Workplace Safety and ISO standards

ISO 45001 is currently the international standard for occupational health and safety used all over the world. If you are interested in achieving and maintaining ISO 45001 compliance, contact us here at Impact Safety Systems, Inc. We offer comprehensive OSHA compliance, Workplace safety training, and other occupational safety services for businesses across a wide range of industries striving to protect assets, reduce risk, and ultimately create a safe work environment for employees.

What is ISO 45001?

The aim of ISO 45001 is to protect both employees and visitors from accidents and diseases in the workplace. It was developed to mitigate factors that may potentially cause irreparable harm to businesses and the people who work there or visit their premises. These standards were formulated by health and safety experts who reviewed other system management approaches including ISO 14001, ISO 9001, OHSAS 18001 – the International Labour Organization’s labor standards—to come up with updated safety guidelines and conventions that are appropriate for today’s workplace.

Why the need for new standards?

Unfortunately, far too many workers around the globe lose their lives to adverse workplace conditions that could have been prevented. In fact, the ISO and the ILO estimate that occupational accidents cause 2.7 million deaths per year worldwide. In addition, around 374 million non-fatal injuries occur each year in the workplace.

ISO 45001 is considered a landmark breakthrough because, for the first time, businesses of all sizes anywhere in the world can access one unified framework that clearly guides them in building better occupational safety measures.

What are the benefits of ISO 45001?

Having an occupational health and safety management system that is based on ISO 45001 enables a business to dramatically improve its occupational safety performance by:

• Developing awareness of its own OH&S risks
• Setting up systematic processes that consider its risks and opportunities, as well as its legal and other requirements
• Developing OH&S objectives and implementing an OH&S policy
• Determining the occupational safety risks and hazards associated with its business activities, pursuing ways to eliminate them, or
establishing controls to minimize potential effects of such perils
• Putting in operational controls
• Evaluating OH&S performance and improving it with appropriate actions
• Making sure that workers can take active roles in OH&S matters

These measures will likewise promote the reputation of the business as a safe place to work. This can bring even more direct benefits including:

• Improved ability to respond to any regulatory compliance issues
• Reduced overall costs related to occupational safety incidents
• Reduced downtime and operational disruption costs
• Reduced spending on insurance premiums
• Reducing employee turnover and absenteeism rates
• Recognition of having achieved an international benchmark

What businesses should follow ISO 45001?

All organizations can benefit from following the guidelines set forth by this standard, along with OSHA compliance and workplace safety training. Any business can certainly gain additional benefits from having a systematic approach to reducing health and safety risks. ISO 45001 can be used by organizations of all sizes—from small and low-risk businesses to large, complex, and high-risk enterprises.

That said, ISO 45001 is complicated. Simply reading through it is not enough because there are many interconnections between specific clauses. The best option for most organizations is to find a workplace safety training course that can help your organization unlock ISO 45001’s full potential. You can’t go wrong with hiring experts to assist you.

It’s important to “lay the groundwork” if you are considering a migration from OHSAS 18001 to ISO 45001. The migration deadline has been moved to September 30, 2021 because of COVID-19. Contact us here at Impact Safety Systems, Inc. to get started.