OSHA white paper highlights importance of health and safety in sustainability

January 11th, 2017 by Dakota Software Staff Industry News

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration recently released a document that highlights the connections between employee health and safety and corporate sustainability. The white paper, titled "Sustainability in the Workplace: A New Approach for Protecting Worker Safety and Health," offers a look at how vital healthy and safe employees are to a successful triple bottom line of people, planet and profit. OSHA used this opportunity to highlight the critical nature of one of if not the most important resource for every company in operation today: its workers.

The importance of integrated sustainability
OSHA argued that many approaches to sustainability lack a high level of focus related to relevant social elements. These range from employee health and safety to broader concerns like workplace diversity and community engagement. The federal regulator said these concepts aren't as strongly understood in this context, and are sometimes left by the wayside in favor of those that seem more actionable or direct. OSHA specifically pointed to how successful the environmental community has been in developing awareness of needs like reducing emissions and efficient resource allocation, noting major health and safety players haven't had that same level of success.

Without a high degree of mutual understanding and crossover between the different elements that make up a complete and holistic sustainability strategy, siloing and unintended consequences can occur. OSHA shared the example of making environmental improvements that end up having a negative impact on employee health. The organization also noted the potential for a more thematic conflict: tension between health and safety and environmental goals can arise when there isn't enough clarity or information available related to both.

Promoting employee health and safety in the sustainability framework
OSHA believes there's an opportunity to bring more attention to employee health and safety issues through the corporate sustainability concept. The white paper addresses a number of avenues businesses can use to improve health and safety concerns, including seeking out partnerships to enhance and integrate this element into the broader framework of sustainability.

Another action highlighted by the federal regulator suggested businesses pay more attention to interdisciplinary training to incorporate employee safety and help staff understand its ties to other components of a sustainability strategy. Companies may also want to consider the advantages of incorporating more health and safety data into their sustainability reporting and measuring how the success - or struggles - of employee safety efforts impact business outcomes as a whole.

"Consistent and reliable metrics are one critical part of this transformation," Dr. David Michaels, assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health, and John Henshaw, a past assistant secretary of labor, said in a blog post. "In sustainability, everyone knows that what's important gets measured and what's measured gets done. Without the integration of consistent and reliable safety and health metrics into sustainability strategies, any discussion of these issues is just lip service."

To learn more about OSHA's strategies for improving the health and safety component of sustainability efforts, download the white paper.