Editorial

Corporate Responsibility and health and safety

Sheila Pantry OBE
July 2009

Corporate responsibility covers a wide range of topics, including the effects that an organisation's business has on the environment, human rights and third world poverty. Health and safety in the workplace is an important corporate responsibility.

Corporate responsibility has various definitions. However, broadly speaking it covers the ways in which organisations manage their core business to add social, environmental and economic value in order to produce a positive, sustainable impact for both society and for the business itself. Terms such as 'corporate social responsibility', 'socially responsible business', and 'corporate citizenship' all refer to this concept.

All organisations need to ensure that the risks to health and safety of workers are properly controlled. In terms of corporate responsibility this will mean:

improve management systems to reduce injuries and ill health;
demonstrate the importance of health and safety at board level;
report publicly on health and safety within their organisation, including performance against targets.

Effective management of health and safety:

is vital to employee well-being;
has a role to play in enhancing the reputation of businesses and helping them achieve high-performance teams;
is financially beneficial to business.

Good health and safety = good business. Some people ask what does "good" look like. There are many examples to be found in various publications and websites e.g. see www.hse.gov.uk/business/casestudy.htm

Also why not take a free of charge 15 day trial of OSH UPDATE and look at the many examples - fill in the interest form www.sheilapantry.com/interest.html

This month's FOCUS is on Research and Health and Safety.

OSHWORLD continues to bring you information on health, safety, environment, fire and other subjects that I hope you find useful in your daily work.

Worldwide, plans have been made already up to 2010 to have training courses, symposiums and conferences in many places in the world on a wide range of subjects. Look at the latest additions to the Diary of Events. Don't forget to budget for these events - make sure that you and your colleagues are up-to-date with the very latest knowledge - remember that all workplaces and those working in them change, so continue to do your risk assessments.

Your OSHWorld Portal

Globally new titles, news items, new products are being produced so remember to look at the News to find the latest information from a number of sources. Use OSHWORLD as your portal to many hundreds of validated and authoritative web sites that you can find in the Country and Subject links we offer. New subject topics are constantly brought together on web sites, e.g. swine flu.

Most information services have a reference shelf where you can quickly check the reference sources - so OSHWORLD brings you a collection of Reference sources.

Click onto the various Bookshops to order any new document as they are being published. Bookshops have a constant stream of new titles available.

Please send any suggestions or comments about OSHWORLD - your portal to validated and authoritative information.

Keeping up-to-date in OSH and fire information despite the turbulent times...

So do you want to keep up-to-date in worldwide occupational health, safety, hygiene, road safety, water safety, environment trends and fire latest information? Do budget constraints not allow you to buy all the journals, newsletters and documents that contain the latest information? Can't afford the time to search for the latest information, legislation and standards? No staff to search for this information? And no time yourself to spend hours searching for information?

It is always good to keep researching and finding out if there are services and other ways of keeping up-to-date in this fast changing world of ours. Time is precious and many people are really stretched in their jobs and find it difficult to keep ahead in current knowledge that they should have for their jobs. But help is at hand for those working in health, safety and fire and fire related industries.

FIREINF www.fireinf.com is the world's premier collection of validated, authoritative fire and fire related information. It now contains 17 databases and over 527,000 records and covers two major collections.

FIREINF Full Text Collection databases containing thousands of pages of full text information and The Bibliographic Collection has databases contain records to journal articles, guidance and advice, circulars, reports, conference proceedings, research reports, statistics and codes of practice from worldwide sources, all of which may be easily accessed. One database from the British Standards Institution BSI - contains references to over 4300 fire and fire related standards and another BSI database contains references to security related standards.

This long established collection started in 1997 as Fire Worldwide and over the years has been rapidly expanding. From 2007 the collection continued to expand with the new software and host platform as FIREINF and aims to help all those seeking information on all aspects of fire, emergency and preparedness management principles, fire risk assessment, good practices and research.

FIREINF is continuously enlarged as new information is published and is used by organisations worldwide.

For a 15 DAY FREE NO OBLIGATION TRIAL contact: Sheila Pantry Associates Ltd | email: sp@sheilapantry.com | or fill in the Interest form www.sheilapantry.com/interest.html

OSH UPDATE - are you using it? If not, why not? If you are missing OSH-ROM - then try OSH UPDATE

More information on health and safety at work - not only from Europe but around the World, including advice and guidance, legislation and much more can be found by checking out the OSH UPDATE electronic collection of information sources. Seekers will find a wealth of authoritative and validated advice from around the world. Best practices, case studies, journal articles, reports and knowledge of systems are in OSH UPDATE.

OSH UPDATE is CONTINUOUSLY expanding and has 19 databases.

As two information experts have said today - "wonderful, easy to use database collections of full text documents and bibliographic records that are unique and are constantly evolving."

Why not try OSH UPDATE for yourself? Take a 15-day free NO OBLIGATION trial to a collection of over 800,000 sources of authoritative and validated information.
Contact: Sheila Pantry Associates Ltd | Email: sp@sheilapantry.com | or fill in the Interest form www.sheilapantry.com/interest.html

Don't work harder - work smarter! Be ahead of the game.

Well did you have a zero accident, incident-free and healthy year in 2008 in your workplace? Some would argue that this is not possible! But keep on trying again in 2009!

And do continue to make plans for your campaigns for 2009 and beyond!