OHSAS 18001 and health and safety law

At the top of any business mind is health and safety these days. To avoid hefty personal injury claims, many businesses are now taking measures to ensure their employees are working in a safe and healthy environment. OHSAS 18001 provides an internationally recognized certificate that provides your business with proof that you are paying attention to and following the health and safety laws.

OHSAS 18001 will help you reach requirements in relation to health and safety law and ensure that your business is equipped to handle any issues. The law surrounding these issues can often be difficult to understand and is constantly changing. Keeping up with the minor alterations in the law might feel impossible for companies in a busy workday. OHSAS 18001 helps you continuously review your business to be compliant with the laws and regulations, and ensures you are updating your procedures in accordance with these changes.

According to the health and safety law, employees must have training in health and safety procedures. This is why many businesses today send their employees on courses or present new staff with training on their computers to show them how to act and what to do to avoid health and safety issues. Most employers are excellent at educating new staff on these topics, but often ignore their existing employees. This can result in them forgetting the things they learnt when they started as well as not being aware of new laws that have come along since they started with the company. Refresher courses and training is therefore essential, not just with new employees or employees holding roles such as ‘first aider’ or ‘fire marshal’.

The OHSAS 18001 will help an employer streamline its health and safety procedures and presenting the business as a safe place to work. An OHSAS 18001 certificate shows the business is up to an international recognised standard when it comes to health and safety laws and regulations and aware of what this entails.

OHSAS 18001 certification process

When thinking about implementing an OHSAS 18001 certification into your business, you may be a little bit concerned about the certification process but there’s no need to be.

There are three steps to the certification process, first of all you need to register your interest in becoming OHSAS 18001 certified. The company providing the certification will usually listen to you and your situation before discussing the ways in which you can go forward.

Step two involves your actual assessment of which you will be briefed on during your initial contact conversation. A date is arranged with your commitments and diary in mind for an assessor to visit your organisation when it is convenient for you. During the assessment the assessor will look at the health and safety systems you currently have in place and carry out a ‘gap analysis’. This basically means that rather than designing whole new health and safety systems the assessor can advise about how you can add to your current processes to make sure that there is not a huge amount of upheaval involved in meeting the OHSAS 18001 requirements. Staff and management time will be used as little as possible and the process usually takes 2 days but can take longer for larger firms.

And the final stage – the presentation of your certificate. This happens around 45 days after the initial assessment, hopefully giving you enough time to make the suggested changes and improvements. And your assessor will be able to give any extra information or advice needed.

Other than these three stages, you will need to complete an annual audit. Again in this situation the assessor will be there to help not hinder and the successful completion of this audit will keep your certificate current and up to date.

Understanding OHSAS 18001 and Its Background

OHSAS 18001 was created by the British Standards Institute, published in 1992 and provides a systematic approach to establishing an occupational health and safety management system. Though it was created by the British Standards Institute the creation was guided by various international standard bureaus and international standard bodies.

Despite not being an official International Organisations for Standards (ISO) certification it is widely internationally recognised and some organisations even make it a requirement.  It was updated in 2007 to cover skill requirements and also to make it more cohesive with ISO certifications, mostly ISO 9001 (for a quality management system) and ISO 14001 (for an environmental management system). This means that if you are certified in one of these that becoming OHSAS 18001 will feel like second nature and vice versa.

When becoming OHSAS certified you will have to carry out a risk assessment, identify any hazards and control for these with new procedures. It is also vital that your employees know their roles in the new procedures and can competently carry out their responsibilities.

A general advantage of becoming OHSAS 18001 certified is that it does tend to raise awareness of health and safety issues throughout your organisation. Part of the certification is that you regularly evaluate how well your procedures are working and if there are any new risks, from this you then improve or update your control procedures; this way you are consistently building on your previous progress. This will also help ensure that if any new health and safety legal requirements come out then you will be in line with them.

The advantages of OHSAS 18001

OHSAS 18001 provides you with a guide to implementing and improving an occupational health and safety management system. Although it is not an official International Organisation for Standards (ISO) certification, in 2007 it was updated in order to be compliable with other ISO certifications (mostly ISO 9001 and ISO 14001). It is also internationally recognised by many industries and is definitely a well respected certification.

Part of what makes it work so well with the other ISO certifications is they work under the same “plan, do, check, act” principle. Because they are specifically designed to complement one another, if you are certified in one becoming certified in the others should seem easier and fit well with the type of procedures you already have in place.

The regular reviewing and improving of your procedures also means that you will always be in line with any new health and safety legislation that is introduced; one of the general advantages of OHSAS is that it ensures you are in line with any health and safety legal requirements anyway.

 A further advantage is that it helps raise awareness of health and safety issues throughout your organisations and means that everyone will know their roles within the procedures and any emergency measures (sometimes employee training is helpful). Also theoretically it should minimise the risk of accidents, hopefully leading to fewer employee absences and potentially saving you money. It had even been known to help lower insurance premiums. Overall there are many advantages to gaining this certification.

OHSAS 18001 for Large Organisations

OHSAS 18001 is a standard for health and safety management that is recognised throughout the UK. It helps businesses to better manage and track their processes relating to occupational health and safety.

While OHSAS 18001 is available to companies of all sizes, it can be particularly effective and important for large organisations to become familiar with. From large private sector companies, to charities, multinationals and public sector organisations, the OHSAS 18001 Certification shows a commitment to Occupational Health and Safety, leaving customers safe in the knowledge that Health and Safety is successfully managed and also reduces the risk of a firm’s directors facing prosecution.

There has recently been growing concern about the issues of Health and Safety in the workplace, and with an OHSAS 18001 Certification some of this worry can be taken away from the CEOs and directors by putting into place a recognised policy to safeguard the possibility of an enquiry after an incident in the workplace. Alongside helping to eradicate any breaches in legal requirements the OHSAS 18001 is designed to reduce the risk of any accidents.

Previously, an OHSAS 18001 Certification has been costly and time consuming, but there is now a hassle free solution which will deliver the certification within 45 days and at a fraction of the cost. An assessor will come in and look at the areas of your business involved in health and safety management and they will then identify areas which need to be improved. After identifying these areas a plan of action will be set up by the assessor so that the business can iron out any issues.  Once the assessment is successful and all the criteria are met an OHSAS 18001 certificate is issued. An Occupational Health and Safety Manual is also supplied which gives advice on how the business can obtain marketing and publicity from the achievement.

Explaining OHSAS 18001 and why you should become certified

OHSAS 18001 offers a specification of how to implement an Occupational health and Safety Management System. Although the International Organisation for Standards (ISO) do not consider it to be an official ISO standard, it is globally recognised by many industries and even a requirement of some.

One of the advantages of this certification is that it was altered in 2007 to be more compatible with other management systems such as ISO 9001 (for quality) and ISO 14001 (for environmental management) meaning once you are certified in one the others fit perfectly with them because they all have the same kind of underlying processes.

Being certified in any of these standards can make your organisation stand out from others and they should all help you improve efficiency. The plan, do, check act model is a good example of the underlying commonality of these management systems; that you are constantly monitoring, assessing and improving your procedures. This system will mean that you are always keeping up to date with any new legal health and safety requirements.

Some of the key criteria for becoming certified are that you identify hazards, carry out a risk assessment and control for these. Then assign various responsibilities and make sure there is communication and awareness of any new procedures and finally formalising your management system.

One of the advantages of becoming OHSAS certified is that it proves to any investors or members of the public that your organisation takes health and safety seriously and that you have a proactive approach to it. Furthermore all these control procedures that are being improved on a regular basis, should mean there is less risk of accidents. So you will most likely be less liable if it was a member of the public (this certification can also help lower insurance premiums).

Also theoretically it may lead to fewer staff absences, if there are fewer accidents.  Becoming OHSAS 18001 certified offers you a systematic approach to implementing a health and safety management system that is widely recognised and gives you an extensive range of benefits, whilst proving your commitment to health and safety.

The benefits of OHSAS/ISO 18001

Many more organisations are putting Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems (OHSAS) into place. Some of the advantages of OHSAS 18001 in particular is that it is made to be generalised to as many settings as possible and the procedures and general framework is very complimentary to other certifications such as ISO 9001 (which relates to  the quality of a management system) and ISO 14001 (which relates to an environmental management system).

This certification enables you to classify any hazards, gauge the risk they may pose and then put procedures in place in order to minimise and control this risk. Going through this process is likely to make all employees more aware of health and safety in general, and part of the preventative measures may include things such as employee training, and ensuring that in an emergency situation they know how they should respond.

Becoming OHSAS 18001 certified will also mean you are in line with any legislation relating to health and safety in the workplace and that you will change procedures accordingly if the legislation changes and requires you to do so.  Although it is worth noting this is not a specific guide for exact safety advice; it will not tell you where to place your fire extinguishers or how many you should have for your space etc. Theoretically having all these preventative controls in place will mean there are less accidents in the working environment, and the wider implication of this being that staff are less likely to not be able to work due to being involved in an accident, also less liability if a member of the public was to be involved in the accident. In general having this certification demonstrates that you are forward thinking and are committed to providing a safe workplace. Overall this is a great certification to have and is well worth considering.