Case study: How Enel promotes occupational health and safety

What are the material issues the company has identified?

In its 2016 Sustainability Report Enel identified a range of material issues, such as economic and financial value creation, responsible relationships with communities in operations, sound governance, innovation and operational efficiency, renewable energies. Among these, promoting occupational health and safety stands out as a key material issue for Enel.

Stakeholder engagement in accordance with the GRI Standards

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) defines the Principle of Stakeholder Inclusiveness when identifying material issues (or a company’s most important impacts) as follows:

“The organization should identify its stakeholders, and explain how it has responded to their reasonable expectations.”

Stakeholders must be consulted in the process of identifying a company’s most important impacts and their reasonable expectations and interests must be taken into account. This is an important cornerstone for CSR / sustainability reporting done responsibly.

Key stakeholder groups Enel engages with:   

How stakeholder engagement was made to identify material issues

In 2016, to identify and prioritize issues considered material not only for the company but also for its stakeholders, Enel took 228 initiatives involving stakeholders, to evaluate the priority given by stakeholders to various issues.

What actions were taken by Enel to promote occupational health and safety?

In its 2016 Sustainability Report Enel reports that it took the following actions for promoting occupational health and safety:

• Providing health and safety education and training
• Enel employees were provided, in 2016, with more than 830 thousand hours of health and safety information, education and on-the-job training. In addition, during the International Health and Safety Week, approximately 1,400 events were organized, in 19 different countries, for both contractors and Enel employees.

• Integrating safety into contract processes
• [tweetthis]Enel makes sure safety is solidly integrated into contract processes[/tweetthis], through:
  • health and safety clauses included in the General Contracting Conditions, which apply to the entire Enel Group
  • the Vendor Rating system, for monitoring activities and measuring health and safety performance during the execution of contracts
  • a number of initiatives involving contractors, aimed at promoting a safety culture
  • the “Extra Checking on Site” tool

• Promoting safety through technological innovation
• Enel’s safety innovation projects include:
  • the Virtual Reality 3D Simulator for Health and Safety Training
  • the Active Safety at Work (ASW) application
  • the smart helmet, to improve the safety of workers in confined spaces by means of a connection with a remote operator

• Effectively managing emergencies
• Enel implements a crisis management system to guarantee a common management approach to critical events in every country where the company operates, through standard methods.

• Implementing a policy for the safe management of nuclear activities
• Enel applies a policy relating to the safe management of the company’s nuclear activities, ensuring the top management’s commitment to guarantee all operational nuclear units are safely managed, and workers, local populations and the environment are protected.

Which GRI indicators/Standards have been addressed?

The GRI indicators/Standards addressed in this case are:

1) G4-EU18: PERCENTAGE OF CONTRACTOR AND SUBCONTRACTOR EMPLOYEES THAT HAVE UNDERGONE RELEVANT HEALTH AND SAFETY TRAINING

2) G4-LA5: Percentage of total workforce represented in formal joint management–worker health and safety committees that help monitor and advise on occupational health and safety programs – the updated GRI Standard is: Disclosure 403-1 Workers representation in formal joint management–worker health and safety committees

3) G4-LA6: Type of injury and rates of injury, occupational diseases, lost days, and absenteeism, and total number of work-related fatalities, by region and by gender – the updated GRI Standard is: Disclosure 403-2 Types of injury and rates of injury, occupational diseases, lost days, and absenteeism, and number of work-related fatalities

4) G4-LA8: Health and safety topics covered in formal agreements with trade unions – the updated GRI Standard is: Disclosure 403-4 Health and safety topics covered in formal agreements with trade unions

78% of the world’s 250 largest companies report in accordance with the GRI Standards

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References:

1) This case study is based on published information by Enel, located at the link below. For the sake of readability, we did not use brackets or ellipses. However, we made sure that the extra or missing words did not change the report’s meaning. If you would like to quote these written sources from the original, please revert to the original on the Global Reporting Initiative’s Sustainability Disclosure Database at the link:

http://database.globalreporting.org/

2) http://www.fbrh.co.uk/en/global-reporting-initiative-gri-g4-guidelines-download-page

3) https://g4.globalreporting.org/Pages/default.aspx

4) https://www.globalreporting.org/standards/gri-standards-download-center/

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