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ISO 45001 is an ISO standard for management systems of occupational safety and health (OH&S), published in March 2018. The goal of ISO 45001 is the reduction of occupational injuries and diseases. The standard is based on OHSAS 18001, labour standards, conventions, and guidelines of the International Labour Organization, and national standards.
The ISO 45001:2018 Occupational Health and Safety is based on the following seven fundamental quality management principles:
An ISO 45001 based OH&S management system will enable an organisation to improve its OH&S performance by:
ISO 45001 project committee met in September 2015 to agree a version of the standard, which may progress to the Draft International Standard (DIS) following review of the comments received against the second Committee Draft (CD2).
Find out the answers to common questions to help you and your organization prepare for the transition from OHSAS 18001 to ISO 45001.
The overall aim of ISO 45001 is the same as OHSAS 18001, which is to align the range of national health and safety management standards into one standard with the intention of ruling-out confusion and market fragmentation.
However, as with all new and revised ISO standards, ISO 45001 follows the common terminology and structure of Annex SL and is the single major difference between OHSAS 18001 and ISO 45001.
With ISO 45001 using Annex SL there becomes a much stronger focus on the Context of an Organization and role of Top Management and Leadership.
David Smith, Chairman of project committee ISO/PC 283, goes into more detail (www.iso.org), "In the new standard, an organization has to look beyond its immediate health and safety issues and take into account what the wider society expects of it.
"Organizations have to think about their contractors and suppliers as well as, for example, how their work might affect their neighbours in the surrounding area. This is much wider than just focusing on the conditions for internal employees and means organizations cannot just contract out risk."
ISO 45001 also expects occupational health and safety aspects to be fully embodied into an organizations structure, by including a greater degree of employee participation in the development of the standard. Additionally, the standard wants to guarantee there is a stronger buy-in from top management by ensuring the role cannot be solely delegated to a Health and Safety Manager.
David Smith continues, "This will be a big change for users who may currently delegate responsibility to a safety manager rather than integrate this entirely into the organization's operations. ISO 45001 requires health and safety aspects to be part of an overall management system and no longer just an added extra."
Once DIS/ISO 45001 is published, buy a copy of the standard and familiarise yourself with its requirements. By completing our Pathway self-appraisal tool, 'ISO 45001: understanding the standard', you will be issued with an overall score indicating how much you fully understand the new standard. Once satisfied with you score, you can start looking at the standard requirements to enable you to implement or transition to ISO 45001.
The overall intent to focus on hazard, risk, and controls, the Plan-Do-Check-Act model, planning and policy, legal requirements, improvement objectives, action planning, monitoring, awareness, competency and resources needed to support the system remain similar to 18001.
ISO 45001's framework can take organizations to the next level in safety and health. A few of the benefits that organizations who implement the standard would attain are:
Organizations that are OHSAS 18001 certified should:
Monitor the changes in ISO 45001. The draft is available on the ISO website which can provide detailed information on expected changes
Speak with the client manager or assessor
Consider the integration opportunity with existing management systems
Make management aware of the upcoming changes and the need of a transition plan and resources
The organizations that do not yet have OHSAS 18001 certification but are planning to get their OH&S system certified, must go on to achieve OHSAS 18001 certification as it would be valid for another three years after the ISO 45001 comes to force. It is unsafe for employees to work in conditions that have not been proven safe by the certification so no organization needs to wait for the new standard.
Certification sounds complicated to many because of the red tape involved, but it is absolutely not necessary to maintain a long list of documents, at least for OH&S certification!
Below is a simple 7-step approach to getting started with a safe, thorough, yet simple management system!
Step-1 The context of the organizationIdentifying the external and internal influences (people/organizations) on your organization, ensuring you have requirements in your system to meet their expectations
Step-2 Leaders and workers together set the policy and assign roles and responsibilitiesAs each sees the issues with a different perspective, the OH&S program is way more effective if everyone irrespective of hierarchy is included in designing the policies
Step-3 Plan to identify the risks and then mitigate those risksIdentify the processes in your facility/organization
Identify risks in those activities as well as the accountable person for those processes
Mitigate the risks with controls
Determine the support and resources needed to implement the controls
Assigning responsibilities to plan the required resources, training and, and documentation of the controls in place.
Step-5 Performance EvaluationThis step is critical to ISO 45001. Start with an internal audit to evaluate compliance with risk mitigating controls and ensuring they are valid.
Step-6 ImproveISO 45001 requires continual improvement by
Addressing incidents
Finding root causes
Updating with new information and requirements
