ISO 45001 Certification – Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems

The standard strongly focuses on an organization’s context. It requires the organization to consider what stakeholders expect from its occupational health and safety management. The organization must determine which parties are relevant to its OHSMS and their requirements.

ISO 45001 aims to provide an organization with a high-level understanding of the important issues that can affect it, either positively or negatively, and how it manages its occupational health and safety responsibilities toward its workers.

Issues of interest are those that affect the organization’s ability to achieve its intended outcomes. These include the objectives set for its OHSMS, such as meeting occupational health and safety policy commitments.

Top management must demonstrate its involvement and engagement with the OHSMS through direct participation, taking occupational health and safety performance into account in strategic planning.

Top management must also contribute to the OHSMS’s effectiveness by actively directing, supporting and communicating with workers, and promoting and leading organizational OHSMS culture.

ISO 45001 defines the requirements for top management responsibility and accountability to ensure that ultimate responsibility cannot be delegated to health and safety or other managers.

ISO 45001 requires top management to encourage consultation with and participation from workers and their representatives, as these are crucial to occupational health and safety management.

Consultation implies two-way communication – dialogue and exchange – and involves the timely provision of information that workers and their representatives need before the organization can make a decision.

An OHSMS depends on worker participation, which enables them to contribute to occupational health and safety performance and comment on proposed changes.

The organization must encourage workers at all levels to report hazardous situations, so preventative measures and corrective action can be taken. Workers must be able to report and suggest improvements without fearing dismissal, disciplinary action or similar reprisals.

The focus on organizational context and the requirement to adopt a risk-based approach when developing and implementing an OHSMS are closely aligned.

An organization must identify and address the risks and opportunities to ensure the OHSMS can achieve its intended outcomes.

These risks and opportunities include those relevant to or determined by its organizational context. The organization must plan actions that address these risks and opportunities, implement them into its OHSMS processes and evaluate the effectiveness of these actions.

ISO 45001 requires an organization to ensure that outsourced processes affecting its OHSMS are defined and controlled.

When outsourced products and/or services supplied are under the organization’s control, supplier and contractor risk must be managed effectively.