The Corporate Responsibility Index

At the recent IOSH conference in Glasgow, the extent, priority and possible solutions for occupational health and safety were well discussed.

However, one area that seemed to be missing was a means for measuring performance. Are companies taking notice, managing the issue and doing something worthwhile about it? Speaking at the conference, Caroline Cook - head of Business in the Community's corporate responsibility programme, suggested a way of finding the answer.

"The Corporate Responsibility Index is a voluntary business led initiative to measure corporate responsibility in a variety of fields, including occupational health and safety," explained Cook. "It engages companies from all sectors, publicly ranking their corporate responsibility, whilst consolidating information demands on companies."

With this being its first year, 122 companies participated, with over half coming from the FTSE100.

The model used for the Index looked at four main areas: corporate strategy, integration, management, and performance and impact. Although a benefit of the Index is to allow companies to be individually marked on their performance as a whole, the results show that while the majority of businesses (80%) have a corporate responsibility strategy, they seemed to be taking a little longer to implement it.

In terms of managing their strategy, businesses were asked to identify what they felt were the five key issues for each area of corporate responsibility. These areas were community, environment, marketplace and the workplace. Occupational health and safety falls under management in the workplace and 53% of companies identified it as one of the five main areas of priority in this field.

Lastly, the performance and impact of the strategies were measured.

Analysing the results, Cook said: "The majority of businesses have a formal occupational health and safety policy, but looking deeper into how they are managing it, we discovered that although most are progressing to measuring the issue, not as many are setting performance improvement targets.

"From companies taking part in the Index we have learned that occupational health and safety is a key social impact area selected by businesses. It is integrated within the governance and risk management processes in the leading companies. Most businesses do have a fairly systematic approach to managing the issue, but the challenge is to drive performance improvement through targets."

Perhaps more important than the results is what companies now do with the information (the results were published on 11th March this year). According to Cook, they have been provided with the necessary management tool to development internal mechanisms for improvement, and she hopes even more companies will take part in the Index next year.

Feature article by Laura Montgomery