How International Standard (ISO 45001) on Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) is going to Help?

According to ILO statistics, there are over 2.3 million death per year and every 15 seconds, a worker dies from a work related accident or disease. Almost 300 million occurrences of non-fatal accidents / injuries occur every year as well. These alarming statistics have made ISO 45001 standard the need of the hour.

How will the ISO 45001 standard help us?

ISO 45001 at the Draft International Standard (DIS) stage would enable organizations to create effective and strong “work safety” processes that would ultimately help them in reducing workplace injuries / illnesses around the world. It has been jointly created by 70 countries and is being directly developed by project committee ISO/PC 283, Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems, with the British Standards Institution (BSI) serving as the committee secretariat.

“Implementing a strong occupational health and safety management system helps organizations reduce accidents and ill health, avoid costly prosecutions, perhaps even reduce insurance costs, as well as create a culture of positivity in the organization when its people see that their needs are being taken into account,” explains David Smith, Chair of the committee.

“Wide adoption of ISO 45001 should reduce the horror stories in the media of poor OHS management leading to loss of life, injury and large-scale disasters, as seen in the factory buildings around the world.”

ISO 45001 is fully compatible with ISO 9001, quality management system, and ISO 14001, environmental management systems. National member bodies of ISO will now be voting and commenting on the text of the standard. The process is three months long, after which the document would then be presented to ISO members as a Final Draft International Standard (FDIS). If voted affirmative, ISO 45001 is expected to be published as an International Standard by late 2016 / early 2017.

 

Source / Credits: Elizabeth Gasiorowski-Denis – ISO

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