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More than 4 years after the commission's initial work, the ISO45001 standard dedicated to occupational health and safety is due for release in the coming months (March 2018).
This standard will be aimed at all organizations wishing to work internally to improve employee protection. It will be based on the structure of ISO 9001 and ISO 14001, and on the principle of continuous improvement. It will give pride of place to consultation with employees; in any case, it will invite companies to involve employees or their representatives in the construction and improvement of the management system.
The latest version introduces important concepts that already exist in France, such as the right of withdrawal, protection of workers against reprisals for reporting incidents, and free personal protective equipment. Every 15 seconds, a worker dies from an accident or occupational disease. The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that the cost of occupational accidents and diseases represents around 4% of global GDP, or almost 2,500 billion euros.
ISO 45001 will replace the OHSAS 18001 occupational health and safety standard, with a 3-year transition period to enable certified sites to switch from OHSAS 18001 to ISO 45001.
Reminder of the final stages of the ISO45001 publication process
In March 2017, the first vote on the draft ISO45001 standard had garnered more than 25% unfavorable opinions. Since then, the ISO working group has revised its copy.
The revised standard was therefore put to a new vote this summer: 57 ISO member countries voted in favor of publishing ISO 45001, 8 abstained and 7 voted against (Argentina, Austria, France, Germany, India, Spain and Turkey). France considers that the document is still too complex to implement, particularly for SMEs.
Nevertheless, the publication process continues...
The ISO project committee dedicated to the development of this standard has made a number of modifications to take account of the many comments received (nearly 1600). The latest meeting of this committee in Malaysia (September 18 to 23) enabled all these comments and questions to be taken into account. It also confirmed the publication schedule.
From now on, there seems to be no stoppingISO45001. The FDIS (final draft international standard) version will be approved in the coming weeks, before publication of the final version next spring.