Sustainability information helps business leaders identify opportunities for risk mitigation and value creation while helping investors and analysts understand factors that affect investment performance. Until recently, occupational safety and health (OHS) reporting was not standardized, making it difficult to include OHS metrics in sustainability ratings.
The Center for Safety and Health Sustainability (CSHS) has launched an initiative to standardize OHS reporting that allows for comparison among organizations worldwide. The "Best Practice Guide for Occupational Health and Safety in Sustainability Reports" provides occupational health and safety (OHS) professionals with metrics and best practices in OHS sustainability reporting.
“Investors and other key stakeholders are demanding more transparency, which translates to higher expectations for reporting on corporate performance, including materiality,” said CSHS Chair Kathy A. Seabrook. “This presents important implications for OHS performance reporting. CSHS is committed to supporting OHS professionals and their organizations as they negotiate these changes to meet the broadening needs and expectations of investors and other key stakeholders.”
CSHS views this campaign as a critical step in improving OHS performance and, ultimately, preventing worker injuries, illnesses and fatalities.
The metrics proposed by CSHS, developed through global collaboration among the world’s largest occupational health and safety professional bodies, currently are used by a multitude of organizations around the world. They are standards of performance that already are accepted, understood and operationalized by those managing health and safety at work.
The CSHS metrics offer a broader scope and wider applicability in assessing workplaces worldwide across all geographical boundaries. In addition to addressing OHS needs at large organizations, they are scalable and therefore applicable to small- and medium-sized enterprises; extend coverage to temporary or fixed duration contract workers; and increase focus on workers for suppliers in the developing world. They present the recommended minimum level of OHS performance reporting that is applicable to all organizations.
The Center for Safety and Health Sustainability (CSHS), established in 2010, is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization committed to advancing the safety and health sustainability of the global workplace. CSHS engages occupational safety and health partners around the world to work toward establishing minimum standards that help reduce workplace injuries and ill health. A collaborative effort by the American Industrial Hygiene Association, the American Society of Safety Engineers, the Canadian Society for Safety Engineering and the Institution for Occupational Safety and Health (UK), CSHS represents over 100,000 occupational safety and health professionals worldwide.