What is ISO 45001 and why should my business get certified?

Posted 4 years ago

The importance of health & safety in the workplace can never be underestimated. As well as being written into law, ensuring staff aren’t at risk of injury or illness is also an integral part of being a responsible employer.

Maybe one of the biggest drivers for employers to take workplace health & safety seriously is that it allows you to show your customers and employees that you are committed to a safer workplace. This is one of the many reasons why organisations invest in ISO 45001 certification, the internationally recognised Occupational Health & Safety (OH&S) Management System Standard, which sets out the requirements for an organisation to ensure a safe and healthy workplace and to prevent work-related accidents and illnesses.

We caught up with our friends over at QMS International, to find out more about ISO 45001 and the benefits of businesses becoming certified.

“ISO 45001 is a framework that helps businesses to raise the awareness of health & safety risks among their employees as well as create controls that help them to mitigate or remove these risks from the workplace. By doing so, employers can help to keep their staff happy, healthy and safe, reducing the likelihood of absenteeism, injury, mental ill health and breaches of legislation. Not only can this reduce staff turnover, but it can raise your business’ reputation in the marketplace and benefit your bottom line.”

QMS International

Why should I get my business ISO 45001 certified?

ISO 45001 certification is a fantastic way of presenting your organisation’s commitment to providing a workplace in which the risk of illness and injury to your workers, community or clients is minimised.

Achieving this accreditation in order to make your organisation a safer place to work is also a fantastic way to boost productivity by reducing the number of disruptive incidents. It can also help to boost your workforce’s morale.

QMS summarise the benefits in seven key points:

Establish controls to ensure legal compliance
Increase health & safety awareness
Enhance your reputation
Reduce absenteeism
Reduce insurance premiums
Improve management of H&S compliance issues
Enhance management of health & safety risks

The certification can be achieved by businesses of any size and it is suitable for all organisations that are looking to improve risk management, protect their reputation and drive productivity at work.

How have ISO certifications helped organisations during the COVID-19 pandemic?

COVID-19 has certainly been a testing time for businesses, especially when it comes to keeping their workforce safe and healthy. But ISO 45001 has certainly supported businesses throughout the crisis.

“A robust framework of health & safety processes has meant that businesses with ISO 45001 have had the procedures in place to quickly assess the new risk and its implications for the health & safety of their staff, as well as the means to communicate these risks and what the business planned to do to control them”

QMS International

How can I gain ISO 45001 certification? What are the requirements?

Gaining ISO 45001 certification is a straightforward process, but it does require you to have some things in place before you start. You also need to be willing to change certain processes if required to gain certification.

For example, you need to determine the internal and external factors that affect your business, communicate roles and responsibilities clearly and adapt/react to changes. Other key actions include:

Supporting staff with training and the provision of personal equipment, etc.
Assessing existing procedures, assessments and planning how to identify and respond to emergencies.
Evaluating your current health & safety performance.
Striving for continual improvement in pursuit of better performance.

What’s the most effective way of getting certified?

The most straightforward way to gain ISO certification is through the use of an experienced external party that can assist you in creating, implementing and certifying your ISO 45001 management system. This will help to ensure your organisation has adopted the right processes from the beginning in order to achieve certification quickly.

We recommend our friends over at QMS International, who have put over 30,000 management systems in place and can help you to reach certification in just 30 days. If you’re interested in QMS’ assistance in gaining certification, simply get in touch with them today and a member of their friendly team will be in touch.