Page 77 - Occupational Health & Safety, September 2019

process for reacting to an incident or non- conformity in a timely manner. Remem- ber that incidents as defined by ISO 45001 includes close calls and near misses, so a “nonconformity” is essentially any instance when the company fails to do what its own management system policies and proce- dures require.
It also states that management needs to involve workers and other interested parties in the corrective action process to eliminate the root cause(es) of the incident or nonconformity. This highlights a key feature of ISO 45001—its strong empha- sis on employee participation. According to the standard, an organization also can’t simply complete the action(s) related to a particular incident or nonconformity and call it a day. Instead, ISO 45001 directs them to determine if similar incidents have occurred, or could potentially occur. It also states that organizations need to document the results of actions taken and evaluate their effectiveness. This helps ensure that management is looking wider and deeper than the immediate problem at hand, and is validating the effectiveness of actions.
This emphasis on promptness, scope and applicability of actions, and employee participation all serve to mutually reinforce management system performance. Prompt completion of actions demonstrates man- agement’s commitment to reducing risks, while focusing our attention beyond im- mediate incidents increases the likelihood of identifying other relevant risks. Worker involvement improves the odds that ac- tions will be effective, since workers know more about their job tasks and associated safety risks than anyone else. The more frequently we can document that actions are effectively managed and completed through employee involvement, the more likely it is that workers will buy into our EHS culture, which makes every facet of our management system facility safety pro- gram that much better.
Employee Engagement
ISO 45001 puts a priority on organizations to consult and participate with workers or their representatives because all too often management systems are the domain of a select few with program documents only existing on a handful of computers within corporate EHS.
The new standard attempts to fix that by specifically requiring non-managerial
workers to consult on various aspects of OHS to ensure that all employees are in- cluded. A common historical reason safety management systems fail in this regard has been because they existed in a separate universe from all of the organization’s pro- duction activities, which caused compart- mentalized thinking and a lack of true en- gagement. That’s why ISO 45001 states that OHS management must be an integral part of an organization’s identity.
The take-away here is that any organi- zation seeking ISO 45001 certification, or looking to pattern their safety management system on it, needs to have a healthy and
engaged EHS culture. It’s important to in- volve your entire workforce, including tem- porary and contracted workers, in all levels of your OHS management system, such as incident investigations, development and tracking of corrective actions, and planned changes to operations.
Glenn Trout is the president and CEO of VelocityEHS, the global leader in cloud en- vironment, health, safety (EHS) and sustain- ability software. To learn more about Veloci- tyEHS and how its award-winning solutions can help reach your EHS goals faster, visit www.EHS.com.
www.ohsonline.com
TM Digital Fire Extinguisher Training System
BullsEye
VISIT WWW.LIONPROTECTS.COM/BULLSEYE
Circle 17 on card. See us at NSC, Booth 6229 73