Whether you are an employee, a manager or a business owner, you won't want anyone to get hurt on the job. However, every 15 seconds, someone will die from a work related accident or disease, and 153 people experience a work related injury. (ISO, 2015). While some business owners can argue that workers can be easily replaced, especially in low income economies, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that poor occupational health and safety practices will reduce the working capacity of workers, causing an economic loss of 10 - 20% of the GNP of a country (WHO, 2006).
This is especially frightening as workers represent more than half of the global population and contribute greatly to the economic and societal value of the society (WHO, 2006). Most people spend a large portion of their lives at work, either as a source of income or to bring meaning and structure to their lives (Jahoda, 1982). Since work is a central part of daily life, it is important to ensure that each person who goes to work are exposed to a safe and health working environment.
Based on the WHO Health for All principles and ILO Convention on Occupational Safety and Health (No. 155) and ILO Convention on Occupational Health Services (No. 161), workers are entitled to the right of access to occupational health and safety services, irrespective of the economical sector, company size and type of job. However, there are many news reports showing that companies are often not protecting their workers, especially in lower income economies.
With this in mind, it is important that organizations put in place effective and robust processes to ensure that incidents are prevented. This can be done through establishing a occupational health and safety management system like the ISO 45001:2018 which is designed to help organizations of different sizes and industries put in place a safe working environment for the employees and stakeholders of the company.
ISO 45001:2018 is a management system standard which is written and published in 2018 in response to the need to have an effective management system in place to ensure that the health and safety of people at the place of work are being protected. This management system follows the same framework as the ISO14001 environmental management system and ISO9001 quality management system which allows the ISO 45001 management system to be integrated into a company with other management systems in place.
There are a total of 10 clauses in the ISO 45001:2018 management system. However, only the seven clauses shown below are auditable.
- Clause 4: Context of the organization
- Clause 5: Leadership and worker participation
- Clause 6: Planning
- Clause 7: Support
- Clause 8: Operation
- Clause 9: Performance Evaluation
- Clause 10: Improvement
