Page 74 - Occupational Health & Safety, September 2019

FACILITY SAFETY
Working Towards ISO 45001 Certification and Beyond
The adoption of ISO 45001 can significantly improve your safety management system.
BY GLENN TROUT
Last year, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) published the ISO 45001 standard to replace OHSAS 18001. Aimed at providing organizations with a sin-
gle, clear framework to improve Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) performance and address persistent problems with safety performance, ISO 45001 repre- sents the first true international standard on safety management systems. Moreover, it takes a more pro- active, integrated approach to risk control by incor- porating OHS practices into the organization’s overall management system, and encourages top manage- ment to take a stronger leadership role in the com- pany’s safety and health program.
While there is no requirement to certify to an ISO management system standard, simply having a formal management system in place aligned with the standard brings many benefits of its own through the implementation of industry best practices. Here are some of the ways the adoption of ISO 45001 can significantly improve your safety management system and boost your facility safety performance.
Hazard Assessment & Risk Analysis
Before we dive in, it’s important to first highlight how ISO 45001 defines “hazards” and “risks” with related, yet distinct meanings.
“Hazards” are conditions that have the potential to cause injury and ill health. They can be physical, observable conditions like wet floors which might create such risks as slips or electrical shocks, or they might be conditions that are not directly observable, such as poor safety awareness or training effectiveness which may also create the risk for various workplace accidents. The likelihood of such a negative outcome, combined with its probability, is what the standard defines as a “risk.” In other words, hazards are condi- tions that create risks.
Another important definition to know: “oppor- tunity.” ISO 45001 defines an “opportunity” as the circumstances, or set of circumstances, that can lead to the improvement of OHS performance. It explains that an organization needs to take opportunities into account along with hazards and risks, highlighting the fact that an effective safety management system needs to be proactive.
Why is this important? According to ISO 45001, the best way to boost safety performance is to elimi- nate hazards, reduce associated risks, and adopt a mindset of continual improvement. This means regularly putting all of your operations, training, pro-
grams and policies under the microscope and look- ing for ways to strengthen safety awareness and re- duce the potential for accidents. Being proactive with safety instead of only responding to incidents is key to ISO 45001, and is what sets it apart in its overall effectiveness. Once you can integrate this continual improvement mindset into your business philosophy and make it part of your culture, you’ll pave the way toward better safety performance.
Incident Investigations and
Root Cause Analysis
Even with an excellent safety management system in place, unplanned events can still happen. You likely know that when someone gets injured, it’s impor- tant to conduct an incident investigation to identify the real underlying reasons—or root causes—for it.
However, when was the last time you applied a root cause analysis to a near miss? The truth is, we often think of near misses as “almost incidents” rather than their own type of incidents, and therefore don’t see the significance of performing a root cause analysis.
ISO 45001 improves this awareness by emphasizing that there doesn’t need to be an actual injury or illness for the event to count as an incident to be investigated and managed. If you simply wait until someone be- comes injured or sick, you miss the chance to respond to clues that unsafe conditions exist, and to change related behaviors before something more serious hap- pens. You also send your employees a message that you only will respond to workplace safety incidents when they’re so serious that they force your hand. This can erode employee confidence in your EHS programs and jeopardize your workplace culture.
Management of Change
One of the most common scenarios in which unsafe conditions get overlooked is when those conditions arise due to changes to the workplace. Some of the worst industrial disasters in history have occurred because a normal process was interrupted or altered, and those doing so did not assess the risks involved.
ISO 45001 acknowledges this reality and prompts organizations to establish a process, or processes, to implement and control planned temporary and per- manent changes that impact OH&S performance. It’s important that this process not only addresses chang- es to operations, but also changes to workplace condi- tions, personnel and the organization itself to the de- gree that such changes can impact safety. For example, if a planned staff cut will reduce the number of work-
70 Occupational Health & Safety | SEPTEMBER 2019
www.ohsonline.com