Work safety as an important aspect of CSR and sustainable development goals

In line with the European Commission (EC) understanding, corporate social responsibility (CSR) involves voluntary integration of social and environmental aspects into the core of company operation and stakeholder communication. In 2001, the European Commission initiated the pan-European discussion of the problem with their publication of the Green Paper “Promoting a European framework for Corporate Social Responsibility”. A year later, the EC issued a follow-up statement presenting the EU strategy adopted for the promotion of corporate social responsibility. This coincided with the start of a European seminar under the auspices of the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work devoted to the examination of correlations between CSR and work safety. These two initiatives have brought potent suggestions that CSR represents a crucial strategic element for European employees and decision-makers, and that work safety is an integral part of the formally adopted concept of corporate social responsibility. The chapter presents the relationship between CSR involvement and the provision of work safety in companies. The main objective of this chapter is to examine the importance that internal stakeholders (in this case, employees) attach to proper occupational safety in the hierarchy of their interests. Respecting the interests of employees is one of the most important areas of sustainable people management in enterprises. It has been shown that the implementation of CSR has a positive effect on improving working conditions and thus on increasing the level of occupational work safety in the enterprise.