Questions & Answers
Does the definition of end users include workers at the client?
- Accidents, work-related
- business-to-business customers
- consumers and end users
- workers in value chain
Background
The following background was provided with the question: ‘If a company sells products B2B, is the potential impact on those individuals to be assessed under S2 or S4? For example, a harbor has ferry services and a truck driver who, having to use in their job a ferry to deliver goods, gets injured because of lack of security in the harbor. Is the impact on that driver to be assessed under S2 (because the truck driver is considered to be a worker in the downstream value chain) or S4 (because the truck driver is considered an end user)?’
The ESRS define end users as individuals ‘who ultimately use or are intended to ultimately use a particular product or service’. A value chain worker is defined as an ‘individual performing work in the value chain of the undertaking, regardless of the existence or nature of any contractual relationship with the undertaking’. This includes ‘all workers in the undertaking’s upstream and downstream value chain who are or can be materially impacted by the undertaking (see Table 2 of Annex II of ESRS)’.
ESRS S1 Own Workforce, Disclosure Requirement S1-14 deals with reporting requirements for work-related injuries and work-related cases of ill health, including those that involve workers from companies other than the reporting undertaking as well as cases of work-related injuries and ill health that happen during travel for working purposes. ESRS S1 paragraph 86 states that, apart from cases of work-related injury and ill health among its own workforce, the reporting undertaking must ‘also disclose the number of fatalities as a result of work-related injuries and work-related ill health of other workers working on the undertaking’s sites’ (emphasis added). ESRS S1 paragraph AR 84 states that an undertaking must also report incidents that happen to its workforce while travelling for work, i.e. outside the undertaking’s own premises: ‘With regard to travelling for work purposes, injuries and ill health that occur while a person is travelling are work-related if, at the time of the injury or ill health, the person was engaged in work activities “in the interest of the employer”. Examples of such activities include travelling to and from customer contacts; conducting job tasks; and entertaining or being entertained to transact, discuss, or promote business (at the direction of the employer).’
Answer
ESRS define ‘end users’ as ‘individuals who ultimately use’ a product or service. In the fact pattern accompanying the question, which is reproduced in ‘Background’, this does not include workers of a business customer of the reporting undertaking. Those workers may use services offered by the undertaking, but they do so in the context of providing a service or producing a good on behalf of their employers. Typically, such workers should be considered value chain workers.
In general terms, there can be circumstances where an undertaking’s negative impacts are the same for workers in the value chain and end users. In any case, whatever the characteristics of each situation, the undertaking must avoid double-counting the same impact by reporting it once as an impact on its value chain workers and a second time as an impact on end users. When appropriate, disclosing the approach used as contextual information may provide useful information.