ISO 45001:2018 – an Introduction
At the organizational level, most jobs/occupations can be dangerous, so there has always been a need to manage occupational health and safety.
Workers need to be careful about health and safety throughout their workday, and their employers management team must support them with this.
A robust health and safety management system can help improve performance and allow the organization to stay productive at all times.
At times, workers may have to withstand psychological stress, unsanitary conditions, long working hours, and other serious labour-related stressors that can be eliminated by an appropriate Occupational Health and Safety Management System (OHSMS).
ISO 45001:2018, the established international standard for occupational health and safety management, facilitates an approach to worker protection and well-being.
As part of a solid and consistent occupational health and safety management system, leadership is needed to promote best practices or measures for worker safety.
Best Practices for ISO 45001:2018
Some of the best practices that organizations use to implement the ISO 45001 standard are as follows.
Employee competency plays an integral role in achieving the goals of occupational health and safety management and other related tasks.
Therefore, the person in charge must have a thorough knowledge of the workplace, the device(s) or material used, and the work situation.
Only then can they identify risks, dangers, or illnesses that threaten workers.
They need to communicate with employees at all levels to get the best possible ideas about their workplace and obtain their opinions on risk and risk prevention.
Creating and supporting a comprehensive Health and Safety Policy is a prerequisite if a structured occupational health and safety management system and its ISO 45001 certification are required.
A company policy must apply to working in all areas of operations!
This also applies to OHS management systems.
We need policies to manage the safety and well-being of workers.
The policy should define health and safety goals, the organization’s approach to achieving them, and the role of the health and safety management team.
Organizations need to be clear about who is responsible for which practices and what they should do to support them.
Since all occupational health and safety management systems are about worker well-being, workers need to participate actively and cooperate with management for the success of their approach.
They also need to know what best practices are and how to follow them in their work strictly.
Workers need the training to learn how to follow and apply safety practices.
The management team should give clear instructions on following each course of action to minimize individual and organizational risks.
Everyone needs to be trained, including existing workers, new hires and contract workers.
To protect workers from risk, organizations must perform risk assessments and monitor all workplaces, all work facilities, and all processes.
A thorough risk assessment should be performed on a regular basis to determine the risk of worker injury, illness, physical stress, or mental illness.
In identifying all possible risks, management needs to identify the consequences of the risks and their potential impact.
Next, you need to determine preventive measures or emergency response plans to eliminate the risk, or if that is not possible, manage them.
Management must implement an effective incident reporting process for workers.
This is necessary to quickly report accidents and unexpected events to the appropriate personnel and the necessary steps taken to correct the situation.
The report is also useful for long-term recording of occupational accidents and identification of their patterns of occurrence.
This allows the management team to take steps to prevent the recurrence of the accident.
All of these must include your organization’s health and safety management system to obtain ISO 45001 standard certification.
These are guidelines for implementing the most competent occupational health and safety management system within an organization following the agreed principles or requirements of the standard.
It not only simplifies the approach to occupational safety management, but also systematically and continuously improves it.
