What Is SHERQpreneurship?

For a lot of people, the terms Health & Safety, Quality, Environment and Sustainability are quite common, and many organizations have a Safety and Quality department or a person involved into organizing Safety and Quality related activities.

Possibly to comply with legal requirements like; fire equipment or waste handling!

Customer requirements, like; having an implemented ISO 9001: Quality Management System, or an incident register record from over the last five years!

Industrial requirements, like; having a Gulf SQAS standard assessment done for all the facilities in the region and being a member of an international association!

It’s a fact that under the current circumstances, the principle of SHERQ got quite a lot of publicity and is mentioned frequently in the media. This has a lot to do with the recent focus on health and hygiene in the ‘era of Covid-19’.

Before getting a better understanding of this for organizations critical phenomena lets first understand the meaning of the individual letters: H. S. S. E. Q, i.e. Health, Safety, Security / Sustainability, Environment and Quality.

• H stands for Occupational Health and Hygiene,

• S stands for Safety,

• S stands for Security / Sustainability,

• E stands for Environment

• Q stands for Quality

When we add the R for Responsible Care[1] and merge the two S’s, we get the term SHERQ!

The meaning of SHERQpreneurship has two-parts; ‘SHERQ and entrepreneurship or intrapreneurship’ depending from which angle you look to the corporate ladder i.e. from the perspective of a business owner or from that of an (executive) employee!

The meaning of entrepreneurship is, as per Merriam-Webster online dictionary;

> “One who organizes manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise.”

Cambridge online dictionary on entrepreneurship;

> “Skill in starting new businesses, especially when this involves seeing new opportunities.”

The meaning of intrapreneurship is, as per Merriam-Webster online dictionary;

> “A corporate executive who develops new enterprises within the corporation.”

Cambridge online dictionary on intrapreneurship;

> “The willingness or ability of people within a large company to take direct responsibility for turning ideas into profitable new products, services, businesses, etc...”

The meaning of SHERQpreneurship would be;

“The skill of organizing and managing risk and developing new opportunities for a business in the area of SHERQ”

The SHERQpreneur is considered the all-round process improvement consultant with a visionary, inspirational and transformational leaders’ approach and is skilled in all the mentioned business contexts.

For this reason, SHERQpreneurship stimulates its practitioners to develop a high-performance mindset, continual development of how to become and stay productive and efficient while leading well-adjusted work-life balance.

With the complexity of many industries, the SHERQ practitioner has to be flexible, agile and able to adopt change, with excellent horizontal and vertical communication capacities. While taking enough care of operational capabilities it’s a must to ensure to complete the all roundness with looking to the body and soul!

‘The famous Greek saying; ‘Mens sana in corpore sano’ is a Latin phrase, usually translated as "a healthy mind in a healthy body".

The phrase is widely used in sporting and educational contexts to express the theory that physical exercise is an important or essential part of mental and psychological well-being.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_sana_in_corpore_sano

With this in mind, the SHERQpreneur must take care of his/her mind, body and soul!

SHERQpreneurship also encourages its followers to adopt a healthy lifestyle by clean eating, e.g. a moderate eating regime of increased protein, healthy fats and reduced carbohydrates and now and then a cheat meal.

The SHERQpreneur is highly encouraged to stop smoking and lead by example in doing a minimum of 150 minutes of sports activity weekly and live life by taking care of his/her outfit and personal hygiene.

Prayer and meditation are to be used to improve the functionality of both mind and body and to give inner peace, trust and confidence to overcome all the hardship, obstacles and difficulties on the road towards success in professional and personal endeavours.

[1] Note: Responsible Care is the chemical industry’s global environmental, health, safety and security initiative.