Requirements of ISO 45001: What you need?

The ISO 45001 standard is the world’s leading standard for occupational health and safety (OH&S) management systems. This standard provides practical solutions to help organisations deal with all aspects of health and safety in their workplace. The primary emphasis is on the prevention of hazards. This article outlines the requirements of ISO 45001 that must be met to ensure compliance. The standard itself is divided into 10 clauses that are created to help the user understand the requirements of an OH&S management system.
Clauses one to three provide the details of the standard scope, normative references, and explanations of terminology that helps organisations gain an understanding of the standard. While sections four to ten contain the requirements of ISO 45001. Professional consultants of the ISO Council will help you easily prepare the required documents for ISO 45001.

Clause 4: Context of the organisation

Clause 4 of ISO 45001 requires each organisation to analyse and comprehend the context of its activities. The scope of activities includes the needs of interested parties, and internal and external issues. Hence, the organisation’s context will comprise of the employee interests, stakeholder needs, understanding of legislation and shareholder requirements. A detailed analysis of activities allows for the development of an inclusive scope of the OH&S management system.

A detailed and inclusive scope helps the organisation understand the deliverables of the project, make informed decisions identify and mitigate risks, and set the right expectations for the shareholders.

Clause 5: Leadership and worker participation

Section 5 of the standard focuses on leadership, encouraging both employee involvement and management commitment. The implied outcome for health and safety should be embedded in all activities of the organisation. This section helps individuals understand that safety is not a concern of one individual but is the shared responsibility of everyone working in the facility.

Sharing knowledge and responsibilities across teams can create proficiency in operating systems.

Shared knowledge and proficiency in systems allow for cultural collaboration, thus reinforcing the importance of OH&S within an organisation. You can check ISO 45001 audit checklist for more information.

Clause 6: Planning for the OH&S system

At its heart, the ISO 45001 standard focuses on planning. The standard aims to create plans to avoid undesired outcomes, including injuries that risk the health of employees or failures to meet the required legislation. Planning also allows organisations to recognise opportunity as a key element of implementing OH&S activities.

Clause 6 critically focuses on the objective setting within the OH&S management system by providing organisations with the requirements for documentation, maintenance and evaluation. You can find a full guide to planning for OH&S system by reading ISO 45001 PDCA.

Clause 7: Support

Using elements such as awareness, competence, communication and documented information as resources, clause 7 explains the importance of support. The specific requirements listed in this clause ensure the alignment of the OH&S management system with the overall activities of the business.

This section asks the organisation to initially determine and provide the resources necessary to establish, maintain, implement and continually improve its OH&S management system. Examples of resources include technology, infrastructure, natural and human. The resource allocation should be done considering the organisation’s current and future needs.

Clause 8: Operation

Emergency preparedness and operational controls are addressed in clause 8. This clause outlines the specificities about outsourcing and procurement management. Hence, organisations are allowed to ensure that the responsibility for risk retention is retained by the management and not passed down to contractors. Effective operation control is essential in any health and safety management system.

Clause 8 obliges organisations to establish a process for the implementation of planned changes.

The control of planned changes allows organisations to avoid creating new hazards when introducing new products, processes, and services or practises.

Clause 9: Performance evaluation

Clause 9 of ISO 45001 provides an in-depth discussion regarding the evaluation criteria for measuring the overall performance of the OH&S management system. The main themes of this section focus on process evaluation and documentation of evaluation systems. This section focuses on documentation requirements and contains recommendations for internal audit protocols, the relevancy of performance metrics, measurement applicability, and documentation of non-conformity.

One of the key attributes of this clause is that it outlines the applicable legal requirements. Similarly, measuring operational risks, evaluating the effectiveness of operational controls, establishing a timeline for conducting measures, calibrating and verifying the accuracy of the equipment and retaining documentation of all measures are other recommendations in this clause.

This clause also provides information for auditing the OH&S management system by providing the policy, objectives and requirements. The frequency of audit, the competence of auditors and communication to management are also outlined in this clause.

Clause 10: Improvement

The last clause of ISO 45001 helps organisations ensure that continual improvement is derived from their OH&S management system. Hence, recommendations to deal with nonconformities and appropriate corrective action processes are suggested within this clause. In real life, this clause recommends involving all level employees in the process of planning.

The rationale behind involving team members is that no one is as effective at defining an issue’s root cause as those directly involved in the process. Additionally, this clause shows that a specific team is designated for the prevention of the reappearance of problems. This team has possession of full facts and is recommended to remain vigilant against repeating nonconformities. This is the foundation for continual improvement in performance.