Benchmarking - some useful background information

Government Advice

• HSC has issued guidance on including H&S information in Annual Reports (2001) http://www.hse.gov.uk/revitalising/annual.htm There have also been calls to introduce legislation requiring companies to make disclosures in this area.
• A few years ago the government wrote to 'the top 350' companies asking them to explain their commitment to health and safety. HSE then published a Contract Research Report (CRR 446/2002) ‘A study of the provision of health and safety information in the annual reports of the top UK companies’ see http://www.hse.gov.uk/research/crr_htm/2002/crr02446.htm and the Research Report http://www.hse.gov.uk/research/rrhtm/rr134.htm .‘The provision of health and safety information in the annual reports, websites and other publicly available documents produced by the UK’s top companies and a sample of government departments, agencies, local authorities and NHS trusts’ (2003).
• Changes to company law have described the content of the Director’s annual report including reference to risks and employee matters and performance indicators. The Companies Act 1985 (Operating and Financial Review and Directors' Report etc.) Regulations 2005 took effect on 22nd March 2005 http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2005/20051011.htm
• HSE commissioned a study of company Annual Reports and ranked them against a number of criteria in Health and Safety Indicators for Institutional investors, see http://www.hse.gov.uk/revitalising/csr.pdf .

OHS&E Benchmarking systems

There are many national and international benchmarking systems including:

• The AA1000 Assurance Standard from Accountability http://www.accountability.org.uk/;
• The Global Reporting Initiative http://www.globalreporting.org/;
• FTSE4Good http://www.ftse.com/ftse4good/;
• the Dow Jones Sustainability Index http://www.sustainability-indexes.com/ ;
• Business in the Environment Index of Corporate Environmental Engagement (part of Business in the Community) http://www.bitc.org.uk/programmes/programme_directory/business_in_the_environment/index.html and
• BITC corporate responsibility index http://www.bitc.org.uk/news/news_directory/cr_index.html.
• Occupational Health and Safety Benchmarking Association http://www.hrba.org/ohsba.html and Environmental, Health and Safety Benchmarking Association http://www.ehsbenchmarking.org/  (both part of the Benchmarking Network Inc. http://www.well.com/user/benchmar/tbnhome.html);

General advice on benchmarking is available on the DTI Benchmark Index website www.benchmarking-uk.com

USA - OSHA Voluntary Protection Program

The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Voluntary Protection Programs are a means of ‘voluntarily’ benchmarking health and safety performance in and between industrial sectors - details on www.osha.gov under Co-operative Programs. The VPP webpage is at: http://www.osha.gov/dcsp/vpp/index.html A VPP fact sheet is also available at: http://www.osha.gov/OshDoc/toc_fact.html

Many companies use the number of injuries or illnesses per 100 full-time employees (equivalent to 200,000 hours worked) as the incidence rate established by OSHA.