OHSAS 18,001 Health & Safety Management Standard

OHSAS 18,001 is an internationally-recognised standard that provides objective evidence that a company has effective Health and Safety management systems in place.

Implementing the OHSAS 18,001 Standard should help you to:

• Reduce the risks of accidents and occupational ill health
  
  
• Cut down the amount of lost time through employee illness and injury
  
  
• Demonstrate to employees that you are concerned about their safety and welfare
  
  
• Reduce your insurance premium
  
  
• Assist the company in meeting your legal/ regulatory requirements
  
  
• Help you to win new customers and keep existing ones
  
  

There are six key elements to the OHSAS 18,001 programme:

• Occupational Health and Safety policy
  
  
• Planning
  
  
• Implementing and operation
  
  
• Checking and corrective action
  
  
• Management review
  
  
• Continual improvement
  
  

Let’s now look at these in more detail:

1) Occupational Health and Safety Policy

This should set out your company’s commitment to:

• Improving work place Health and Safety and
• Meeting your legal requirements

It will also outline your company’s safety objectives (e.g. to cut the number of accidents, improve employee welfare etc.)

2) Planning

You should carry out risk assessments to identify the hazards in the workplace; and state what controls you will implement to deal with the hazards that you have recognised.

Specific goals and objectives should be set. You should explain how and when these objectives will be achieved.

3) Implementing and Operation

You now have to implement the risk control measures that you’ve decided are necessary to eliminate or minimise the risk of injuries from the hazards identified during the risk assessment process.

4) Checking & Corrective Action

You should carry out regular inspections (perhaps weekly or monthly) to make sure that the standards you’ve laid down are being met. You might, for example, carry out safety checks to make sure that all employees are wearing the required safety gear.

In the event of any accident or ‘near-miss’, you should carry out a full investigation to ascertain the root causes of the incident. The information obtained should then be used to prevent any recurrence and, where relevant, used to update the risk assessments.

5) Management Review

This should be done at least once a year.

6) Continual Improvement

Self-explanatory.