When it comes to health and safety certification, how compliant is your business with current regulations? Do you have ISO 45001 certification, for example? Do you know what ISO 45001 certification is, and why it’s so important to your business?

What is ISO 45001?

ISO 45001 is the international standard in occupational health and safety certification – a global certification designed to protect employees and visitors from injury and ill health, as well as to ensure their continued health and safety in the workplace

The replacement for its predecessor, OHSAS 18001, ISO 45001:2018 is directly aligned with other certifications, including ISO 9001 and ISO 14001, and is internationally recognised, and applicable to all companies regardless of their size or nature.

Should your company still be certified under OHSAS 18001, please be aware that you will need to migrate to ISO 45001 in order to remain compliant with industry standards. Due to COVID-19 measures and lockdown procedures, the migration date has been moved from March to September 2021, giving you enough time to undergo the necessary procedures and maintain the validity of your certification.

Why is ISO 45001 certification necessary?

As a risk-based certification, the objective of ISO 45001 is to continually drive you to improve on your company’s occupational health and safety. As a result, seeking out these opportunities for improvement can have very real benefits for your business:

• Reduced operating costs: More worker safety and more injury prevention means less downtime – which ultimately translates into less money spent on compensation, and lower legal fees.
• Increased productivity: A healthy worker is a happy worker, and a happy worker is a more productive worker, by extension. A safe working environment and a healthy workforce means a boosted bottom line for you.
• Reduced insurance payments: Save money on your insurance costs by demonstrating that you have the necessary certification in place. If you’re able to prove that your workforce is taken care of, your insurable risk will be lower, meaning your insurance costs will decrease.
• Improved stakeholder relationships: Prioritising the health and safety of your employees, customers and suppliers will help to strengthen your business relationships, while enhancing your focus on occupational health and safety as a whole.
• Improved risk management: By being able to identify potential risks ahead of time, and create a safe working environment with the necessary controls in place, you’ll be able to reduce your risk and keep your employees safe at all times.
• Legal compliance: Staying up-to-date with the required health and safety certification will help you to fulfil your legal and other requirements, while allowing you to understand exactly how certain statutory and regulatory requirements impact your business.

More than these benefits however, having the correct ISO 45001 certification in place will help to build your credibility as a brand, giving your company a reputation based on trust and integrity and cementing your status as an employer of choice.

What is the value of ISO 45001 certification?

Further to benefits such as increased productivity and reduced costs, having ISO 45001 certification in place can help to significantly increase your market share as well, giving you a bigger client base and helping you compete side-by-side with your competitors. Having a recognised management system will allow you to benchmark your organisation against other industries of the same nature, giving you more exposure in the marketplace and allowing you to potentially increase your profitability as a result.

Moreover, being ISO 45001 certified will give you increased scope for planning, implementing, checking and acting across all health and safety procedures and processes, allowing you to measure and monitor your activities and continually improve where necessary. With top management encouraged to show their commitment and accountability, and consult and engage with employees and representatives, a culture of health, safety and cooperation is cultivated from the top down, adding to the value of your business and creating a safe, nurturing working environment for all.

ISO 45001 certification with NOSA

As one of the industry leaders in health and safety training, NOSA is able to partner with your organisation and your employees in a number of ways, particularly when it comes to ISO 45001 training and implementation:

ISO 45001: 2018 Introduction – suitable for all general employees

In this course, your employees will learn about the current thinking on occupational health and safety, the principal requirements of ISO 45001 certification, and how it compares to other internationally recognised management systems.

ISO 45001: 2018 Implementation – suitable for all those involved in implementation of the system

With this course, your process owners will be taken through a thorough examination of the Management System Framework defined in OHSAS 18001, and will learn how to implement a management system that enables continuous improvement of your company’s health and safety performance.

ISO 45001: 2018 Internal Auditor – suitable for those selected to independently audit the process

In this course, your auditors will learn to apply the principles of health and safety management while implementing continuous improvement and applying the procedures of hazard identification, risk management, training, communication, consultation and more.

With health and safety, a bigger priority now more than ever given the current pandemic, a migration to ISO 45001 certification is critically important for organisations. More than a simple certification it represents a new era in health and safety, a new focus on employee protection and well-being, and a new way forward for physical, mental and occupational health.