Many of the “most sustainable” companies in the world show a real lack of transparency in occupational safety and health reporting, an IOSH-backed research centre has found.
A report released this week by the Illinois-based Centre for Safety and Health Sustainability (CSHS) – a collaborative initiative by the Institution with the American Industrial Hygiene Association and the American Society of Safety Engineers – analysed public data on the OSH reporting practices of the Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World 2011, compiled annually by Canadian media group, Corporate Knights.
It found that the majority of the corporations did not include metrics recommended by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) – described by the CSHS as one of the most comprehensive sustainability reporting frameworks available – nor those recognised as important by the international OSH community.
Concerns were also raised about ranking methodology, as some corporations in the Global 100 reported more than 10 work-related fatalities in a year, with one reporting 49 deaths in the same period.
Commenting on the findings, CSHS chair Tom Cecich said: ““The objectives of sustainability reporting are not achieved simply by disclosing information. The information disclosed must also be meaningful. Current OSH sustainability reporting practices make it difficult for stakeholders and investors to understand and evaluate the extent of an organisation’s commitment to OSH management.
“It also makes it difficult for an organisation to improve awareness of its own performance, better understand necessary improvements, compare itself to competitors, and gauge performance improvement over time.”
CSHS recommends that GRI and other sustainability reporting frameworks better promote the importance of OSH as a major indicator of an organisation’s overall sustainability and adopt OSH performance indicators that meet the following criteria:
