News on the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Survey

We’re pleased to update CRS customers on IOSH’s efforts (together with the Center for Safety and Health Sustainability) to improve occupational health and safety (OSH) metrics in the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) sustainability reporting guidelines (G4) which have progressed well.

Following indications from GRI of insufficient interest from stakeholders in OSH to warrant a revision; CSHS sought support from around 85 OSH groups across the world for five new metrics. IOSH also filed comments with GRI both online (survey) and off, participated in GRI’s first public workshop on G4, and met the GRI senior leadership team several times.

GRI has now issued a report on the consultation results “G4 Development-First Public Comment Period, 26 August-24 November 2011 – Full Survey Report 10 February 2012”.

It is pleasing to note, that overall, OSH was the 4th most cited material topic for ‘reporters’, and topped the ‘Labor’ category, with 25% of all reporters. 93% of respondents wishing to see a standard-set for all organisations chose OSH as one of their topics (p.27) and of the 78 who offered ideas for indicators, a large majority cited the same five OSH indicators (p.31).

Here at CRS, we believe these results were largely due to the strong support from the global safety community for the efforts of the CSHS to improve OSH metrics.

Without the efforts of IOSH (and CSHS), it seems unlikely there would have been more than a passing reference to OSH, and not the level of coverage achieved. There is still much to be done to ensure improved OSH metrics are included in G4, but this is great step forward.