Companies are responsible for the health and safety of their workers and others who might be affected by their operations. This responsibility includes promoting and protecting their physical and mental health. The first step to reaching ISO compliance is understanding what it is and what tools can help you achieve it.
ISO 45001: Occupation Health and Safety Standard
What is ISO 45001?
Created by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), ISO 45001 is an International Standard that specifies requirements for an occupational health and safety (OH&S) management system, with guidance for its use, to enable organizations to proactively improve OH&S performance in preventing injuries and illnesses.
The ISO 45001 standard lays out a comprehensive framework for developing, implementing and managing a system for ensuring healthy, safe and productive workplaces. The standard specifies requirements of effective systems and provides guidelines for their use. When properly implemented, an ISO 45001-compliant OH&S management system can significantly change the performance of an organization.
Benefits of ISO 45001:
- Improves safety of all persons affected by the company’s activities
- Improves the ability to identify and mitigate workplace risks
- Improves the efficiency of internal operations, reduces accidents, dangers, and downtime
- Ensures compliance with current regulations
- Enhances Organizational Safety Culture
- Creates consistency throughout the organization built around best practices
- Improves management oversight through monitoring and measurement of key performance indicators in health/safety
- Facilitates continual improvement
According to many health and safety experts, ISO 45001 represents a landmark breakthrough. For the first time internationally, businesses of all sizes can now access a single framework that offers them a clear pathway to developing better and more robust occupational health and safety measures.
Become ISO 45001 Compliant
Implementing the provisions of ISO 45001 to achieve the operating benefits is an ambitious but worthwhile project. It turns out that the standard allows entities to self-determine and self-declare their compliance or they may retain the services of outside parties to independently certify their compliance – your call.
The core requirements of ISO 45001 are:
- Internal and external communication of the program
- Hands-on leadership, commitment and participation from ALL
- Continual performance evaluation
- Resources to properly support the program
- Include all workers in process decisions affecting them
- Processes for identifying hazards and addressing them
- Integration of OH&S processes into business processes – safety is not a silo
Health & safety management failures, performance and the review of policies and objectives should be regularly monitored to ensure improvements and business benefits are realized and prioritized accordingly.
Note: If you have certification to OHSAS 18001, you will need to migrate to ISO 45001 to maintain the validity of certification. The deadline is March 2021, so there is still time to plan your move.
How Sospes Can Help
OH&S management systems are not computer systems – they are the processes and procedures that all employees know about, are committed to and follow. While there is nothing in the standard that requires the use of computers, software can dramatically streamline the workflows and documentation required by ISO 45001, when properly selected, implemented and used as intended.
Sospes’ software makes it easy to report, monitor, measure, audit, and review items related to your occupational health and safety (OH&S) management system, supporting the requirements of ISO 45001.
Our mobile inspection app allows you to create and deploy checklists for conducting internal audits across multiple locations. It also makes it easier to instantly generate and assign corrective actions for individual checklist items when nonconformances are identified, and to be able to verify completion of actions during follow-ups.
Contact our professional staff to learn more about ISO 45001 and if it is right for your company.
Sospes’ Software
The most powerful software for EHS Management, Sospes provides a robust and secure backbone to your organization’s health and safety program while transforming your organization into a digital leader in safety.
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