Читать книгу Patty's Industrial Hygiene, Program Management and Specialty Areas of Practice - Группа авторов - Страница 97

In 2000, the first of a series of guidelines were developed by GRI for the public reporting of progress in sustainability. While a number of both public and private companies published some form of environmental or CSR reports or had elements of both in their annual reports, these were a minority. This was especially true for the United States. However, there were a few exceptions. As an example, Proctor and Gamble published their first sustainability report in 1999.

The GRI is considered the “gold standard” for sustainability reporting with almost all sustainability and CSR reporters using it as the template for their reports. This is shown by the GRI having gone from a disclosures database of 12 reports in 1999 to more than 6000 in 2016 (10). The Governance & Accountability Institute reported that 82% of the US‐based S&P 500 companies issued sustainability reports in 2016 further showing the tremendous growth in this as a business practice (11). The GRI also reported in their 20 years of progress report that 74% of the largest 250 companies in the world also use the GRI standards for reporting.

The GRI has recently changed their organizational structure (2014) with the formation of the Global Sustainability Standards Board and their recommendations are now called GRI Standards. The reason that the GRI takes a prominent role in our discussion is that it is the most widely used template for sustainability reporting. The GRI does not limit the amount of information reported but does form a baseline. These recommendations will be expanded and more oriented to sectors like those for the US‐based Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) which is discussed later. This is important because what is required to be publically reported is collected by the reporters at their organizations. Thus, the importance of a reporting requirement in the GRI means that the metric reported will surely be monitored by the reporting company and that there will be pressure to improve that statistic. The collection of health and safety metrics and information is found in the Social element of the current GRI requirements (Environmental and Governance are separate). These are GRI version 4 Labor (LA) 5 through 8 and are shown as follows:

LA 5: Percentage of total workforce represented in formal joint management–worker health and safety committees that help monitor and advise [sic] on occupational health and safety programs

1 Report the level at which each formal joint management‐worker health and safety committee typically operates within the organization.

2 Report the percentage of the total workforce represented in formal joint management‐worker health and safety committees.

LA 6: Type of injury and rates of injury, occupational diseases, lost days, and absenteeism, and total number of work‐related fatalities, by region and by gender

1 Report types of injury, injury rate (IR), occupational diseases rate (ODR), lost day rate (LDR), absentee rate (AR), and work‐related fatalities, for the total workforce (that is, total employees plus supervised workers), by:– Region– Gender

2 Report types of injury, injury rate (IR), occupational diseases rate (ODR), lost day rate (LDR), absentee rate (AR), and work‐related fatalities for independent contractors working on‐site to whom the organization is liable for the general safety of the working environment, by:– Region– Gender

3 Report the system of rules applied in recording and reporting accident statistics

LA 7: Workers with high incidence or high risk of diseases related to their occupation

1 Report whether there are workers who are involved in occupational activities who have a high incidence or high risk of specific diseases.

LA 8: Health and safety topics covered in formal agreements with trade unions

1 Report whether formal agreements (either local or global) with trade unions cover health and safety.

2 If yes, report the extent, as a percentage, to which various health and safety topics are covered by these agreements.

There are several other reporting recommendations in the GRI that are related to safety and health, such as consumer safety (PR 1) and product labeling (PR 3), but these are beyond our scope in this discussion. The full reporting requirements are available from the GRI website (https://www.globalreporting.org/standards). The GRI has global applicability but there are some additional voluntary nonfinancial disclosure reporting requirements for public companies in the United States.