Promoting Workers’ Health through responsible business practices

Each year 2.2 million workers die due to occupational accidents and work-related diseases (ILO, 2005). To address this enterprises are increasingly being expected not only to meet legal requirements but also ‘go beyond the law’ by acting responsibly and by creating healthier workplaces. Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) is increasingly being recognised as an essential component of responsible business practices and thinking in terms of “respecting rights”, especially respecting fundamental human and labour rights is an ethical principle of growing business relevance (ILO, 2009).     As such, labour standards are a key component in global initiatives for promoting responsible business practices such ISO 26000, the UN Global Compact and as part of human rights under the Global Reporting Initiative and other similar initiatives. However, OHS policy initiatives have, until now, not looked at enterprise responsibility as a means of promoting workers’ health. The recent WHO Global Framework for Healthy Workplaces outlines common denominators for all WHO regions recognises the responsibility of enterprises towards their employees.    This paper describes the importance of the inclusion of enterprise responsibility as the 4th avenue of influence in the WHO Healthy Workplaces Framework. It presents the finding of company case studies (n=60) from all WHO regions, which were examined to gain information on how enterprises conceptualise and report on enterprise responsibility and its operationalisation in practice in relation to workers’ health. Findings indicate that a number of initiatives have been taken by companies in this area. However, there are large differences in the focus of the health issues addressed depending on the region as well as the size of the enterprises. The findings strongly suggest that responsible business practices through enterprise internal responsibility has the merit of providing a broad space for the development of innovative approaches to a whole variety of occupational health issues.