TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword
Sustainability: A Movement
OSH-Sustainability Connection
Lessons Learned: Areas of Sustainability Activity
Lessons Learned: Drivers and Leverage Points
Potential Actions
Moving Forward
Appendix A. Methodology
Appendix B. Acknowledgements

Organization of this Document This document, which focuses on the intersection of OSH and sustainability, is the product of OSHA’s efforts described in Appendix A. It is organized to follow our exploration of the sustainability landscape—understanding what sustainability is and the connections between sustainability and OSH, identifying key areas of current activity in sustainability, gaining insight about the factors that are driving these activities, and finally outlining potential actions for leveraging sustainability to advance worker safety and health.

This document is intended for two distinct audiences. First, the OSH community and safety and health professionals can utilize this work to recognize new opportunities for their efforts and a path for moving beyond their traditional roles. Second, individuals and organizations engaged in sustainability from a variety of perspectives can utilize this work to understand how they can better articulate and integrate OSH issues into their work and the benefits of doing so.

Foreword

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration¹ (OSHA) recognizes that new strategies are needed to ensure that all workers return home safe, sound, and healthy from a day on the job. Workplace safety and health standards and their enforcement can have a huge impact on workers’ lives—but the OSHA standard setting process is slow and even full compliance with standards will not prevent all work injuries and illnesses. There is much untapped potential to leverage other movements that are big, proactive, diverse in audience and stakeholders, future-thinking, and innovative to advance worker safety and health. Sustainability is one such movement that provides the potential to go beyond the Agency’s traditional role and become a transformative force.

Rooted in the integration of environmental, social, and economic considerations, the sustainability movement has steadily gained power and traction. Individual organizations (companies, local and state governments, etc.) have been using sustainability as a platform for decision-making and transparency efforts. OSHA is not looking to redefine or reinvent sustainability; occupational safety and health (OSH) is already a component of existing conceptual models. However, in practice, the sustainability movement has focused more on environmental concerns, leaving key social and workplace considerations, such as OSH, behind.

The sustainability movement is going to continue to advance whether or not OSHA and the OSH community choose to actively engage. Where OSH is not part of the discussion, individuals, companies, and organizations that present themselves, their activities, or their products as sustainable may not be doing what is best for their workers. A building, no matter how energy efficient or healthy for occupants, is not sustainable if a construction worker is killed while building it. Furniture, no matter how responsibly the wood is harvested, is not sustainable if a woodworker loses a limb during manufacturing. The poultry supply chain, no matter how well free-range chickens are treated, cannot be sustainable when workers endure crippling musculoskeletal disorders while processing those chickens. Employers are only truly sustainable when they ensure the safety, health, and welfare of their workers.

OSHA has undertaken this project as a way to assess the current sustainability landscape, understand how OSH is integrated (or not) into sustainability efforts, and identify opportunities to leverage the sustainability movement to promote worker safety and health. This white paper was developed as a result of more than 80 conversations and the review of many articles, publications, reports, and frameworks. It lays out OSHA’s understanding of sustainability, key areas where stakeholders are currently engaging, recognized opportunities and challenges, and potential actions that could advance OSH within sustainability discussions.

These ideas are just the beginning of the Agency’s sustainability journey and future engagements with the sustainability community. OSHA welcomes feedback and dialogue to build on these efforts. The path forward is ripe for collaboration and innovation. Together we can work toward an integrated vision of sustainability that protects the environment for future generations, ensures long-term economic viability, and allows all people to thrive and flourish.

Engage with us @OSHA_DOL or sustainability@dol.gov

Sustainability: A Movement

While issues of environmental stewardship and worker safety and health achieved notoriety by the 1970s, sustainability began to emerge as a topic of interest following the release of the United Nations (UN) Brundtland Commission report in 1987.² This report provided the initial definition for sustainability and a call to action to preserve the societal, economic, and environmental systems on which we all depend.

Since that time, progress has been made at both global and organizational levels on sustainability. In the early 1990s, poor working conditions in supply chains became highly visible as a result of consumer campaigns and have since continued to evolve towards increased accountability and transparency. At the same time, systematic approaches to both environmental and OSH management (e.g., ISO 14001, OHSAS 18001) were developed and integrated into global business practices. In 2000, the UN Global Compact made strides toward aligning business with global sustainable development principles and the introduction of sustainability reporting guidelines spurred growth in individual organizations (companies, local and state governments, etc.) using sustainability as a platform for decision-making and transparency.

“Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
– Our Common Future, UN Brundtland Commission (1987)

More recent efforts have focused on increasing transparency, developing global and national goals, and addressing emerging issues (e.g., climate change, supply chain sustainability). For example, in 2014, the European Union issued a Directive that places mandatory disclosure requirements for non-financial and diversity information on large companies.³ In 2015, the UN adopted 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) as a part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development⁴ and in the U.S., Executive Order 13693, Planning for Sustainability in the Next Decade, which sets goals for maintaining Federal leadership in sustainability, was issued.⁵ In 2016, the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Committee on Decent Work in Global Supply Chains adopted a resolution and a set of action-oriented conclusions to bridge governance gaps and address labor concerns throughout global supply chains.⁶

Worker Safety and Health Considerations in the UN Sustainable Development Goals

On January 1, 2016, 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted in September 2015 at a historic United Nations (UN) Summit, officially came into force. Each of the goals, which include specific targets to be achieved over the next 15 years, are meant to inform and guide strategies for governments, the private sector, civil society, and individuals. Because of their wide acceptance and broad applicability, some organizations are using the UN SDGs to underpin their sustainability efforts.

A number of the SDGs have direct and indirect connections to worker and labor issues. For example:

GOAL #8: Decent Work and Economic Growth

Protect labour rights and promote safe and secure working environments for all workers, including migrant workers, in particular women migrants, and those in precarious employment

Take immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms

By 2030, achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value

GOAL #12: Responsible Consumption and Production

By 2020, achieve the environmentally sound management of chemicals and all wastes throughout their life cycle, in accordance with agreed international frameworks, and significantly reduce their release to air, water and soil in order to minimize their adverse impacts on human health and the environment

Encourage companies, especially large and transnational companies, to adopt sustainable practices and to integrate sustainability information into their reporting cycle

http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/

OSH- Sustainability Connection

The three pillars of environment, society, and economy are frequently used to model how sustainability can be incorporated into an organization’s mission, goals, and practices. The “three Venn” diagram is a well-recognized visualization of these pillars. Each of the pillars is considered essential for sustainable outcomes to be achieved. To date, the environmental community has effectively leveraged the sustainability movement to advance improvements in environmental outcomes, such as resource usage and emissions reductions, through increased awareness, the establishment of a collective vision, investment in innovations, and promotion of transparency.

The issues that are most often classified under the social sphere of sustainability (e.g., OSH, human rights, labor relations, community engagement, diversity, equity, benefits and compensation, the organization of work, supply chains, culture) are less understood and have gained less attention. This has led to people siloing sustainability; using the concepts of “environmental sustainability” and “social sustainability” rather than an integrated vision for sustainable outcomes. This singular focus on any one aspect of sustainability can result in unintended negative impacts (e.g., hazards to workers arising from improvements to reduce environmental impacts) or creating tension between goals (e.g., labor and environment).

Although there are many worker issues embedded within the concept of sustainability, there is a unique opportunity to advance OSH through this framework. In this context, OSH refers to the promotion of the safety, health, and welfare of workers. Utilizing a sustainability framing provides a way to reimagine approaches for protecting workers and raises new issues to explore and opportunities for innovation.

Existing gaps in current sustainability thinking highlight one opportunity to leverage the power of this movement to advance OSH simply by being part of the conversation. For example, the work of the Sustainability Consortium,⁷ a global organization of manufacturers, retailers, suppliers, service providers, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil society organizations, governmental agencies, and academics dedicated to improving the sustainability of consumer products, highlights how worker safety and health is often left out of current sustainability discussions. In mapping hotspots and improvement opportunities in product supply chains, this effort’s methodology failed to identify any worker safety and health issues in the slaughter, processing, and cooking of chicken. However, we know that workers in this industry suffer elevated rates of injury and illness, toiling long hours in difficult conditions.⁸

The Sustainability Consortium’s Chicken Supply Chain Visualization. Screen Capture. 11/8/2016.

Fully articulating and integrating OSH within sustainability efforts can help expand the thinking of those already involved in sustainability and also provide a platform for OSHA and the community of safety and health professionals to move beyond traditional roles. Given the traction and the momentum of the sustainability movement, this type of engagement can be used as a transformative force to amplify the impact on the lives of workers, both inside and outside the workplace.

Lessons Learned: Area of Sustainability Activity

Current sustainability efforts are focused in seven areas of activity: reporting and metrics, investing and shareholder engagement, business, standards and certifications, procurement, education, and research. Based on our conversations with stakeholders, opportunities and challenges for advancing worker safety and health in each of these areas were identified. The project methodology and a complete list of those that participated in the project are included in Appendices A and B. It is anticipated that there will be continued engagement with identified and not yet identified stakeholders to further explore these topics.

The table illustrates stakeholders that provided insight into each of these areas and the primary topic of our conversations with them. As many of the stakeholders we spoke with are active in a number of sustainability efforts, the diagram is not inclusive of all efforts, initiatives, and areas of expertise that may be ongoing or planned by the stakeholders listed.

Reporting and Metrics

The public reporting of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues began in the 1980s with corporate environmental reporting.⁹ This expanded to corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting, which now is essentially synonymous with sustainability reporting in many cases, the terms often being used interchangeably. Currently, sustainability reporting is becoming a common practice for organizations ranging from businesses to governments to NGOs. This sort of reporting is considered non-financial reporting and is most often voluntary. Organizations are self-selecting what issues are included in their reports. This selection can be based on a variety of mechanisms, including industry expectations, organizational values, data quality and availability, consumer demand, formal materiality assessment, or more recently, the UN SDGs. With this growth in disclosure, there has also been a move to increase the rigor of sustainability reporting through the development of organizations and tools to standardize practices and metrics. There have been a few efforts in some countries (e.g., European Union) to make ESG disclosures mandatory for companies of a certain size or in certain industries.

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), established in 1997, developed a reporting framework that has become the most adopted model used for sustainability reporting around the globe. Since its initial version, the framework has undergone several iterations in an effort to increase rigor and applicability.¹⁰ There are several other organizations, including the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB)¹¹ and the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC)¹², that are especially active.

Material issues are ones that can “reasonably be considered important for reflecting the organization’s economic, environmental and social impacts, or influencing the decisions of stakeholders.” – Global Reporting Initiative. (2016). GRI 101: Foundation. Global Reporting Standards. https://www.globalreporting.org/standards

Many people, regardless of their primary area of activity in the realm of sustainability, considered metric development and use critical challenges to be solved. It is essential to be able to identify what measures are important, when they should be reported, how they should be calculated and standardized, and how to compare across years, organizations, and geography. Efforts are ongoing through reporting organizations, trade associations, professional associations, standards development groups, investing and financial organizations, and companies themselves to address these challenges through the development of tools (e.g., The Vitality Group Reporting on Health Roadmap)¹³, indices (e.g., The Harvard SHINE Well-being Index¹⁴), workgroups and collaborations, and recommended metrics and methodologies (e.g., the Center for Safety and Health Sustainability’s Best Practices Guide for Occupational Health and Safety in Sustainability Reports¹⁵).

Proposed OSH Elements for Sustainability Reporting. Adapted from CSHS Best Practice Guide for Occupational Health and Safety in Sustainability Reports.

In addition to company reporting, there have been efforts to develop rankings and indices for use by groups, including investors, looking to incorporate the information reported by companies into their decision support tools. Some of the popular rankings and indices include: the Dow Jones Sustainability Index,¹⁶ the Corporate Knights Global 100,¹⁷ and the MSCI Global Sustainability Index.¹⁸ The assessment of information for inclusion in these indices and rankings is highly dependent on what information is publicly available or self-reported. It is difficult to include health and safety as a factor in these rankings based on the sporadic nature of reporting on OSH and inconsistency in the metrics used when information is provided on these issues.

Opportunities

• UN Sustainable Development Goals: The nearly global acceptance of the UN SDGs offers a unified context for organizations to develop and advance their own sustainability goals and efforts. The SDGs provide targets that are applicable to governments, civil society, and the private sector. While not every goal and target will be applicable to every organization, a number of organizations, such as Unilever,¹⁹ PwC,²⁰ The Dow Chemical Company,²¹ and the World Health Organization,²² are viewing the SDGs as an opportunity for developing strategy, accountability, and innovation.
• Increasing the Salience of OSH as a Sustainability Issue: To date, the inclusion of OSH in sustainability reporting is highly dependent upon industry sector. As sustainability reporting expands to include additional social aspects, there is an opportunity to increase the prevalence of reporting on OSH and the metrics that are used by more fully articulating and defining the path forward in this area.

  How are you accounting for impacts on the safety and health of workers?

Challenges

• Voluntary Nature of Reporting: Currently, in the U.S., sustainability reporting is voluntary and most often not driven by regulation. NGOs, the investment community, and consumers are driving what is reported and are demanding more robust and effective disclosure. Even when people do report on OSH, the way the information is reported makes it difficult to compare. The voluntary nature of reporting means that the information available to investors and the public remains inconsistent and incomplete.
• Leading Metrics: Leading indicators, in addition to the more commonly used lagging indicators for OSH, are needed. These metrics can be difficult to develop and use due to comparability challenges, but also because there is a lack of industry-specific evidence of financial impact related to safety and health.
• Disconnect Between OSH Professionals and Business Leadership: Incorporating information into high-level reporting channels in organizations often falls beyond the normal functions of most OSH professionals. Primarily seen as technical specialists, they are not typically involved in discussions about business goals and opportunities.

Investing and Shareholder Engagement

Sustainable, responsible, and impact investing and shareholder engagement integrate ESG criteria into the investment process. Those engaging in these types of activities do so by considering ESG criteria from a variety of sources (e.g., financial disclosures, non-financial disclosures, and indices and rankings²³) in their decision-making, as well as by utilizing shareholder engagement strategies, such as letters, resolutions, proxy votes, and meetings, to advocate for ESG issues.

In 2014, U.S.-domiciled assets under management incorporating ESG considerations into decision-making and shareholder engagement strategies rose to $6.57 trillion, a growth of more than 900% since 1995.²⁴ This growth is driven by a number of developments, including: (1) increased evidence of the impacts of ESG concerns; (2) increasing interest to seek out investments that fulfill personal values, goals, and institutional missions as well as aim for strong financial performance; (3) seeking hidden sources of financial out-performance over the long term; (4) pursuing an investment discipline that manages risk and fulfills fiduciary duties; (5) growing body of academic research that shows a strong link between ESG and financial performance; and (6) millennials who are looking to not only make a return on their investments, but to also make a difference.

U.S. Department of Labor Guidance on Incorporating ESG Considerations into Decision-making

In 2015, the U.S. Department of Labor issued guidance outlining the ways in which ESG considerations could be incorporated into decision-making. For example, they can be considered as “tiebreakers” when investments are otherwise equal with respect to their economic and financial characteristics. In cases where ESG factors may have a direct relationship to the economic and financial value of an investment, they can be considered as proper components of the fiduciary’s analysis of the economic and financial merits of competing investment choices. https://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/ebsa/ebsa20152045.htm

As a field, sustainability is pushing heavily into investing for non-financial risks and opportunities. Human capital management,which includes considerations of workplace safety and health, encompasses a broad range of corporate practices that are of particular interest in this regard. According to the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), “the scope of human capital management includes a company’s direct employees, as well as the employees of vendors in the company’s supply chain. In addition, human capital management encompasses a broad range of corporate practices, including but not limited to: hiring and retention, training, compensation, fair labor practices, health and safety, responsible contracting, and diversity and inclusion.”²⁵

While OSH is generally considered to be important, particularly as it relates to governance and leadership performance, metrics used to assess OSH performance are not consistent in use or application. This information gap makes it challenging, if not impossible, for OSH to be considered material to an investor’s decision-making process. Information about safety and health performance is only required in quarterly and annual reports to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from mining companies (see box for additional detail). There are several efforts underway to make similar information more broadly available in these types of financial filings. Other efforts to date have focused on gaining the attention of chief executive officers (CEOs) and board members through non-binding shareholder resolutions.

Required Mine Safety Disclosures, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission

In December 2011, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced new rules implementing the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act’s requirement that mining companies disclose safety information in the quarterly and annual reports they file with the SEC.

Items required for disclosure include but are not limited to:

• The total number of flagrant violations under Section 110(b)(2) of the Federal Mine Safety and Heath Act (Mine Act).
• The total number of imminent danger orders issued under Section 107(a) of the Mine Act.
• The total dollar value of proposed assessments from MSHA under the Mine Act
• The total number of mining-related fatalities.
• A list of the mines that receive notice from MSHA of a pattern of violations of mandatory health or safety standards that are of such nature as could have significantly and substantially contributed to the cause and effect of coal or other mine health or safety hazards under Section 104(e) of the Mine Act.

Any occurrence of a violation, order, or other event from the list of required disclosures must be reported; no materiality threshold applies.

https://www.sec.gov/news/press/2011/2011-273.htm.

In 2016, researchers found a decrease in mining-related citations and injuries among the mines owned by SEC-registrants as compared to those that are not registered.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2680296.

Opportunities

• Risk Approaches: Viewing OSH as a business risk rather than an operational function can drive its inclusion in internal audits and enterprise risk analysis. A number of practitioners in this field have identified the advantage of expanding audit and risk analysis beyond financials to include applied approaches, policies, and control mechanisms.
• Materiality of OSH: U.S. law requires publicly listed companies to disclose material information, defined by the U.S. Supreme Court as information presenting “a substantial likelihood that the disclosure of the omitted fact would have been viewed by the reasonable investor as having significantly altered the ‘total mix’ of information made available.”²⁶ However, there is no universally agreed upon definition for materiality in relation to non-financial factors, such as OSH. There has been criticism of efforts to develop universal materiality determinations based on industry sectors as some feel that materiality varies at a smaller scale (i.e., from company to company). While the method used in the determination of materiality may still be debated, access to information and data is a common need no matter the method. Even lagging indicators can provide information about potential risks to investors. These data need to be publicly available and able to be aggregated and identified to the parent company (e.g., stock ticker identifier).
• Transparency: Organizations are trying to push information release requirements through the SEC. The SEC recently asked for public feedback on business and financial disclosures required by Regulation S-K,27 through a concept release. A joint report released by several coalitions noted that more than 26,000 comments were submitted to the SEC, with many commenters expressing clear support for expanded and enhanced disclosures, including disclosures on sustainability topics.²⁸
• Emerging Topics: There are a number of macro trends that are contributing to interest in ESG considerations including supply chain risks, climate change, human capital, and rising economies. As many engaging in ESG opportunities are interested in long term investing (e.g., 20-30 year time horizons), investors are not as constrained by conventional economic frameworks or deterred by the complexities of working towards solutions in these areas.

What data do you need to make OSH a central component of your investment and financial decision-making?

Challenges

• Education: Sustainable, responsible, and impact investing and shareholder engagement that integrates ESG criteria into decision-making are still considered specialized areas of activity, although they are becoming more mainstream. Business schools are beginning to incorporate these concepts into their programs, and some educational courses and certifications that include ESG topics are available, but additional training and curriculum are needed to increase the knowledge base for these types of investing strategies.
• Reporting is Not Required: To date, companies have not had to report their safety and health data to OSHA, though this will change for a certain subset of companies that are required, beginning in 2017, to electronically submit their injury and illness data.²⁹ Even where companies are voluntarily making their safety and health information publicly available there have not been widespread or accepted efforts to harmonize this reporting for consistency, strength of metrics, or verification. Investor efforts to comprehensively incorporate ESG information into investment decisions are hindered by this lack of comprehensive, comparable, and reliable data.

Business

As the idea of sustainability within businesses has matured over the last decade, many leading companies are making it a key part of their growth strategy for the future. There have been several drivers for this, which include: increased importance of transparency and reporting, supply chain and customer demand, regulations and voluntary standards, green procurement and contracting, and investing. To meet these demands, sustainability is seen as a way to package and express the core values of a company to outsiders.

“For many organizations, sustainability has evolved from a ‘feel good’ exercise to a strategic imperative that focuses on economic, environmental and social risks and opportunities which, left unattended, can potentially threaten the long-term success of strategies and the viability of business models.”
– Demystifying Sustainability Risk, Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) (2013)

With these trends, there has also been a move to elevate sustainability positions within companies. While no two organizational structures are alike, the GreenBiz “State of the Profession” report found that there has been a significant increase in the number of vice presidents of sustainability reporting directly to corporate senior executives or the board of directors.³⁰ Others have also noted that adding Environmental Health Safety & Sustainability (EHS&S) performance into an executive’s compensation structure can be a successful strategy for integration.

Over time, businesses have started to move from a focus on environmental sustainability to one that also embraces social aspects. For many businesses, worker safety and health is a non-negotiable value (e.g., “zero harm”) that has always been a part of the business model, regardless of how a company views sustainability. In some of these cases, OSH efforts are also seen as a natural fit under a broader sustainability umbrella (e.g., “people, planet, profit”). A recent report by the Campbell Institute at the National Safety Council, which brings together world-class performers in EHS across industry sectors and regions of the world, similarly found that leading companies are taking on “a broader, more holistic view of sustainability, of which safety plays a key role.”³¹

To identify focus areas for future sustainability work, as well as reporting, companies have been moving toward detailed materiality assessments to identify those issues that are of importance for both the company and stakeholders. These assessments often include extensive surveys and interviews with internal, as well as external, stakeholders. Worker safety and health is regularly identified as a key issue in these assessments.

Some other strategies currently being used to address worker health and safety issues include: evaluations of the maturity of OSH management systems, design processes that include OSH, culture and perception surveys, worker engagement through EHS committees and teams, close call systems, internal recognition programs, toolkits for workers and managers on safety and health issues, and audits of company and supplier facilities.

Highlighting Worker Safety and Health in Sustainability Reporting

In their annual sustainability report, Baxter International Inc. provided information beyond the typical injury and fatality rates to describe their performance on worker safety and health. In addition to analyzing the main sources of work-related injuries and serious incidents to identify trends and opportunities for improvement, they also highlighted several initiatives on safety program management, including the launch of a “Safety Connection” intranet portal, a key resource that defines critical safety behaviors and provides tools and resources to enhance employee ownership of safety. (Graphic courtesy of Baxter International Inc.)

Opportunities

• OSH as Innovation: Given the past focus on the environmental aspects of sustainability, OSH can be seen as an innovation area as businesses increase their focus on social aspects. OSH professionals, if engaged appropriately, can use sustainability to drive issues of worker health and safety forward. Worker engagement can also help identify opportunities for innovations that improve not only safety and health, but also business performance.
• Expanded Understanding of Worker Issues: Within their sustainability frameworks, many organizations are now moving toward an expanded understanding of worker and workplace issues. This understanding includes a focus on the many aspects of work that need to be addressed in order to reach a truly sustainable workplace that ensures workers are flourishing. This includes providing a healthy, safe work environment, but may also extend to community engagement, volunteering, and other aspects of company practices (e.g., leave policies, wages, employee ownership).
• Rankings: Some businesses, especially those that are publicly traded, are motivated to improve their performance to achieve high ranks on various lists, such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Index or the Corporate Knights Global 100. Other companies, even if not public, do not want to see themselves at the top of lists of under-performers in any respect.
• Collaboration: Business leaders recognize that many of their sustainability goals cannot be achieved alone. Convening of groups of sustainability leaders, EHS managers, and others that are similarly situated in companies will likely take on more importance going forward.

What strategies typically used in sustainability activities (e.g., innovative partnerships, environmental and ethical guidelines) can you use to improve health and safety in the workplace?

Challenges

• OSH as Cost: For many businesses, OSH is still viewed largely as a cost to business, rather than as an investment. This is especially the case where lost-time incident rates and fatality rates, the two most commonly used indicators of safety and health performance, are low; people think the problem is solved and further investment in these issues is not needed. Consideration of leading indicators that focus on the ongoing risks to worker safety and health may help dispel issues of complacency around OSH.
• Lack of Consistency in OSH Reporting: Even where businesses are regularly considering OSH within their sustainability goals, there is a lack of consistency in global reporting of these issues that makes it challenging to compare, even across the various entities within a global company.
• Supply Chain: As business becomes ever more global, supply chain management and engagement is increasingly seen as the next frontier in sustainability. Because worker health and safety issues may be more pronounced in global supply chains, it will continue to be a challenge to highlight the importance of these issues in U.S. supply chains. When evaluating goods and services for sustainability, it is important to also consider safety and health implications for those who are actually performing the services or manufacturing the goods throughout the supply chain, not just those using the final products.
• Scalability: As many large, global businesses have made substantial progress in sustainability over the last decade, many small businesses are in the beginning stages of understanding how they can incorporate these issues into their business models to remain competitive. Adapting leading approaches for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) will be critical to ensure that they will be able to take advantage of these innovative and beneficial strategies.

Standards and Certification

  Over the last several years, the development and use of standards and certifications to define sustainability has exploded, resulting in hundreds, if not thousands, of standards, certifications, and labels for products, materials, and businesses. The graph, based in part on information from the Ecolabel Index, the largest global directory of ecolabels, depicts the rapid growth in predominantly consumer-facing labels, which make up just a small portion of the overall standards and certifications picture. Currently, the Ecolabel Index is tracking 465 ecolabels in 199 countries and 25 industry sectors.³² Much of this development has been in the environmental, or “green” space, but there are others that address discrete issues that fall under the social aspect of sustainability (e.g., child-laborfree), as well as those that attempt to incorporate all aspects of sustainability (e.g., B Impact Assessment).³³

 

 

 

 

Evolution in the Total Number of Environmental Labelling and Information Schemes © OECD. Taken From: Gruère, G. (2013).
“A Characterisation of Environmental Labelling and Information Schemes”, OECD Environment Working Papers, No. 62, p. 23, OECD Publishing.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/5k3z11hpdgq2-en.