Is ISO 45001 a legal requirement?

The adoption of the ISO 45001 standard was a pivotal moment for Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) management systems. The goal of the standard is to provide organisations with a structure around which they can work to prevent workplace related illnesses, injuries or fatalities.

Essentially, the ISO 45001 is a global standard for occupational safety and health management systems that provide practical solutions to organisations to enhance worker safety. It has helped to create a global foundation of employee safety standards and inspections that can be utilised in supply chain across the globe. The creation of the standard made the Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series (OHSAS) 18001 obsolete.

ISO Consulting in Australia will help you find the answer to the question of whether ISO 45001 is a legal requirement.

Is ISO 45001 a legal requirement or voluntary?

Technically, business owners are not required by law to implement the ISO 45001 or other similar management standards. Having said that, implementation of this standard can help provide a structured framework for your organisation to ensure that it is safe for all its workers. The other benefits of implementing ISO 45001 recommendations into your daily operations is that it improves hazard identification and risk assessment. As a result, downtime, overall cost of incidents at the workplace and the number of insurance premiums claimed also reduces.

How to acquire certification ISO 45001?

In order to acquire certification and implement the recommendations of the ISO 45001, you need to:

1. Understand OHS management systems and the recommendations of ISO 45001

The first step of implementing any standard, is understanding its purpose and how it can benefit your organisation. Hence, one must begin by building the knowledge on what a management system is and how its implementation can leverage benefits to the workers as well as the organisation. Therefore, organisations that wish to acquire the ISO 45001 or enhance the safety of their workplace must take out time to familiarise themselves with the requirements of the standard.

The standard contains 11 success factors for the implementation of an effective OHS management system. By developing a deeper knowledge of OHS management and the ISO 45001, you gain insight into how your organisation is exposed to risks on a daily basis. Additionally, you also gain an insight into the impact the standard could have on your organisation’s bottom line.For more information, read what is ISO 45001.

2. Examine your current system

To better understand how the ISO 45001 recommendations will fit into your organisation, it is important to examine what standards and systems you already have in place. For example, some organisations have adopted the ISO 14001 to enhance the environmental performance or the ISO 9001 to improve the quality of their goods or products.

Some of the standards contain the same code language as the ISO 45001. If your organisation is already utilising the ISO 9001 or the ISO 14001, the integration of ISO 45001 becomes less complex and the transition can be made in a more seamless manner.

Alternatively, if your organisation is not adhering to any ISO recommended management system, it is beneficial to conduct a gap analysis.

Essentially, an ISO gap analysis is an objective evaluation of your organisation’s current arrangements against the requirements of the standard.

It is an ideal place to start when implementing a new standard within your organisation. A gap analysis compares the existing core processes, practises and documentation with the requirement stipulated in the ISO 45001. It identifies where the organisation meets the requirements of ISO 45001 and where there are deficiencies or gaps.

3. Engage with your stakeholders

As the implementation of the ISO 45001 could lead to organisational change, it is beneficial to engage with your stakeholders. This is because with any change, individuals and groups are affected in a variety of ways. The change may favour some individuals and may create resistance in others. Therefore, it becomes helpful to gather input from the entire organisation and understand different perspectives that people have about safety and health risks before implementing the ISO 45001.

Understanding different perspectives can also help to identify organisational objectives. By gathering the opinion of majority of the individuals within the organisation, business owners can identify patterns that they may have overlooked. Moreover, gathering information on different perspective also helps to foster a culture of unity.

By appropriately engaging with stakeholders, everyone feels a sense of ownership in the safety management system.

In fact, the implementation of the ISO 45001 is a unique opportunity to develop leaders within an organisation. Anyone from a worker, to a technical assistant, or a member of the board of directors can acquire additional responsibilities related to occupational health and safety. The ISO 45001 establishes that every individual within an organisation has a role, responsibility and ownership of safety by creating an accountability system.

4. Determining priorities and establishing goals

Utilising the information gathered from engaging stakeholders, you can begin to determine priorities for your organisation’s OHS management system. After creating relevant safety goals, organisations can then align the implementation of the standard with their business objectives.

The identification of business objectives in terms of occupational safety and it’s consequent alignment to the recommendations of the ISO 45001 allows businesses to create unique metrics. These metrics can be utilised  to measure the success of the OHS management system and make adjustments as well as improvement over time.