Corporate Social Review Magazine 1st Quarter 2012 | Page 20

In other words, the intent of the
drafters of this landmark legislation was not to eliminate all risk
and impose regulation that now often seems to defy common sense.
Their intent was to make the world
a better place for the people who
live in it. To balance the need of a
modern society to produce goods
and services with the desire of that
society for those goods and services to not come at an unnecessarily
high price.
And let’s be clear; South Africans
may not have got to the point
where we think that a one day
course is needed before we can
get the ladder out and change a
light-bulb, but we have embraced
the core spirit and intent of Health
& Safety. We wear our PPE, we do
our workshops, we subject staff
and visitors alike to increasingly
detailed safety briefings, we incentivise senior managers based
on their safety records, we post
signs, write articles, make videos
and do everything (so far as is rea-

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“It’s very important that
corporate social investment goes beyond the
often marginalised CSI
department, and it’s
seen as a major thrust
of the company as a
whole.”Dr Mamphela Ramphele
Chairperson: Gold Fields

sonable and practicable) to make
the places where we work safer for
ourselves, our colleagues, our visitors and our customers.
Hurting and killing people is bad
for business (unless you’re a professional army, and even then you
better be wearing your own PPE
when you do it!). Across the world
Health & Safety has become increasingly important – a measurable standard that we are happy to
hold ourselves to.
From legislation designed principally to address heavy industry,

CORPORATE SOCIAL REVIEW

manufacturing and construction,
the Health & Safety directorate
has slowly crept into every aspect
of our businesses and our lives
and - the Jobsworth clan, the snow
ball police and the ladder lecturers
notwithstanding – our world is better for it.
*
When we first talked about this article and took a look at the overview
for the ISO 26000 legislation, we
were immediately struck by a single overwhelming fact. This is an
international standard that seeks
to have an effect on every single
aspect of how we run our businesses.
When we talk about Corporate
Social Responsibility, we tend to
think of team building exercises
helping to build low cost housing,
big cheques being handed to smiling recipients representing good
causes and (as Jonathon Hanks
puts it in his article) an organisation’s philanthropic and charitable
activities.