Getting Started on ISO45001 for Occupational Health & Safety

When we first started helping organisations implement ISO45001:2018 for Occupational Health & Safety Management Systems we quickly realised that organisations were struggling to understand exactly what this standard was about. They were all focused on the day-to-day health & safety processes, accident/incident reporting, risk or in some cases hazard management, safe work method statements and so forth. These are all important, but these are the tactical side of things, the ISO45001 for Occupational Health & Safety standard is about the strategic side of things. About how you ensure your H&S systems and processes are working throughout the entire organisation, that you are reviewing them on a regular basis and that everyone is aware of their part of the puzzle. Think about it as the operations manual for your H&S approach

Don't skip the Intro

When you pick up a book you don't dive into the middle of it and start reading, yes some strange people look at the last few pages first but they always return to the start and then read from there. The start of the book sets the scene, introduces the characters, sets the rules and the tone of the book. The start of the book is where the tone of everything else you read is set. You never skip the start of a book.  So why do it with your ISO45001 implementation?

For many people when they launch a new process or system, they want to dive right into the getting stuff done part, the using it part. Spending all that time reading the pointless instructions is just getting in the way of the doing. It's the same with ISO45001, so many people just jump right over those 'pointless' initial clauses, we're talking about clauses 0.1 to 0.3 and 1 to 3 in ISO 45001:2015, but that's the important opening act of the process you need to really understand it.

We thought it may be a good idea to give you a few key gems from those initial clauses to convince that you really need to go back and reread them and truly understand them, in this section we'll talk only 0.1 – 0.4 and cover 1-3 in our next post.

Set the Tone

Clauses 0.1 – Background and 0.2 Aim of an OH&S management system are always glossed over by organisations eager to get into the meat of the system, they need to be doing something. Yet they forget that all ISO Systems are based on a PDCA process, Plan – Do – Check – Act (or Adjust). If you jump right into the doing part you aren't planning, with no plan, you are just wandering around I the dark.

This is about actually making the clear strategic decision that you are going to implement the ISO45001 Occupational Health & Safety Management System. Importantly it is repeating the point over and over that the system should be designed to provide safe and healthy workplaces, prevent worker related injury and ill health, and continually improve the performance of the OH&S system.

Business are all pretty good at thinking about the safety part of Health & Safety, barriers are installed, training given, PPE handed out and so forth to ensure that people aren't injured which is critically important. What about the ill health part of it? Health issues after all may not be immediately obvious to either the individual or the company but things like respiratory illnesses, cardiovascular, hearing, cancer, mental health, all hard to see but all very real. In New Zealand, according to research by Worksafe, up to 900 people die each year with work related health issues and a further 5000 – 6000 are hospitalised as a result of work-related health issues. 45001 is going to help you think about both sides of the puzzle.

As a leadership team you need to have had those great, and sometimes heated, discussions about the benefits to your people and your organisation that implementing the ISO45001 standard will bring. Spend quality time on this discussion, don't rush it as it's important that the entire management team are clear on what is involved and their part of it. It is not a small undertaking. The message they put out to the organisation needs to be consistent and in support of what you are doing. 

Success Factors

The number of times that we have had people ask, “well, how will we know our ISO45001 system is a success” is startling. Surely more engaged employees, a safe workplace and reduction in health and safety events is an easy success to measure, and see? The great thing about ISO45001:2018 for occupational health and safety management systems is that it lists all the factors for a successful implementation and outcome measurement right in clause 0.3 of the ISO45001 standard. Here's the list directly out of the standard: 

1. Top management leadership, commitment, responsibilities, and accountability.
2. Top management developing, leading, and promoting a culture in the organization that supports the intended outcomes of the OH&S management system.
3. Communication.
4. Consultation and participation of workers, and, where they exist, workers' representatives.
5. Allocation of the necessary resources to maintain it.
6. OH&S policies, which are compatible with the overall strategic objectives and direction of the organisation.
7. Effective process(es) for identifying hazards, controlling OH&S risks and taking advantage of OH&S opportunities.
8. Continual performance evaluation and monitoring of the OH&S management system to improve OH&S performance.
9. Integration of the OH&S management system into the organisation's business processes.
10. OH&S objectives that align with the OH&S policy and take into account the organization's hazards, OH&S risks and OH&S opportunities.
11. compliance with its legal requirements and other requirements.

Undertstand what you must do

Not everything in an ISO standard is mandatory, there are some things you need to do or have in place to comply and some things that the standard is suggesting as good practice but in reality it may not fit your organisation. Understanding the difference in wording within the standard is important, so here are some key definitions to remember as you work through your implementation:

• “shall” indicates a requirement; (i.e. you must do it)
  
• “should” indicates a recommendation; (i.e. you should do it)
  
• “may” indicates a permission; (i.e. you can do it if you want & it adds value)
  
• “can” indicates a possibility or a capability. (i.e. think of this as an outcome or a result)

Don't forget PDCA

The process approach is one of those non-negotiable things in ISO45001:2018 that you need to incorporate. Here, we are talking about the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle and of course your risk-based thinking approach. We talked about the process approach here:

For your Risk Based thinking it's important to look at both the positive & negative risks. Your brain is hard wired to look for negativity first, it's what kept us alive as cavemen, so you need to put effort into the risk from a positive side, for example if you improved in X then the risk is you double your sales!

It also talks about the need to 'adopt various forms of improvement" so these may be big bang breakthrough change improvements, kaizen style events, innovation or even a change to your organisational structure that yields an improvement in some way. Build it into your thinking for your system from the start.

That's' a lot of thinking just for a few short, 'simple' clauses that I bet you skipped over so here's your homework, go back and reread them, at least twice, get your colleagues to do it as well and then compare notes, only then can you move forward. 

Start at the start

So, before you dive into figuring out how you will do your risk assessments, setting up your health monitoring and report your issues, take some time and start at the start and think about what exactly this standard is going to do for your team and your organisation and importantly that you have all the key players involved and supporting it.

Now you have the initial foundational understanding in place, everything else builds on that.