These include impact areas covered in the Higg FEM, such as energy, water, and waste, as well as other impact areas such as legal compliance, environmental noise, and vibration. Understanding a facility's most significant risks helps to prioritize improvement actions to reduce impacts on the environment. This is also sometimes referred to as an environmental risk assessment. EIAs are defined in fourteen thousand and one and EMAS, and your country or local jurisdiction may also have specific guidance or laws around EIA requirements. I also do want to note that sometimes an EIA is done when the building is built or the facility is made. So it might have been quite a long time since this has actually been completed, But you may have documentation from that original EIA that might be helpful. Now, let's go over all of the questions in the EMS section starting with level one. Level one is worth twenty five percent of total section points. Throughout this portion of the session, I will also highlight the top five questions marked inaccurate during verification in last year's cadence. These will be marked with a yellow warning icon, and I'll also point them out as we go. I do want to emphasize this session does not substitute the full guidance. So any examples that I'll provide doesn't mean that that's the only way that you can do something, but definitely always refer to the guidance for more information. All right. So question one in level one is, are one or more of your employees at your facility responsible for coordinating your facility's environmental management activities? This question is looking for clear accountability. Who manages environmental data and processes at this facility? Who ensures permits are maintained? Who coordinates training? To answer yes to this question, you'll need documented evidence that these duties are assigned and active. If your facility is missing documentation, the easiest improvement is to write down what's already happening informally. Often, facilities are managing environmental tasks, but nothing is recorded. Start with one responsible person and expand as your EMS grows. Question two is, has your facility identified the significant environmental impacts associated with current operations within the factory premises? Answer yes if your facility has performed an EIA or environmental impact assessment that covers all of the environmental aspects to identify significant impacts from operations. Please note, if your facility has a valid environmental management system scheme certification that includes requirements for environmental aspects and impacts assessment, such as ISO fourteen thousand and one, you should select yes to this question. Documentations examples include an EIA or Environmental Impact Assessment report, Environmental Aspects and Impact Evaluation, or a most recent local government environmental assessment report, if applicable. After completing the EIA, facilities should compare the risk and impact scores of each activity with each other to ensure scoring is consistent. In addition, significant impacts should be addressed within the environmental strategy. In this way, the EIA and the environmental strategy are linked to each other. An EIA should also consider any applicable environmental laws and regulations to determine the significance of risk, as well as specific legal requirements for conducting the EIA. Question three is, does your facility have a company environmental policy? The environmental policy is the foundation of your EMS and should support the strategy and impact assessment. A common pitfall is having a policy that is too generic or not updated to reflect real operations. To meet this requirement quickly, create a simple policy using ISO fourteen thousand and one as a guide. Make sure it references compliance with local law and that employees are aware of this policy. And I'm sharing an example of an EPA policy in the chat now so you can see an example of what this could look like. Question four is does your facility have a company environmental management strategy that guides long term decision making on environmental management? Answer yes if your facility has a documented environmental strategy in place that sets forth environmental priorities and includes defined goals and actions for three years or more. Please note the three year timeline must include the Higg FEM reporting year. For example, for FEM twenty twenty five, the strategy must include the twenty twenty five calendar year. This question is one of the top questions in this section marked inaccurate last year. Facilities often upload a policy or a sustainability report or a generic set of goals, but these do not meet the requirement unless they form a real strategy with structure and coverage of all required topics. Your strategy does not need to be super sophisticated. Even a basic multi year plan that links to the significant impacts from question two is acceptable. The key is completeness and alignment. Speaking of environmental strategies, I'd like to do a quick poll so we can better understand each other's challenges, and hopefully, I can address some of them today. So I'm going to go ahead and launch this one. This one's a little bit longer. It's a three question poll. So the first question is, what stage are you in implementing an environmental management strategy? And the options are not planning to implement, just getting started, in the process of implementing, fully implemented, implemented, and looking to improve. Question two is how do you currently use environmental data in your organization? You can say, we don't use environmental data. We track some environmental metrics, but don't really use it for decision making. We use environmental data to support decision making. We use environmental data extensively to guide strategy. And then finally, what is the biggest challenge in your environmental management strategy today? You can say setting measurable goals, tracking performance, engaging staff or leadership, meeting regulatory requirements, or something else. Awesome. So we're getting a good number of responses. Wanted to break it up a little bit today, get some some engagement. Alright. Awesome. I see answers are slowing down. Great. So I'm going to go ahead and end that poll, and I'm going to go ahead and share those results. So you can see most folks are using or in in some sort of stage of planning to implement an environmental management strategy. So that's great. There's also a good chunk of folks who are looking to improve or revise. So that's awesome to hear. And then if we move on to question two, generally speaking, most folks are using data in some way to support their decisions. Looks like there are some folks that tracking things, but not really using it super systematically and then others who are using it extensively. And then the biggest challenge, it looks like, is tracking performance as well as meeting regulatory requirements and setting measurable goals. They're about even. So that is super helpful. Hopefully, I'll be going over a few things that might be helpful today, but also feel free to submit questions if you have anything that you'd like to discuss during that time as well. So awesome. Thank you so much for your responses. Alright. Moving on to question five. Does your facility have a mechanism in place to regularly review and monitor environmental permit status and renewal where appropriate and ensure compliance? Answer yes if your facility has established procedures and defined responsibilities to review these permitting requirements, monitor permit requirements, and renew environmental permits. This question is a major source of inaccuracy and verification because most facilities have permits but do not have a documented system for monitoring. This question evaluates foundational compliance. Verifiers will request copies of all permits and check whether the facility has a system to ensure that they remain valid. Even if a permit is expired but renewal is in progress, evidence such as application submissions can support a correct yes response. And I'm sharing a link to an example template created by Cascale in the chat now that you can use to track your permits if you need a place to get started. So, again, often, this question was missed because there wasn't a process to document tracking permits even if you do have all of your environmental permits. Alright. Next is question six. Does your facility maintain a documented system to identify, monitor, and periodically verify all laws, regulations, standards, codes, and other legislative and regulatory requirements for your significant environmental impacts in addition to areas that are not covered in required permits. So, again, this is very, very similar to the last question and is often confusing. So this is one of the biggest sources of verification errors because facilities are often confusing permits from question five with laws and regulations in question six. So the FEM is assessing both. A compliance system includes not just a list of requirements, but also how you monitor new or updated regulations, how often compliance is checked, and evidence that responsible staff are reviewing this register. Please note that these procedures may be implemented at the manufacturing group level, but facilities must be able to demonstrate how these procedures are aligned with at the facility level. This question is not inclusive of legally required permits covered in question five. For this question, significant impacts relate to impacts that have been identified in question two. All right. Question seven. Does your facility provide training to employees on environmental awareness and company environmental management strategy? Answer yes if your facility has provided training on environmental awareness and the facility's strategy to all employees. The intent of this question is that all employees, at minimum, have received training on environmental awareness and company environmental management strategy. Training does not need to be provided annually for each individual employee. However, facilities are encouraged to provide refresher training at regular intervals as a part of their ongoing environmental training program, for example, every two to three years, or if there are any significant changes in the facility's environmental strategy. Different levels of training may be provided based on an employee's position and or responsibilities. However, training must have been provided to all employees to answer yes to this question. This training is different from question eleven, which we haven't gotten to yet, but question eleven's data related training and is focused on ensuring that employees understand the facility's major environmental impacts, the environmental strategy covered in question four, and their role in reducing impacts. And I'm sharing an example of environmental awareness training so you can see of what an example of this might look like. But this might be posters. This might be a recorded webinar that you share with all new hires. It might be e learning that you have them go through. It might be just a lecture that someone gives periodically. Question eight is, does your facility have documented procedures to enable employees to report on environmental incidents? Answer yes if there's a documented procedure that enables them to report on incidents or issues and all employees have been trained on the procedure. Please note, if your facility has a general grievance or worker feedback procedure, but it does not specifically outline procedures to report on environmental incidents or employees have not been trained on the environmental reporting procedure, you should select no for this question. This question addresses employee protection, not merely incident reporting. Verifiers may ask workers if they feel safe reporting leaks, spills, or environmental problems, and how to do so. The key is evidence of communication. A policy that no one knows about does not work. Question nine is does your facility have a process and schedule to maintain all equipment? Answer, yes, if you have a documented process and maintenance schedule covering all equipment used for production and facility operations that is being implemented. Verifiers will check that maintenance records align with actual equipment observed on-site. Missing logs or incomplete equipment lists are the most common issues. Remember to include smaller items that influence environmental performance, such as pH meters, flow meters, dust filters, etcetera. Key aspects of a good maintenance program include appointing qualified staff to oversee, manage, and implement the maintenance program. And this may include external contractors. Create an inventory of all equipment at the facility, identify the required or recommended maintenance activities for each piece of equipment. Often, this is located in manuals or available from the manufacturer. Define the maintenance scope and schedule for each piece of equipment. Create standardized documentation or utilize technology or software to record and track maintenance for all equipment, and finally, ensure the appropriate resources are available for staff to implement the maintenance program. Excuse me. Question ten is, can you please confirm there is no soil and or groundwater contamination in your facility? A yes answer to this question requires confidence that there is no contamination. If contamination did occur, you must answer no or partial yes, and then describe the remediation steps. If no contamination has occurred, make sure preventative measures, such as secondary containment or chemical storage controls, are documented. Documentation that shows how you currently monitor for contamination also helps to support a yes response. Question eleven is, does your facility have a data management system for quantitative metrics? This is one of the highest questions marked inaccurate during verification in the EMS section because facilities often submit accurate data but cannot demonstrate the underlying system. The intent of this question is to see standard operating procedures, defined roles, training, and evidence of internal reviews. Chapter seven of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, a corporate accounting and reporting standard, provides detailed information and principles on data quality management that can be applied to all types of environmental data. And I'm sharing a link to the protocol now. Alright. That was all of the questions in level one, which has by far the most questions in this section. So we're getting close. If you achieve level one, you will automatically move to level two and three. Or if you did not leave achieve level one, you may optionally answer questions in level two or three if you would like or if requested by a business partner that you currently share your data with. Now let's review questions in level two. Level two is worth fifty percent of the total section points. Alright. So the first question in question in level two is question twelve. Does your facility review the environmental management system with your facility's managers each calendar year? Answer yes if your facility has conducted a review of your EMS with the management team in the last calendar year. A management review is required to demonstrate top management involvement, not just EMS staff activity. The meeting does not need to be complex when you're just getting started. A one hour review is totally sufficient. What matters is evidence. What was discussed? Who attended? What follow-up actions were assigned? Question thirteen is, do employees at your facility responsible for environmental management have the technical competence to do their job? Facilities often missed this question because they do not define competencies, even though staff are capable. The FEM asks for documentation that the facility has thought about what EMS staff should know, such as regulatory knowledge, data collection and quality assurance, risk and impact understanding, equipment and process knowledge, or professional accreditations or certifications. A short table mapping roles, required competencies, your current staff, gaps, if any, and a training plan is ideal. Question fourteen is, does your facility have a program to build awareness of your environmental impacts and performance with your employees? This question is about awareness beyond training. Employees must understand the facility's key environmental impacts, how performance is trending, and how they contribute to improvements. Verifiers will check consistency. If the facility lists major impacts in question two but never communicates them to employees, this question will be marked inaccurate. Evidence may include posters, digital slide shows, newsletters, or meeting minutes. Now let's go over the questions in level three. Level three is worth twenty five percent of the total section points. Question fifteen is, does your facility monitor, evaluate, and or engage with your subcontractors on their environmental performance using the Higg index or other relevant environmental assessment? This question only applies to production subcontractors, not service vendors, such as waste collectors, calibration providers, etcetera. To answer yes, the facility must demonstrate both assessment or data collection from subcontractors, engagement or monitoring, which can be very simple. Some of this may be emails requesting FEM or the assessment, meeting notes reviewing their performance, screenshots of FEM sharing, or notes on planned joint improvements. Question sixteen is, does your facility monitor, evaluate, and or engage with your upstream suppliers using Higg index or other relevant assessment. So this question is about upstream suppliers, very similar to the last one. But this will be, for example, your materials providers and chemicals that influence your downstream impacts. Again, engagement does not need to be super formal. Even sending an email asking about certifications or environmental policies is considered engagement. To answer yes, you must show outreach and evidence that you collected or reviewed some environmental information and are showing improvement. Examples of acceptable engagement might be requesting the Higg FEM, ISO, or another assessment or report, as well as sharing your environmental requirements list. Question seventeen is, does your facility engage in environmental improvements in your local community? Answer yes if you have engaged with local stakeholders in your community and have contributed or participated in one or more projects, worked with a local stakeholder, business, or government agency working group on environmental management improvements in the Higg FEM reporting year, and have supporting documentation to demonstrate this engagement. Engagement can be simple and low cost. This question evaluates whether the facility interacts with its surrounding community on environmental topics. Some examples include hosting a school or local officials for a site tour showing environmental improvements, participating in a community cleanup, sharing information on wastewater treatment or energy saving initiatives, or attending local environmental meetings. The FEM looks for evidence of actual engagement, not just intent. Now that we have reviewed all of the questions for this section, let's bring it all together. First, you assess your environmental impact in questions one and two. Then, you develop a strategy and policies to address your impacts in questions three and four. Next, develop standard procedures aligned with your strategy in questions five, six, eight, nine, ten, and eleven. Then train staff on environmental policy, strategy, and standard procedures appropriate to their jobs in questions seven and twelve through fourteen. And finally, engage with your subcontractors, upstream suppliers, and your local community in questions fifteen through seventeen. Now let's go over what you can get started on now. So first, if you haven't yet set up an account, you can set up your account on app. So a p p dot worldly dot I o, and that's on the screen, as well as I'll share it in the follow-up email. If you haven't yet purchased a subscription, you can purchase a subscription. You can open a new assessment as well as start reading the guidance, take an elearning course, or register for another webinar like you did today. You can also import your FEM twenty twenty four data. So roll over your qualitative data from FEM twenty twenty four if you did it last year. You may also import twelve months of your FDM quantitative data. And if you do either of these imports, you can also review for completeness and accuracy now. Also, I do want to say you can import, like, partial months right now and then complete December so that you can do a final import in January for the FDM data, for example. And then finally, you can review guidance and then identify with who or where that data is stored. So who at your organization? Is it with, the admin team, with human resources? Is this kept with engineering, or the production floor staff? Just kind of depends. You can identify any gaps in processes that you have now so that you may implement them before the end of the reporting period. And finally, you can review Insights Hub for gaps and environmental baselines. All right. And now, let's go over additional resources available to you really quickly before we get into Q and A and a brief demonstration. We offer resources in a variety of ways so that you can learn about the Higg FEM and the Worldly platform in your preferred method. We have e learning courses and curriculum, live learning opportunities with language interpretation, and written resources. I'll go over a few specifics for each of these now. First, I'd like to highlight some elearning courses. All elearning courses are free and available to all Worldly platform users. Simply access the learning center from the question mark in the upper right hand corner of the platform and log in with your Worldly platform credentials. If you have any trouble accessing the elearning platform, please reach out to the support team at Worldly, and we are happy to help. We also have a general onboarding course that would be helpful for anyone who is new to the Worldly platform. We have a full elearning curriculum on the Higg FEM that goes over how to get started, how to analyze your results, and also includes deep dives into each section by the Cascale facility tools team. You may also complete any of these courses individually if you do not want to complete the full curriculum. We also have an e learning e learning courses on Insights Hub and Facility Data Manager with new courses added regularly. Check out the full e learning list to see all courses currently available. All elearning courses are subtitled in multiple languages. In addition to elearning, we are also hosting plenty of live opportunities to learn more and ask questions. First, we have our series of FEM q and a's cohosted with Worldly and the Cascale facility tools and verification teams. Following that, we are hosting a series of get to know the FEM sections. These are just like today, so these are designed for new and returning users who want a refresher, to better prepare for the assessment. I'll also be hosting periodic sessions on facility data manager and insights hub, so check out the training calendar for links to register for all sessions I just covered. We always offer live interpretation during these sessions as well, so check out the session descriptions for specifics. Lastly, we have recorded webinars covering a variety of topics, including the best practices series, how to use FDM to get a head start on FEM, and more in the link provided. And all webinar recordings have subtitles in multiple as well. And lastly, I'd like to highlight a few key written resources to check out to better prepare you for this cadence. First is the HowtoHigg website. This is where Cascale publishes the full long form PDF guidance translated into multiple languages along with Higg FM methodology, scoring, and verification guidance. HowtoHigg is the best place for technical guidance on how to answer the questions. I've shared some links directly already, but in the presentation file, you will find all of the links on the screen as well. On the Worldly side, we have the support site. I've highlighted a few helpful articles here that should help during the cadence, but there is much more. First is the cadence timeline. This has been updated to reflect the new cadence dates and the unposting deadline adjustment. There are also outlier guides as well as written guides for importing FDM data into FEM and a quick start guide on the Insights Hub and Facility Data Manager, which is a great place to start if you haven't had a chance to explore those tools yet. Our knowledge base is also fully translated into our supported languages and contains resources on how to navigate the platform, frequently asked questions, and additional guidance. In addition to those items you can start that you can start now, you can also complete the Worldly platform experts program. The Worldly platform experts program is a blended learning curriculum that provides everything you need to understand facility environmental tools like the Higg FEM in the Worldly platform. Complete a series of elearning courses, attend live sessions, and join a community of your peers to discuss problems and learn together. When with this program, you'll gain additional support throughout the cadence, access to experts, and exclusive access to community features coming soon. After successful completion of the curriculum and program requirements, you'll earn a badge for your efforts. Learn more in the resource that I'm sharing now. And I'm sharing that in the chat. I do want to note that this is not a requirement for FEM completion. Again, not a requirement to do this for FEM completion. But it is an additional opportunity to gain support and engage with the community of your peers. Alright. With that, let's go over just a brief demonstration, and I'll answer your questions. Alright. So, hopefully, you can see my screen okay, and I'm able to see your questions. Yep. Great. So first off, if you're brand new to the platform, a couple things to know. In the upper right hand corner, after you create your account, this is where you can switch between accounts if you do belong to multiple accounts. This is also where you can view your subscriptions. So if you click here, if you purchased a subscription last year and you purchased for two years, this is probably what you'll see. You'll see something that tells you your expiration date. So if this is in the future for twenty twenty six, there's no need to purchase again. So I do want to emphasize that as there was some confusion earlier on. At any rate, the standard or complete subscriptions have FEM. If you choose standard, just make sure that you're choosing FEM if that's your intention. You can also purchase for one year or two years. You do get a discount if you purchase a two year subscription. Once you make your selection, just click select and then go through the prompts to pay. You can pay with wire transfer, AliPay, and WeChat Pay, I want to say. But you'll see the options there. I don't know actually if we have WeChat Pay, but you'll see the different options. Let me actually pretend like I'm doing that just so we can see. I don't want to lead you guys astray. Let's do this one. I was wrong. Credit card, Alipay, and wire transfer. So I know I was saying something wrong. Awesome. So that is subscriptions. Once you have purchased your subscription, then you will see Higg FEM Environmental here. If you are better at, you know, operating in a different language, you can trans translate the entire platform into any of these languages. If you need any additional support or help, you can access all of that in this question mark icon. The help center, I mentioned before, but this is going to be written documentation. I'll just show you that really quickly. Under assessments is where you can find all the FEM content, or you can go to how to get started. There's training and elearning information here. So the elearning course list is here. You can also find all of the webinar recordings here from the past if you would like. In addition to written documentation, there's also the elearning center directly. If you haven't yet clicked into this, you may be prompted to log in. If it does ask you to log in, all you have to do is enter your Worldly platform credentials. So just your regular login for the Worldly platform, and then you'll have access to all that good elearning. You can also chat with our support team. So for example, you can open this up. You can chat with a support bot and have it search, for different content. Or, you know, if there's something that's coming up right away, you can also report an issue from here. They it's not twenty four seven, but they are available during business hours in Asia. And then you can also go directly to submit a support request if you're running into any issues. Alright. I'm going to go ahead and pop into my twenty twenty five FEM. And just because it's just going to take a second to load, there's a question that I'll answer really quickly. So the first question is, will the FDM data automatically transfer to FEM, or is there a specific process required to transfer the data? So if you have twelve months of data in FDM, actually, I don't know why I opened a new one. Let me show you where you can find that information. So there's a whole section here that covers the FDM import in more detail. There's a short ten minute video. So if that's an easier thing to follow, that's there. There's also some step by step instructions. When you open your FEM, once the import is available, it will just show you, hey. You have this many months of data, like, if you've been engaging with FDM. So if you use FDM, it will pop up automatically for you in your FDM. But if you are not yet using FDM, it won't do anything. And then it will also show you, you know, if you're missing months of data in a particular section or anything like that. But, yeah, that you can follow these step by step instructions to import your data there. So, hopefully, that answers your question, but do let me know if you have any more. So here we go. I am currently in an FEM. If you have an FEM from twenty twenty four and you have not yet initiated your FEM, you can do so either from the assessment or you can go to the overview tab. And if you did purchase a subscription that includes twenty twenty five, you would see a blue banner at the top, and it would say, you know, initiate FEM. So if you haven't yet opened that up, that would be visible there. If it's your very first time, then you would just click to start a new FEM. That is also documented in the assessment section under the FEM section. So it has, like, the question by question guidance as well as just a getting started guide. I'll go ahead and share this as well just for everybody's, knowledge. So that will go over, like, very detailed step by step. There's what it would look like for the blue banner, just so you know what that will, appear like. Alright. So within the FEM, you can always filter by answered or unanswered questions. I actually like to keep them unfiltered when I first start answering questions so that I can kind of see what questions are becoming revealed to me as I go. In the site info and permit section, I did import my information from last year, so you can see that that's there. It will also show you answers from last year. So even if it's not necessarily relevant or the same, you will see I didn't import, like, the EMS section, but I can see what my answer was last year. And that includes documents as well. So if you have a document from last year, you can always pop that open and see, oh, okay. That was you know, John had that particular document. I'll ask him, see if he has that again this year, you know, if it's your first time doing it. Within each question of the FEM, you can click view guidance. This will show you kind of a shortened version of that long form guidance right below the question. And then you can also now this is new for this year. You can also ask the Worldly assistant. This is available below each question as well as over here on the right hand side within the assessment. So either way, you can click that. And let's say you have a question and your question is, you know, how many people are required to manage EMS? Is there a limit? So you can ask it in your preferred language, and it will respond to you in the language that you spoke to it in. So what it's doing is it's been trained on all of our documentation. It's been trained on the long form guidance, ZDHC guidance, all of the different kind of resources that we use internally and things like that. So it's going through that, and then it's coming up with an answer. I do want to say with any AI product, just be aware that it can make mistakes. So do not rely on this to be the be all end all. However, it is very, very helpful if you have, like, a clarifying question or need to learn, you know, a little bit more about a particular topic and you're not quite connecting with the guidance maybe. So here we can see, hey. It doesn't set a minimum or maximum, but it does say you must have one or more. So it is pulling that up and saying, hey. At least one person needs to be doing something. And then you can always see if it was a good or bad bad answer, and then it will also provide where it got that information from. So you have a source, and so you can click through to that to learn more. Additionally, if you're asking kind of a more complex question, you can also prompt it to think a little bit more deeply. So I'm just to kind of show an example. Let's see. I'm going to pull one of our questions just to see what kind of response we get from here. So let's go to a different section. And you don't have to go to a different section. It can be a different or it can be in the same conversation. But this was a question that was submitted. So let's see what it says. So the question was for EMS question two. Some countries legally require facilities to conduct a one time environmental impact assessment before construction. Is this considered valid evidence for this question? These facilities do not conduct any further EIAs after that initial assessment, so I believe this does not meet the intention of this question. Yeah. So it would not necessarily, so I could tell you that right away, but unless your facility was just built. So, you know, if you're in a brand new facility and you have an EIA that's current because it was just built, then that could maybe meet that requirement. It just kind of depends. What you can use that original EIA for is to understand the impacts so that you can start to develop your strategy. So at least you'll have your impacts evaluated at some point. If it's not current, though, obviously, best recommendation is to conduct a new one. And then you can see here, you know, what kind of response that I'll give you. So has performed an environmental impact assessment that covers all of the inputs and outputs. Doesn't say whether that qualifies, but based on the wording, it says evidence must demonstrate that significant impacts from current operations have been identified. So it's generally only if it still reflects the current operations. Typically, I would say probably not unless you're in a brand new facility. But, hopefully, that helps to answer your question and helps to show how this new tool works and kind of explains. So if you're like, okay. You know, maybe I'll argue this or what have you. You know, you could say, I don't like that, and you can say bad answer, and that will keep kind of training the the assistant. But, hopefully, I hope to actually answer your question generally. Typically, I would say, like yeah. Unless you're in a new place, that won't really fulfill the intent of that question unless unless it's a brand new facility. But it might point you in the right direction or point you to the people who actually have that information available and who can help you conduct a new one. So, hopefully, that helps to answer your question. Awesome. So that's available within any section as well. It's not just in the EMS section, this tool. So one thing I did want to mention is there's a lot of questions such as this that say, have you identified something? And then it has upload documentation, or if you can't describe it here. So these are kind of hand in hand, and it's an either or situation. So just be aware. If you upload documentation that kind of supports to answer that question, you don't necessarily have to then describe it here as well. Or if you don't have documentation, you can answer, you know, a little bit longer form than my example. But yeah. Alright. So we went through all the questions, so we don't need to do that. So let me go ahead and go through the question that have been submitted. Alright. So the question that was submitted so for question seven about training, is it okay if we don't do refreshment training annually, and is it okay if we use data in years before? Because based on your explanation, the main point is all employees have already been given the training. So let us take a look at HowtoHigg because that's going to be your best bet there. And, you know, if folks have to hop as well, don't worry. Totally understand. But I'm going to pop into HowtoHigg. If you are in HowtoHigg, you just go to Higg FEM. The question by question guidance is here for twenty twenty four. The long form guidance for twenty five is here. Twenty twenty four is not that different. So you can still go to here. There's been a little bit of updates in the long form guidance. I don't believe they've yet updated this version of the question by question guidance, but this is here. I love all your guys' emojis. So let's look at question seven. Oops. So if you select yes, you'll be asked these questions. So that's something to be aware of. So you'll be asked how many were trained, how frequently do you train, and do you evaluate, and how do you evaluate. And then documentation that demonstrates the facility has conducted training for all employees. The other thing to note here is that you also have all of these documentation required. So it doesn't have to be yearly as long as you have, like, your supporting evidence and that all employees at some point in their tenure at your facility have received some sort of training. Always highly recommended to have it be an ongoing thing, though. That is going to be a best practice. Ongoing and preferential training is obviously recommended and something that will, frankly, improve your performance year over year if everybody is on the same page. So the next question is, is it possible to stop filling out level two halfway through after selecting to continue? Yeah. Well, actually, no. I'm I'm sorry. I misspoke. I think it will make you answer all the questions. So some of them you might just be answering no to, though. So you can answer no. If you are optionally answering questions having not achieved level one, those do not contribute to your score. So whenever you're at answering those optional questions, it's really just for either your business partner or your own tracking. So for that reason, if you do have additional questions that you do want to answer in level two, you can move to level two and continue to answer them. But then some of them might just be no. You know, maybe there's only a couple that you can say yes to, and then the rest are no. So it will kind of make you answer those questions because it opens it up if you say, like, yes. I want to continue. But if you're answering no to the basic questions, it there's no, like, additional sub questions. So you can just answer no to the ones that you don't want to fill out because it won't count against or, like, for your score, if that makes sense. Alright. There's a question about would you please send this Higg FEM training event reference number? Those reference numbers are specific to those Higg FEM trainer body trainings. So I shared the link to the training body list earlier, but let me share that again. So those are for trainer trainings provided by those groups. Also, I do want to note, a lot of folks ask about that because there's a question in the site info section about specific trainings. That is not a scored question, so that's not, like, counting towards or against you if you're not able to answer yes to that question. So this specific question is probably what you're referring to, and this is specific to a Higg FEM trainer body training. So there is the link there as well. Alright. So the next question is for EMS question seventeen. If a facility participates in a program for the environmental improvement in the local community, does the facility need to have documented activities that are officially published by either stakeholders or the government every year? Simply put, does the facility need to have new activities for this question? So as far as new activities, I believe and let's just double check. I believe the activity has to be within the reporting year. So has your facility engaged? Yeah. In the Higg FEM reporting year. So need to do something once per year. You do not necessarily need to have it published by stakeholders, published by the government. But if you have photos from the event, meeting minutes from hosting people there, you know, a video, anything like that, just evidence that something of that nature has occurred, you know, evidence of your cleanup party, maybe just pictures of you guys cleaning up a local park, whatever thing that you did. That's what it's asking for. Or it could be just supporting something financially. So maybe you're supporting a local conservation group. So there's a bunch of different options here that you can see and engage with, but it does need to have occurred within the reporting year. Hopefully, that helps answer that question. The next question is, do I need to pay to access the elearning center for the training? No. You do not need to pay. The elearning is available to all Worldly users. The Worldly platform experts program is a paid program, but all of the elearning content that's housed within that program is also available for free. So the program is really about getting that additional support and, getting, badge recognition and access to community features. Whereas the elearning generally, all that, like, kind of foundational knowledge on, like, how to use our platform, different sustainability topics, all of that is available just as part of having your Worldly subscription. So thank you for the question. And I believe I answered the question about the training being conducted yearly. So let me know, Phoebe, if you have any other questions on that. There's a question about providing the training PowerPoint after the meeting. Yes. I'll be sending the presentation, as well as all of the links that I shared, today along with the recording. Alright. The next question is for Higg FEM from March twenty twenty six, the same verifying body cannot be used for two consecutive years to conduct on-site verification for factories. Yes. I believe that is true. Let us take a look. So any verification information let me share this with you. I believe that was shared prior during the review. All of the verifier or verification program information is here. So I would take a look at the protocol as well as, you know, the field guide is helpful. It's more for verifiers, but it's helpful for you to kind of see, you know, what they're looking for and that sort of thing. And then also, like, the different requirements there. So highly recommend checking that out. And I believe I believe you're right in that that is a requirement this year. I'm trying to find I think this is from last year. Yeah. That's from last year. So, yeah, I'll include information in the follow-up email on that as well. Thank you for the question. Alright. The next question is, can you offer the long term EMS strategy template? Yes. I think that is in. If we go here. Because I think I did have that. The other thing is that if you do have ISO policy, that can be a helpful thing to look at. So this it may or may not be accessible. Hopefully, it is to everybody. I think it will prompt to download, though, so just be aware if it doesn't allow you to download that, that might be why. But that's an environmental management strategy template. May not be applicable to everybody and depending on where you're located. I just don't know if that website will be accessible. But, hopefully, that helps. And yeah. Okay. So the final I think these are related. So the final question, looking for a clarification regarding the appropriate facility scope for our Higg FEM reporting this year. We are a footwear manufacturing facility producing finished shoes. Last year, we selected finished product assembler as our facility type. However, during verification, the verifier requested that we also select finished product processing covering, printing, product painting, embroidery, embellishments, buffing, polishing, molding, etcetera since embroidery is part of our process. In our case, embroidery is only used for small logos and is not a major production process. We maintain a separate room for embroidery because the machines are noisy, require a cooler environment, but the scale of this activity is minimal compared to our core shoe assembly operations. For this year's audit, we would like guidance on which facility type we should select. Should we continue with finished product assembler only, or should we also include finished product processing due to the limited embroidery? So that's actually a site info question just for everybody's knowledge. So there was a slight change this year in that there's two different types of processing now. So they got broken out to have specific embroidery and embellishments as a type. So I would say that the guidance that you got would be correct. If you are struggling to I don't think this has gotten updated. If you are struggling to capture because usually this comes up as an issue with tracking production volume. So do let me know, though, if that's not specifically what you're asking about. But if it's a question about that, the new facility type was added so that you can track it in either kilograms or pieces. And I believe it's the printing and things like that that are now tracked in pieces. So for your example, based on what you described, I will say, though, I'm not an expert, but I would agree with the verifier that you would be both an assembler as well as this version where it says embroidery embellishments. And then in the section where it has you report your production volume, that should be available in pieces. So, hopefully, that helps to kind of alleviate any concern there. You don't that does not necessarily mean that you have to track all of your data separate for each facility, but you're just saying these are the things that I do within our facility. And then, you know, within, like, the energy section or something like that, you can say, no. This is all one facility. I don't track those separate by facility type. So I know that was kind of a long winded answer, but hopefully that helped to answer your question. And then if you need any more additional clarification, though, feel free to always submit a a question either with our support team or through here. They they also escalate tickets to the Cascale team if they're a little bit more complex. So alright. And that was there. And I see a question. Will I be hosting similar sessions for greenhouse gas in the future? Yes. Absolutely. Let me actually share that right now. So this is the upcoming training schedule. This will also be in the follow-up email. That's actually going to be next week for greenhouse gas and energy. If you're talking about air emissions, that's going to be in January. But, yeah, energy is next week. There's two sessions. And similar to this, it'll be kind of a similar thing. I may not be able to go through, like, every single question within the energy section in the same way, but I'll definitely hit the the important pieces. And as always, if you can't attend live, I'll always send the recording out to folks as well if you register. Awesome. And let's see. Final question is a little bit outside the scope, but it says the factory purchased green certificates such as GEC or I IRECs, but did not subtract the amount of these green certificates from the final GHG emissions of FEM. Why is that? So I believe what you're asking about is within the energy section, the facility indicated that they did purchase RECs of some sort, but you're not seeing that value, like, subtracted in your final emission value when you're looking at your overview. And that is actually on purpose. So there's different kind of accounting standards that people follow. What the FEM provides is the way to answer all of those. So it's going to give you an overall kind of, quote, unquote, pure without subtracting anything based on different emission factors and things like that. I can show you if you're in HowtoHigg under Higg index tools, Higg FEM twenty twenty five resources. There is a oh, yeah. So there's all the kind of energy source information, energy source comparability guidance as well as the different calculations. Also, something to know is that sometimes you might just be able to download that, and then it will give you kind of all of the different data points so that if you do want to subtract that from your personal, like, reporting values for, like, I mean, any corporate reporting or anything like that, you still have that data that was reported. It just might be in your data downloads. But yeah. So you can see kind of there was some emission emission factor changes and things like that. But, hopefully, that helps. And I'll share this this page again just in case folks need it. Awesome. Oh, yeah. And I did I the last the link right before last is the Worldly training schedule. So but I'll I'll include all of these links in the follow-up email that you sent. Alright. Oh, we got a last question. Okay. Final question. So for question seventeen, if a company conducts discussions with stakeholders external and documents them in the form of MoM I'm assuming that's like meeting minutes. I'm not familiar with MoM or month over month or EMS materials. Can this be considered as meeting the requirement? Yeah. So as long as you have evidence of engagement. So I would recommend, again, taking a look at the full kind of long version of the guidance just to make sure that, like, what you're thinking of is something that is acceptable. So it does have suggested uploads. So there's different, you know, list of activities, what you did, etcetera. And then yeah. So there's a bunch of different options here that are listed, and then it has the documentation required. So what I would recommend is think about whatever project you want to do and then just make sure that you're able to fulfill the documentation requirements so that you don't have, like, an event and then you're not able to kind of prove that you had that or if you, like, had a meeting or discussion. So I'm not sure what MOM stands for in this context. So, hopefully, I'm answering that question. But yeah. But definitely check out the longer form content for details on that. But yeah. Alright. And, yes, I will be sending all the training materials as well. Awesome. Alright. Well, that was all of the questions that we had today. Thank you so much for your time and attention today. I hope this was helpful. I'm sorry that we lost our interpreters a little bit early. I really should book them for ninety minutes, but I appreciate you guys staying on. You'll see an email from me in probably tomorrow, my time. And, yeah, and you'll have all those links. Check out the training schedule if you want to attend more of these in the future. After I end this session, there'll also be a little short survey that'll pop up. Super helpful for me just to know what we can do better, what we can improve, what's working, what's not. So thank you all so much, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. Alright. Bye.