Certification - Occupational Safety
ISO 45001
CERTIFICATION
Occupational Health & Safety Management System
What is ISO 45001?
ISO 45001 is a worldwide recognized International Standard that specifies requirements for an occupational health and safety (OH&S) management system, with guidance for its use, to enable an organisation to proactively improve its OH&S performance in preventing injury and ill-health. ISO 45001 is intended to be applicable to any organisation regardless of its size, type and nature. ISO 45001 enables an organisation, through its OH&S management system, to integrate other aspects of health and safety, such as worker wellness or wellbeing. However, it should be noted that an organisation can be required by applicable legal requirements to also address such issues.
ISO 45001 follows the high-level structure approach that is being applied to other ISO management system standards, such as ISO 9001 (quality) and ISO 14001 (environment) allowing for better alignment and integration with the other standards as well as easy migration. In developing the standard, consideration has been given to the content of other international standards (such as OHSAS 18001 or the International Labour Organisation’s “ILO –OSH Guidelines”) and national standards, as well as to the ILO’s International Labour standards and conventions (ILSs).
- Benefits of ISO 45001
- Current version of the ISO 45001
Benefits of ISO 45001
- Improve organization performance
- Promote a safer work environment by reducing risk of workplace accidents
- Improving its ability to respond to regulatory compliance issues
- Reducing the overall costs of incidents
- Reducing downtime and the costs of disruption to operations
- Reducing the cost of insurance premiums
- Reducing absenteeism and employee turnover rates
- Recognition for having achieved an international benchmark (which may in turn influence customers who are concerned about their social responsibilities)
Current version of the ISO 45001
The current version of the Occupational Health & Safety Management System Is the ISO 45001:2018 which was published on March 2018. The ISO 45001 consist of ten sections. The first three sections represent an introduction to the standard, its scope and normative references, and the other seven sections contain the requirements for the Occupational Health and Safety Management System. The remaining seven sections are as follows:
Section 4: Context of the organization – This section requires the organization to determine its context in terms of the Occupational Health and Safety Management System, including interested parties and their needs and expectations. It also defines requirements for determining the scope of the OH&SMS, as well as general OH&SMS requirements.
Section 5: Leadership – This clause of the standard requires top management to demonstrate leadership and commitment to the OH&SMS, along with defining the occupational health & safety policy. The top management must also assign process owners with other roles and responsibilities.
Section 6: Planning – The planning section defines requirements for addressing risks and opportunities, and the requirements for occupational risk analysis. This clause also includes requirements for hazard identification and assessment, determining legal and other requirements, OH&S objectives and plans for achieving them.
Section 7: Support – This clause defines requirements for supporting processes and provisions of resources necessary for effective operation of the OH&SMS. It defines requirements for people, infrastructure, work environment, monitoring and measuring resources, competence, awareness, communication and documented information.
Section 8: Operation – This clause is focused on establishing operational controls to eliminate the occupational health and safety hazards, management of changes and emergency preparedness and response.
Section 9: Performance evaluation – The purpose of the requirements placed in this clause is to provide the organization with mechanisms to determine the effectiveness of the OH&SMS. It contains requirements for necessary monitoring and measuring, including performance evaluation, compliance obligation, internal audit and management review.
Section 10: Improvement – The last section of the standard defines requirements for continual improvement of the OH&SMS, including requirements for managing nonconformities, incidents and corrective actions.
These sections are based on a Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle, which uses these elements to implement change within the processes of the organization in order to drive and maintain improvements within the processes.