Designing OH&S Management System Processes Under ISO 45001
ISO 45001 Clause 4.4
Establish, implement, maintain and continually improve an OH&S management system that meets the standard.
ISO 45001 Clause 4.4 - OH&S Management System
ISO 45001:2018 Clause 4.4 is the umbrella requirement that an organisation establishes, implements, maintains and continually improves an occupational health and safety management system, including the processes needed and their interactions, in accordance with the requirements of the standard.
The clause is short on words but broad in scope. It is the requirement that all the other clauses are pulled together into a coherent system rather than treated as a list of unconnected obligations. The Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle that runs through ISO 45001 - context and planning, operation, performance evaluation, improvement - is the structure of the system as a whole.
What an OH&S Management System Looks Like in Practice
An OH&S management system is the set of processes, documents, responsibilities and arrangements an organisation uses to manage its health and safety risks and opportunities. It is not a binder of policies. It is the way the organisation actually works to keep its people safe.
For most organisations the system has the following visible elements: an OH&S policy, an interested parties register, a hazard and risk register, a legal register, a set of risk assessments, training records, accident and incident reporting arrangements, internal audits, management review records, and corrective action records. The integrated management system manual ties these together and explains how the processes interact.
For organisations seeking certification across multiple standards - ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 together - the system can be built once and shared across all three. The Annex SL high-level structure used by all three standards is designed to support this.
To audit Clause 4.4 I look at the overall existence and effectiveness of the OH&S management system. The clauses that follow are the detail. This is the head clause where I check the system is real, joined up and working - not a collection of templates that have been filled in but never used.
For most organisations, the quickest way to comply is to use a toolkit. The toolkit provides the structure, the manual, the policies, the registers and the form templates needed to cover every clause of the standard. Starting from a toolkit avoids the trap of writing a system from scratch and missing requirements.
The standard does not say you have to rewrite it. It just says your system has to cover what the standard asks for. If you are integrating with ISO 9001 or ISO 14001, build one set of documents that does both, not two parallel ones.
Practical Compliance Guidance
The IMS1 Manual is the central document of the OH&S management system. It describes the policy, scope, processes and interactions in one place and acts as the entry point for the rest of the documentation.
The following alphaZ documents support compliance with ISO 45001:2018 Clause 4.4.
| alphaZ document | How to use it |
|---|---|
| ISO 45001 Toolkit | The full set of documents needed to build an OH&S management system that meets the requirements of ISO 45001:2018. |
| ISO 9001/14001/45001 IMS Toolkit | The integrated set of documents covering quality, environmental and OH&S management for organisations seeking joint or triple certification. |
Note - all the above files can be downloaded with an alphaZ subscription.
Frequently Asked Questions
UK Legislation
The following UK legislation underpins the existence and operation of an OH&S management system in the UK. Organisations outside the UK should identify equivalent legislation in their jurisdiction.
