company awareness and three areas of Duty of Care responsibility (steps 1, 3 and 7). Government organizations show greater Duty of Care awareness than educational institutions. In regard to assessment and the development of Duty of Care policies and procedures, corporations and government organizations show greater awareness than educational institutions. Educational institutions are less aware of the Duty of Care assessment and the development of policies and procedures than corporations and government organizations. This further corroborates the fact that educational institutions do not perceive the threats to their employees to be as high as companies in other sectors do.
With regard to industry differences, the general trend is that certain industries (automotive, entertainment, media and publishing, logistics and distribution, and aerospace/defense) tend to have higher awareness of Duty of Care, while other industries (consumer goods, transportation, travel and tourism, education) and NGOs tend to have the lowest awareness of Duty of Care. Yet, these trends do not reach statistically significant differences as there are other differences in Duty of Care awareness with regard to industry, company or different areas of responsibility.
4.HQ location—The general trend is that companies headquartered in Asia, and Middle East/North Africa rate the awareness of Duty of Care lower while companies headquartered in Australia/ Oceania, Europe and North America rate the awareness of Duty of Care higher. Duty of Care awareness seems to be a widely accepted concept in the developed world, as companies headquartered in Australia/Oceania, Europe and North America have much greater awareness at all levels (company, industry, specific areas) than the Asian, Middle Eastern and North African companies.
Respondent Demographics
1. Level of respondent—Level of position does not matter in terms of Duty of Care awareness.
2. Function of respondent—Overall, security, medical and QHS&E respondents tend to rate industry, company and stakeholder awareness higher than any other functional group. The statistically significant differences are that HR respondents rate the Duty of Care and travel risk management awareness of their industry, company and stakeholders lower than respondents from risk and security, medical or QHS&E. If Duty of Care is part of one’s core job responsibilities (such as for risk and security, medical and QHS&E respondents), they tend to rate company, industry and stakeholder awareness the highest. This is likely because it is their area of expertise and they project that awareness onto others. HR results indicate that they rate all Duty of Care awareness much lower than other respondents. This lack of awareness may impede HR’s ability to understand and support their organization’s Duty of Care deployment, especially as it relates to employee communication, education, training and enforcement of Duty of Care policies.
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3. Respondent location—In general, respondents from developed countries have greater Duty of Care awareness than other regions of the world. Australian respondents have the greatest awareness (followed by Europeans), have greater company awareness than North America and greater assessment awareness than Asian respondents. There are also differences in stakeholder awareness based on the respondent’s geographic region. Strikingly, Australian respondents rate Duty of Care awareness much higher than respondents from any other region in the world. This may be related to the Duty of Care legislation in Australia and New Zealand, which is embedded into workers’ compensation laws in both countries. The fact that the workers’ compensation law in Australia is extra-territorial (it applies to Australia companies and their workers outside of Australia), it supports the trends that are seen in the Duty of Care awareness of these respondents.
Ownership
The Global Benchmarking Study included several dimensions on ownership of Duty of Care, and the following was uncovered:
Who has primary responsibility? HR, security, senior management, travel and risk management.
Who coordinates the activities? HR, security, travel and risk management, and senior management.
Who makes decisions in the organization? Senior management, HR, security, risk management and travel.
Notably, these five groups remain the same for the three types of ownership (primary responsibility, coordination and decision making), but the rank order differs somewhat as to who is involved.
In addition, each ownership dimension was conceptualized in two ways: actual practice (“as is”) and the wish-list (“should be”) so that what is valued can be compared to the reality (see Figure 12). When asked who “should” own Duty of Care, respondents significantly indicated an increase in responsibility for almost every function, especially for senior management. With regard to Duty of Care ownership, few respondents pinpointed one particular function as the owner (although HR and security were listed most often as a single owner)9
. Most respondents
indicated that Duty of Care ownership is (and should be) shared between different functions in the organization and lies (or should lie) with everyone in the company, including the employee. HR currently has key ownership in all three areas (either ranked No. 1 or 2), followed by security. It is somewhat surprising that HR holds such a dominant Duty of Care ownership position in the company, when results previously indicated that HR has a low risk perception of threats and low ratings on industry, company and specific areas of Duty of Care awareness.
9
Note that multiple responses were possible for primary responsibility, ownership and decision-making based on 13 different stakeholders in the company.
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