Navigating Legal Requirements in ISO 45001:2018
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Navigating Legal Requirements in ISO 45001:2018
One of the toughest aspects of maintaining an Occupational Health & Safety Management System (OHSMS) compliant with ISO 45001 is keeping up with changing legal requirements. Your organization must pivot to meet new requirements but also ensure you do not neglect other set requirements of your OHSMS.
ISO 45001 has two crucial clauses that help create a continuous cycle of identifying new requirements, updating your OHSMS, and evaluating compliance. These are clause 6.1.3 “Determination of legal requirements and other requirements” and clause 9.1.2 “Evaluation of compliance.”
What Does Clause 6.1.3 Require?
Clause 6.1.3 requires your OHSMS to include a process for determining up-to-date requirements applicable to your hazards, OH&S risks, and the OHSMS in general. This will include legal requirements. The process must determine how these requirements apply to your organization and how to communicate about them. Documentation of these requirements is necessary, and it must be kept updated to reflect any changes.
You then need to integrate these requirements into all OHSMS processes. Here’s how it fits into the bigger picture:
Identify OH&S Hazards: Recognize risks and opportunities related to the hazards and the OHSMS.
Determine Legal and Other Requirements: As discussed, identify these requirements.
Plan Actions to Address Them: Clause 6.1.4 outlines planning actions.
These planning actions are implemented in your operations to control injury and ill health prevention. This includes data collection for assessing controls and communication internally and externally.
What Does Clause 9.1.2 Require?
Clause 9.1.2, “Evaluation of compliance,” is part of the larger clause on monitoring, measurement, analysis, and performance evaluation. It requires you to have a process to evaluate if you meet the legal and other requirements identified and documented in clause 6.1.3.
This process should include:
Determining Evaluation Frequency: Decide how often compliance evaluations should happen.
Conducting Evaluations: Perform the evaluations and take necessary actions.
Documenting Results: Maintain records of your compliance evaluations.
In essence, clause 9.1.2 ensures you check if you are meeting the OH&S requirements applicable to you.
The Cycle of Legal Requirement Identification and Compliance Evaluation
ISO 45001 requires a continuous cycle of identifying legal requirements, listing them, staying updated on changes (clause 6.1.3), and verifying compliance (clause 9.1.2). Although these clauses are separate, they form one larger process of ensuring you meet OH&S legal and other requirements.
This process is not one-time. Continuously check for changes in OH&S requirements and update your response accordingly. Routinely evaluate compliance to ensure ongoing adherence.
The Importance of the OH&S Requirements Cycle
Occupational health and safety requirements and our ability to meet them change over time. Striving to improve injury and ill health prevention in the workplace may lead to inadvertent drifts from identified requirements.
Continually checking OH&S requirements and ensuring ongoing compliance prevents accidental failures in meeting OHSMS obligations.
Using a comprehensive documentation toolkit can simplify compliance with OH&S legal requirements. This toolkit includes the Procedure for Determining Context and Interested Parties, List of Interested Parties, and Compliance Evaluation Record.
