Blog Five Ways the ISO 45001 Standard can Create a Culture of Safety within your Business

These are the five basic steps in establishing a lasting culture of safety that you can implement and maintain. But before we dive into them there is one thing to remember, in any management system there are two things that make them work, the first is communication. Clear lines of communication within a business allows for better understanding, clarity of messages and builds trust. The second is participation.  Any management system needs to have ‘buy-in’ not just from senior management, but from all the staff. So, bearing this in mind let’s look at the five steps.

Step 1 – Leadership Commitment

If you employ people, then you are ultimately responsible for their wellbeing and safety.  It is written in legislation. Executive management must be seen to be fully involved and committed to health and safety within their business. This can be done through actively participating in safety meetings, taking an active part in safety exercises, regularly reviewing the present health and safety policies, procedures, and processes to ensure they meet the need of the people within the business. Effectively, lead from the front and be seen to be leading. This is a mandatory part of the ISO 45001 standard and provides the drive to implement the management system.

Step 2 – Health and Safety Working Groups

Within clause 5 – Leadership in the ISO 45001 standard, there is a requirement to ‘consult and include the participation of workers’. A great way to encourage a culture of health and safety is to setup working groups or committees. This will encourage the participation of staff, from all areas of the business, to help drive and steer health and welfare matters that affect everyone within the business.

The composition of these working groups should have representatives from all areas of the business, and not necessarily have a big input from a health and safety practitioner. This will allow the members of the working groups to identify the areas within their workspace that concern them with regards to safety. It will also allow them to identify solutions to these concerns and communicate them officially to executive management.

Participation of staff allows them to take ownership of their safety concerns, and everyone becomes an integral part of the health and safety culture within the business.  Allowing for an ‘unfiltered’ communication conduit to management will also develop a strong sense of a business wide commitment to health and safety.

Step 3 – Encourage Positive Behaviour

Whether you’re implementing the ISO 45001 standard or not, recognition of positive actions, suggestions and responses will go a long way to encourage a culture of health and safety within the business. Whether you decide on an official monthly recognition program, or departmental champion program, a health and safety recognition program can be of real benefit to the business.

This will encourage further participation from staff and act as recognition to their valued input and hard work. It would also inspire others to get further involved in the health and safety of their workspace and the business as a whole. A positive output from this initiative would be to ensure a positive culture of safety within the business that will be continuously improved upon.

Step 4 – Shared Knowledge

A good way to encourage a culture of safety is to develop inhouse health and safety training programs that are combined with the business’ own safety behavioural programs. This will not only provide staff with basic safety knowledge for them to perform safely in their workspace, but they will also allow for the staff to understand how accidents within the workspace can affect them, their colleagues, and families.  The programs are used to encourage safety initiatives, developing greater participation, and instilling a commitment to follow the business’ safety policy and regulations. The ISO 45001 standard encourages a culture of health and safety and communicating this to the wider team.

Step 5 – Continual Improvement

As with all management systems, it is important to monitor how the system is working and what can be improved upon. This is a requirement within the ISO 45001 standard.

There are many areas within the management system that can provide data to measure the effectiveness of the management system, and in doing so indicate the depth of the culture of safety within your business.  Areas to look at would be your initiatives or health and safety objectives, the number of ‘near miss observations’, incidents and uptake on the inhouse training programs.

As part of the ISO 45001 standard certification audit the Occupational Health and Safety Management System should be reviewed on a regular basis. As a rule of thumb, in the first couple of years probably at least bi-annually. Then, as the system becomes more embedded and part of the business’ culture and ethos, annually.

As stated at the start of this blog, the two main factors to make this, and any other management system successful are communication and participation. The greater engagement of your staff, the better effectiveness of the management system and the more positive results you will see.

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