Occupational Health and Safety as a part of Corporate Social Responsibility: A case study

In a world in which accidents at the workplace are still a major concern for most organizations, there is an urge to increase the efficiency of occupational health and safety management systems implementation (OHSMS). Organizations such as International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) can be fundamental for companies to establish an efficient management system, as well as, to adequately disclose their progress, which is regarded as a positive action in society’s eyes as the organization’s sustainable development increases. The aim of this study is to understand how a tobacco industry organization, Tabaqueira, is ensuring this sustainable development. Through the analysis of the organization’s current occupational health and safety management system, it is possible to understand what are the company’s main strategies, goals and what tools are being used to achieve these. Also, it is important to comprehend what and how this information is being disclosed by Tabaqueira, as a highly scrutinized organization as this one, needs to be extra diligent regarding such issues and use it to improve internal safety standards. The results obtained show that Tabaqueira is certified for ISO 45001 and complies with the European executive directive DL50/2005. It was found that currently, a continuous improvement model, OPEN+, is being implemented to improve the organization’s management systems, which includes safety as top priority. This is fundamental for the company to achieve its main goal of having an interdependent safety culture and 0 accidents in the workplace. So far, the implementation of such a model has been presenting positive results but is yet far from the pertained achievements as Tabaqueira is continuously working to ensure a safe workplace for every employee. Regarding the disclosed information, it was found that occupational health and safety chapter can be improved and extended to discuss more of the innovative tools used to share social concern over safety and evaluate the implemented system in general.