The Occupational Safety and Health Scorecard – A Business Case Example for Strategic Management

HR and health issues are supposed to be crucial in terms of enterprises´ future performance and competitiveness. However, systematic, continuous and strategically aligned OSH management is scarcely applied in enterprises. One major reason for this might be the lack of generally accepted and standardised OSH controlling methods. The objective of this article is to propose an eligible business case bridging OSH-related and performance issues of an organisation. The business case is based on the well known and accepted Balanced Scorecard (BSC) approach which was adapted to a specific OSH-BSC. It was conceptualised and implemented in the course of a comprehensive case study at a German Automobile manufacturer. The main result - based on multivariate regression analysis - was that the BSC approach is adequate as a means to control OSH issues in terms of strategic health management. However the data quality especially with respect to performance data has to be improved in order to get more detailed information as for the mechanisms, which bridge health and performance