ISO 45001 Plan-Do-Check-Act Guidelines – To Create a Better OH&S Management System

ISO 45001:2018 – Occupational health and safety management systems is an international standard that intends to give companies of all sizes a framework for designing, implementing, maintaining, and upgrading an occupational health and safety (OH&S) management system. Any type of business, regardless of size, can use the ISO 45001 standard to fulfil its responsibility to ensure the health and safety of its employees. The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that approximately 2.78 million individuals lose their lives to illnesses or accidents at work each year. Organizations should be able to promote a safe and productive workplace with the aid of an OH&S management system developed by ISO 45001:2018.

Each OH&S management system’s performance depends on several critical elements, including the involvement of top management and open communication at all organizational levels. The processes that make up an OH&S management system are equally important. To achieve OH&S goals, it is crucial to identify workable OH&S practices. It is equally crucial to assess such procedures after they are finished to make improvements moving forward. Plan-Do-Check-Act is the foundation for the OH&S management system approach in ISO 45001:2018. (PDCA). The PCDA cycle of ISO 45001:2018 includes:

• Identifying and evaluating the possibilities and hazards related to OH&S, as well as setting the goals and procedures needed to operate within the constraints of the organization. Also, it must be maintained in ISO 45001 documents for reference.
• Executing the procedures as intended
• Monitoring and measuring OH&S objectives’ activities and procedures, as well as reporting the outcomes
• And taking steps to continuously enhance the effectiveness of the OH&S management system.

There are 10 clauses in the entire ISO 45001 standard, which is built on a framework of clauses. Plan, Do, Check, and Act make up the PDCA. The ISO 45001 standard incorporates a phase of the PDCA cycle. The first instance of “Plan” is when an organization develops its OH&S Policy and sets goals and objectives. The “Do” phase entails thinking about and creating the procedures to achieve these goals, while the “Check” and “Act” sections deal with evaluation and modification. The PDCA cycle is thus applied, whether consciously or unconsciously, even in the development of the OH&S Policy itself. As an example, let’s evaluate the following clauses:

• Clause 6, Planning: The identification of hazards, risk analysis, and controls are the key points that this part addresses. The reason why it’s essential to the success of any OH&S System is simple to comprehend. This is a part of the “Plan” phase, so if the planning and identification are not done properly, your OH&S System will end up falling short of its goals, and incidents will happen as a result of poor planning.
• Clause 7 & 8, Support and operation: By closely analyzing elements such as resources and process construction, it is clear that flaws in this stage of the cycle can undermine the operation of an OH&S System.
• Clause 9, Performance Evaluation: focusing primarily on the “Check” segment of the cycle, which can be defined as performance measurement, internal audit, and management review. A solid foundation for action and encouragement for ongoing systemic change depend on accurate data recording for analysis.
• Clause 10, Improvement: The ISO 45001 standard is provided by such a specification, which also includes the “Act” phase of the cycle. This is crucial to properly tie the entire PDCA cycle together and deliver outcomes, whether by formal ISO 45001 processes like incident, nonconformity, and corrective action, or through employee suggestions or internal improvement initiatives.

Poor planning, imprecise execution, inaccurate data collection, ineffective OHSAS awareness training, or inefficient processes are all examples of lack of performance in the cycle, and they all lead to a similar result such as underperformance of the OH&S System and failure to reach goals. As a result, the significance of correctly using the PDCA cycle cannot be overstated. Likewise, there are enormous advantages to completing the entire cycle, and the chances of achieving the goals rise dramatically. Making the “Plan, Do, Check, Act” cycle the center of the OH&S System will safeguard your stakeholders, improve the reputation of your company, and increase your chances of receiving ISO 45001 certification.

Information about Monitoring and Measurement in ISO 45001 Occupational Health and Safety Management System

ISO 45001 is an international standard for occupational health and safety management system, refining employee safety, decreasing workplace risks and making better and safer working conditions. The standard proves an organization’s commitment to controlling its health and safety risks by executing processes and procedures to decrease the risk of work-related incidents.

An organization faces many health and safety associated issues despite planning and establishing several systems in place to confirm that all health and safety related requirements are addressed. Issues like more than expected health complaints, incidents resulting in serious injuries, absenteeism affecting work and deliveries to customers and many other such problems are a reason of concern to the organization at some point of time. These issues result in low worker satisfaction or motivation and may impact deliveries to customers resulting in lower customer satisfaction. It is significant for an organization to keep a track of all such cases. To do this an organization needs to monitor, measure, analyze and evaluate processes to confirm that these are effective, adequate and suitable.

Measurement and Monitoring Requirements

Measurement and monitoring requirements should be absolute on the basis of risk and criticality of the process. The measurements should be in line with OH&S objectives recognized for the organization. The measurement and monitoring requirements should reflect requirements of the standard, legal requirements and other requirements.

• Observation of health of employees, work environment monitoring.
• Development on policy declarations, objective achievement, and constant improvement.
• Ability levels of the workers.
• Gaps in obedience with legal requirements, if any.
• Standards and Codes.
• Insurance Necessities.

Once organization have identified measurement and monitoring requirements, organization need to establish systems to collect and combine these measures. To do this, organization want to describe criteria to compare these measurements. These criteria could be against industry benchmarks or organization’s own codes and objectives. Establish measurement devices or tools that would be essential to take these measurements. Along with procedures to collect and merging, establish methods to check that the results of measurements are valid.

Analysis and Evaluation

Analysis is the procedure of investigating data to determine relationships and trends. Organization may use several statistical tools like Pareto analysis, fish-bone analysis, 5-why analysis, etc. to draw a conclusion from data. Evaluation is done to confirm adequacy, suitability and effectiveness of health and safety necessities. This activity is most frequently related to monitoring activities. Occupational health complaints, work environment monitoring and health observation of workers are some of the elements that need to be monitored in an organization.

The results of analysis and evaluation shall be used to take actions to remove root causes which are the reason for negative feedback or measurement going beyond the targets established. Present the trend analysis in Management review meetings and identify the requirement for improvements within the OH&S management system through evaluation of these procedures.

To understand the Occupational Health and Safety Management System and its requirements, ISO 45001:2015 OHSAS awareness training will provide an overview of the OHSAS requirements based on ISO 45001:2018. This ISO 45001 Awareness Training helps employees to reduce the risk of employee’s health safety and improvement effectiveness of an Occupational Health and Safety Management System, and also helps to understand the requirements of ISO 14001:2015 and hazards risk identification.