ISO 45001, Occupational Health & Safety (OH&S) management system will be the world’s first OH&S international standard. It will help thousands of organisations to provide a safe and healthy workplace for their workers and other people, prevent deaths, work-related injury and ill health, and to continually improve their OH&S performance. With the new standard organisations will be better equipped to improve their resilience by anticipating, adapting and responding to risks so they can survive and prosper.
ISO 45001 is intended for use by any organisation, regardless of its size or the nature of its work, and can be integrated into other health and safety programmes such as worker wellness and wellbeing. ISO 45001 can assist an organisation to fulfil its legal requirements.
The simple answer is all organisations. As long as your organisation has people working on its behalf, or who may be affected by its activities, then using a systematic approach to managing health and safety will bring benefits to it. The standard can be used by small low-risk operations equally as well as by high risk and large complex organisations. While the standard requires that OH&S risks are addressed and controlled, it also takes a risk-based approach to the OH&S management system itself, to ensure a) that it is effective and b) being improved to meet an organisation’s ever-changing “context”. This risk-based approach is consistent with the way organisations manage their other “business” risks and hence encourages the integration of the standard’s requirements into organisations’ overall management processes.