How Organization become ISO 45001 Certified?

According to the International Labour Organization, over thousands of people die each day from work-related accidents or diseases. The human cost of this day-to-day difficulty is huge, and the economic problem of poor occupational safety and health practices is projected at 3.94 per cent of global Gross Domestic Product every year. If organization want to manage health and safety well, they will need a systematic framework to start with. The ISO 45001 Standard, Occupational health and safety management systems – Requirements with guidance for use, it is an ISO international standard delivering such a framework. It helps any type of organization to stop work related deaths, injuries and illnesses, to meet legal requirements, and to systematically expand safety performance, and to reach the set Occupational Health and Safety purposes. While an independent audit by a certification body of safety management system against the ISO 45001 standard is not compulsory, it is the only way to confirm Certification. Otherwise, one can choose for Self-Declaration of Conformance, to avoid the associated costs of Certification. Business partners may require or prefer suppliers and contractors which hold an ISO 45001 obedient occupational health and safety certificate.

ISO 45001:2018 substitutes the British Standards Institution’s OHSAS 18001, which will be withdrawn at the end of the three years transition period on March 12, 2021. There is little time left for change to ISO 45001 for organizations which are certified according to OHSAS 18001, while an extension of 6 months has been granted due to the challenges posed by COVID-19.

Organizations can get their Occupational Health and Safety Management System certified by certification bodies while individuals can get certified, as ISO 45001 internal and lead auditors. This section delivers information on the steps towards the ISO 45001 certification for organizations.

In order to get ISO 45001 certified, the organization requires to execute Occupational Health and Safety Management System obedient with requirements of ISO 45001. Once the system is in place, the organization can hire certification body to accomplish the certification audit to determine whether the organization is compliant with the ISO 45001 standard. After the successful audit they want to deliver the certificate which testifies to the organization’s compliance with requirements of the ISO 45001 standard. Implementing ISO 45001 standard is a challenging task and the first step is to get the management support for such endeavour. With the top management on board, start identifying legal requirements regarding occupational health and safety, define the scope of the OH&SMS and OH&S policy and objectives, identify risks and opportunities and OH&S hazards and define operational controls. There are some mandatory processes that need to be included, and others to be added if the organization finds them necessary.

As part of confirming constancy of Occupational Health and Safety Management System, Organization will essential to document many procedures and policies that will communicate to the employees what expect from them in regard to the OH&SMS. The documents can be created internally, or also can seek for external help in form of ISO 45001 consultant or documentation templates. After the organization establishes the processes and required documented information, the system will need to operate for some time to determine whether the system is set up appropriately and whether some changes are required. By operating the occupational health and safety management system, the organization will produce records that will prove that the activities are carried out as planned. These records are essential for auditing and reviewing system and to achieve certification.

Ian Colin has published many articles regarding ISO Certification. Ian has rich experience as a online publisher and prepared various Certification documents as per ISO guideline since large amount of years in his professional career.