What is ISO 45001?

ISO 45001 is the international standard that helps you protect your employees for health and safety. This standard can be for organisations of many sizes and industries and easily be integrated into existing management systems.

This standard of ISO outlines a framework that aims to reduce risk and injuries, increase safety and help organisations operate a happy and healthy workplace.

What are the benefits of ISO 45001?

Having your organisation ISO 45001 certified will mean you can confidently operate an Occupational health and safety (OHS) management system which will help manage risks, protect against harm and improve your safety performance. Some of the key potential benefits to implementing an ISO 45001 management system are as follows:

• Reduction of workplace incidents
• Reduced absenteeism and staff turnover, leading to increased productivity
• Reduced cost of insurance premiums
• Creation of a health and safety culture, whereby employees are encouraged to take an active role in their own OH&S
• Reinforced leadership commitment to proactively improve OH&S performance
• Ability to meet legal and regulatory requirements
• Enhanced reputation
• Improved staff morale.

Certification to ISO 45001

Certification is not mandatory for businesses, but it will be beneficial to you by demonstrating that they have met these requirements voluntarily. Certification demonstrates to your Board, your Management, your Workers, and your Customers that you have formal processes in place for preventing harm to your workers and others. This will give them a higher level of assurance compared to if you didn’t have certification.

In order to do this, you can follow the steps below;

1. Anaylse the context of the business that relates to OH&S, and any internal or external factors that have an impact on the organisation
2. Determine the scope of the system – keeping in mind what you want the management system to achieve
3. Set the OH&S objectives and policy, and ensure these are clear
4. Come up with a time frame for when you want to implement this system and how you will go about this
5. Outline any competence or resource gaps that may need to be filled prior to implementing the standard