Firm’s occupational health and safety, employees’ accidents, and the assurance of sustainability reports

The research problem: Implementing an occupational health and safety (OHS) system can demonstrate a firm’s commitment to employees’ safety and the improvement of working conditions. We explore the practices of several hazardous industries, and later focus on the oil and gas industry, to examine the association between the presence of an OHS system and (i) the level of employee accidents of a firm and (ii) the likelihood of a firm deciding to assure its sustainability report. Motivation: Lack of an adequate OHS system can adversely affect employees’ lives and lead to considerable costs for firms. Moreover, accidents in the oil and gas industry may have disastrous environmental consequences. The hypotheses: We test whether the existence (and quality) of an OHS system is negatively associated with the number of accidents that occur in a firm and whether the existence (and quality) of an OHS system is positively associated with the assurance of the firm’s sustainability report. Target population: We analyze a large sample of firms in hazardous industries from 2015 to 2022, which includes 1,068 yearly observations of oil and gas production firms and 1,258 yearly observations of other industries (mining, freight, and food). The observations correspond to 345 unique firms with headquarters in 44 different countries. Adopted methodology: We test the first hypothesis by using a pooled Poisson model. We start our tests of the second hypothesis using a pooled logit regression. To extend the analysis of H2, we performed a mediation analysis and an ordered logit. Analyses: Most of the analyses are performed on the entire sample. We use several models to consider the characteristics of the data. Most of these models are OLS and Poisson models. Fixed effects (for country-level and time) are considered. In some instances, we study subsamples. Occupational health and safety, accidents, and assurance. Findings: This study has two main findings. First, oil firms with an OHS system or high OHS score report a significantly lower number of employee accidents. Second, oil and gas firms with an OHS system or high OHS score are more likely to seek assurance for their sustainability reports. These findings are robust to several alternative specifications. Looking closer to the relationship between the existence of an OHS system and assurance, we find that (i) this association is stronger when firms have developed their own OHS system and (ii) OHS-related topics have been assured.