Improving Safety and Health in the Workplace
Integrating OSH - the Safety, Health, and Welfare of Workers to Sustainability / CSR Practices
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a self-regulating business model that helps organizations be socially accountable to itself, stakeholders, and communities. The three pillars of CSR are often referred to as people, planet, and profit.
In this article, we address people and the planet through Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) efforts. (EHS is also referred to as HES, HSE, or SHE - the same words in a different order as well as Occupational Safety and Health (OSH), and Sustainability.)
EHS empowers organizations to:
reduce risk,
improve productivity,
enhance compliance,
keep workers safe, and
drive measurable business outcomes.
The History of EHS
Today’s EHS efforts are born out of initiatives that originated over fifty years ago. In 1971, the US passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act, leading to a dramatic decrease in worker injuries and fatalities. In 1974, the United Kingdom approved the Health and Safety at Work Act, with similar positive results. These acts, combined with laws in other countries and the ILO’s Occupational Safety and Health Convention in 1981 created positive strides for workers and companies.
In parallel, many countries implemented their first environmental laws, requiring companies to commit to more sustainable operations, reducing impacts on the planet by limiting carbon emissions and toxic wastewater discharge, and establishing more effective solid waste management practices.
As a result, the scope of managers responsible for OSH widened to include environmental practices we now know as EHS.
Eliminating Workplace Hazards - a Win for Everyone
In factories all over the world, workers face significant workplace hazards, including:
Injuries from unguarded machines
Hot, stuffy, and poorly ventilated workspaces
High noise levels from production machines
Exposed wiring with the risk of injury from high voltages
Structural issues related to poor building maintenance
Exposure to chemicals from toxic materials and dust
Poor ergonomics with seatings and standing arrangements
Inadequate emergency and preparedness protocols
And more.
Workers at Risk: Injuries, Death, and Compensation
These common workplace hazards cause accidents, injuries, and even death if not appropriately monitored - often leaving families and communities reeling with the loss of a primary breadwinner.
For example, in Bangladesh, the Rana Plaza garment factory collapsed, killing more than a thousand workers and injuring at least 2,500 more. Only five months earlier, at least 112 workers died in another accident, trapped inside a burning factory. And despite these deaths, neither the victims nor their families - many of them women and girls - received any sort of compensation from the company responsible for the incidents.
With the ILO acting as a neutral party, the Rana Plaza Arrangement was adopted, defining a uniform approach for compensation consistent with ILO standards.
A Focus on Prevention
Workers' health, safety, and welfare programs (commonly referred to as OSH) are critical aspects of any CSR, EHS, and Sustainability efforts.
As a CSR professional, I have visited hundreds of factories and advised management and stakeholders on small changes that can make a huge impact for workers and the company bottom line.
Missing fire extinguishers, blocked emergency exits, non-functioning fire alarms, and locked doors are not uncommon. Furthermore, many factories do not prioritize basic safety procedures such as fire drills. As a result, when accidents do happen, the impact is magnitudes larger than it could have been with proper procedures in place.
And in addition to injury and death, workers also face daily psychological stress that impacts the quality of work and productivity, ultimately affecting the bottom line profits.
Case Study: A Factory in South Korea
Companies have a moral, ethical, and legal obligation to choose their partners wisely. In fact, companies who are serious about people, planet, and profit should use a robust assessment of the labor and EHS risks before onboarding any new factory partners.
As an example, I’ll share an experience I had with an apparel factory in South Korea. This particular audit was part of a pre-production approval process. In other words, the factory had to comply with specific standards to get the job. For this job, I selected an auditor with expertise in both EHS/OSH and labor issues.
We met with management and toured the factory floor. We could see about 150 sewers crammed into the production lines.
Looking at the emergency evacuation map, we should have seen at least two emergency exits; however, we could find only one. The exit was the main entrance door, and to reach it, the workers needed to go through the main buying office and a conference room before reaching the exit.
This was a high priority issue that needed immediate action. The auditor alerted the factory management of the problem. However, the factory management did not see any reasons to change because the factory already received consistent high-volume work from another client - and that client did not ask for these changes.
As a result, the factory did not pass the audit, as the client rightfully felt that management’s willful oversight indicated high risk. As such, the factory did not get the production contract (but their competitor did.)
Training Your Team in EHS/OSH/Sustainability
Many organizations with CSR programs want to strengthen their EHS/OSH/Sustainability offerings, but they need access to training by subject matter experts.
Earlier in my career, I worked at Nike in CSR. Nike had a team of EHS experts that worked closely with the labor compliance team. Within this team, there was staff covering Nike's own in-house EHS operations and teams that looked at suppliers (factories) EHS issues. I learned best practices from both headquarter facilities and the factories abroad.
For example, explaining to the factory how to install a secondary containment to store chemicals properly is daunting. From headquarters, I would ask an EHS expert to take me to this area to show me what it looks like, and then I would ask them what regulations are involved (not just US laws, but also the laws in the countries under my scope). I would then document this process with photos and keep them in a binder, which I take when visiting the factories.
During the factory tour, the EHS experts would also walk the factory floor with me. When we'd get to the chemical storage area, I would pull out my EHS notebook and show the photos I took of the secondary containment from headquarter example to the factory staff and then take a picture of what the factory currently had in place. This served as a valuable reference to support corrective action plans, showing the "before" and "after" photo.
Over the years, I gained valuable experiences from training like this, which broadened my expertise in EHS, OSH, and Sustainability best practices.
And today, I offer training, coaching, and consulting to companies and organizations.
Need help? Let’s talk.
I provide high-impact CSR consulting, coaching & training for companies, organizations, suppliers, and people who want to make this world a better place.