Every day, thousands of lives are impacted due to work accidents or fatal diseases linked to work activities. These are incidents that can and should be prevented. To combat the problem, ISO has developed a new standard, ISO45001 for occupational health and safety management systems. This standard will help organisations, like us prevent incidents by providing a framework to improve employee safety, reduce workplace risks and create better, safer working conditions.
What is ISO45001?
ISO45001 is an international standard that specifies the 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.
It can be applied to any organisation regardless of its size, type and nature. All of its requirements are intended to be integrated into an organisation’s own management processes System.
What are the Benefits?
- Improved ability to respond to regulatory compliance issues.
- Reducing the overall costs of incidents
- Reducing downtime and the costs of disruption to operations
- Reducing the costs of insurance premiums
- Reducing absenteeism and employee turnover rates
- Recognition of having achieved an international benchmark (which in turn may influence customers who are concerned about their social responsibilities)
ISO45001 Improves OHS Performance by:
- Developing and Implementing an OH&S Policy & Objectives
- Establishing systematic processes which consider its “context” and which takes into account its risks and opportunities and its legal and other requirements.
- Determining the Hazard and OH&S Risks associated with activities; Seeking to eliminate them by putting in controls to minimize potential effects.
- Establishing operational controls to manage its OH&S Risks and legal & other requirements
- Increasing awareness of OH&S risks
- Evaluating its OH&S performance and seeking to improve it, through appropriate actions
- Ensuring workers take an active role in OH&S matters
What’s New in the Standard?
The former benchmark for OH&S was OHSAS 18001, and while ISO45001 draws on this it is a completely new and different standard. The key changes in the standard focus on:
- Context of the organisation
- Understanding the needs and expectations of the worker and other interested parties
- Leadership , culture and commitment
- Policies linked to overall strategic objectives and direction of the organisation
- Participation and consultation
- Risk and opportunities
- Performance evaluation
- Evaluation of compliance
- Management review
What does this mean for clients?
By obtaining this standard our clients can rest assured we comply with an internationally recognised standard for health and safety. It also lends itself to a number of positive changes that will impact clients directly, these include:
- Improved business performance – reduces workplace illness and injury and increases productivity.
- Consistency while operating best practices
- Lower insurance costs – proves due diligence
- Better identification of hazards and risks
- Improved efficiency internally – reducing accidents, dangers, and downtime
- Improved safety of all persons affected by the company’s activities
- Monitoring and measurement of key performance indicators in health & safety provides objective data for management to base decisions on
- Internal auditing – acts as a warning system for threats to health and safety
- Operations are proactive rather than reactive
- We are committed to the safety and welfare of our team
When will we be certified?
We hope to gain certification by the end of June. A huge amount of work has been put in by our H&S officer and management to ensure a smooth transition over to ISO45001. Employees have received training on all elements and are incorporating these into their everyday tasks. This will be a great achievement by the entire team, solidifying our commitment to health and safety.