What the ISO 45001 Standard Means for your Organization

What is ISO 45001?
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) released the health and safety management system standard, ISO 45001, in March 2018. This is the world’s first international standard dealing with health and safety. Created by occupational health and safety experts, the standard follows a generic management system approach similar to ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 14001:2015. The new global standard has an increased emphasis on management commitment, worker involvement and risk control, which is applicable to all organizational industry types and sizes.

ISO standards are developed by experts and committees to ensure it captures all necessary aspects and that it is fit for purpose. During the five years of developing ISO 45001, ISN participated as part of the Technical Advisory Group and even hosted the ISO Technical Committee at ISN’s HQ office in Dallas.

Further information on the requirements of the ISO 45001 standard and any actions organizations need to address to adhere to this standard can be found on the ISO website.

The Purpose of the Standard
Organizations are responsible for the occupational health and safety (OH&S) of all workers, including part-time and contracting personnel. Visitors who may be affected by a company’s scope of work should also be considered in an organization’s health and safety plan. The ISO 45001 standard includes being responsible for workers’ physical and mental health and promoting best practices throughout the organization.

The purpose of an OH&S management system that meets the requirements of ISO 45001 is for organizations to provide safe and healthy workplaces and prevent work-related injury and ill health while continuing to improve health and safety practices. Organizations can minimize or eliminate risks associated with hazards by taking effective preventative and protective measures and implementing ISO 45001 recommendations.

Each element of the ISO 45001 standard is a reference to the Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) cycle, which those in the health and safety field will most likely be familiar with from other ISO standards. The purpose of implementing this cycle to the standard as a whole and to each element is:

• Plan: determine and assess OH&S risks and opportunities and establish objectives and processes necessary to deliver results in accordance with the organization’s OH&S policy
• Do: implement the processes as planned
• Check: monitor and measure activities and processes with regard to the OH&S policy and objectives and report the results
• Act: take actions to continually improve OH&S performance to achieve the intended outcomes

Timeline of ISO 45001 Implementation in Australia
Australia is one of the first countries to introduce the ISO 45001 OH&S management system country-wide. Like all new standards, ISO has ensured a generous grace period for organizations that are currently accredited in Australia to A/NZS4801 to migrate to the new ISO 45001 standard by October 2021. The ISO organization is promoting a positive collaboration culture amongst the standards until October 2021 to ensure organizations can promote a safe and positive culture through their management systems.

ISN has proactively created a timeline that offers a grace period to allow ISN Hiring Clients complete understanding of the new management systems and how it amends written program requirements within ISNetworld. During this time period, ISN has hosted Roundtables with Hiring Clients in Australia and the U.S. to ensure Hiring Clients understand the standard, the effects on their contractors and the next stages.

Similarities Between A/NZS4801 and ISO 45001
While developing the ISO 45001 standard, the experts and technical committee took into consideration the elements of the A/NZS 4801 standard and the ability for organizations to comply with the new standards. There are a number of similarities between the standards, such as their overall intent to prevent injuries, illnesses and fatalities within the workplace. Other similarities exist, such as the PDCA cycle, policy requirements; identification of legal and other requirements, improvement objectives, awareness requirements, competency requirements, resources needed to support the system and requirements for monitoring, measuring and analyzing OH&S performance and improvement.

Differences Between A/NZS4801 and ISO 45001
Although the ISO 45001 framework is based upon similar ISO standards, the structure differs from A/NZS4801. The new structure allows organizations to be more proactive in preventing accidents and injuries and evaluating hazard risks, while A/NZS4801 focuses mainly on hazard control.

ISO 45001 also evaluates workers’ involvement and responsibility to allow for broader employee participation within organizations. This looks at employees receiving relevant training and education in order to complete their tasks safely and to help create a successful safety program.

Some other key differences between A/NZS 4801 and ISO 45001 include:

• Management Representative (Clause 5.1) has changed from appointing a management representative and replaced by 13 responsibilities that need to be allocated to Senior Management
• Health & Safety Policy (Clause 5.2) has additional requirements to be included in the policy.
• Risks have been extended to go beyond hazards (Clause 6.1)
• Psychosocial hazards (Clause 6.1.2.1) have been added to the standard
• Documented information (Clause 7.5) changed to allow organizations to determine what documented information will be retained to demonstrate compliance (unless there is a legal requirement to retain certain documentation)
• Procurement (Clause 8.1.4) requirements added as part of the overall standard
• Evaluation of compliance (Clause 9.1.2) requires organizations to evaluate their compliance with legal and other requirements and retain documented information of the evaluation results.

Get Support Complying with ISO 45001
If you are a Hiring Client interested to learn how the new ISO 45001 standard will impact you and your contractors’ use of ISNetworld, contact your ISN representative for more information.

Are you a Hiring Client and interested to learn how ISN could help you manage your contractors and adhere to ISO 45001 standards? Request a demo of our contractor management system, ISNetworld.

If you are a contractor and need support submitting the new standards within ISNetworld, contact our customer support team for additional resources.