What is ISO 45001?
ISO 45001 provides a framework to increase safety, reduce workplace risks, and enhance health and well-being at work, enabling an organisation to improve its OH&S performance in terms of preventing injuries and health issues.
The standard is based on the principle of reducing workplace risks and providing better and safer working conditions globally.
It focuses on a proactive approach to identifying hazards and managing risks, emphasising the importance of top management leadership and worker participation in achieving a safe and healthy workplace.
Your UKAS certification highlights your commitment to excellence, ensuring you meet rigorous quality standards.
At EmmersonWills, we are The ISO Simplification Experts, ensuring that ISO 45001 certification is straightforward, effective, and tailored to your business needs. Simplify your ISO, Empower your success with expert guidance that makes achieving a safer workplace easier than ever. Contact us today to start your ISO 45001 journey and create a safer workplace.
Why obtain ISO 45001 Certification?
ISO 45001 certification is a critical step toward establishing a safer, more secure working environment, offering compelling reasons for its adoption, including:
- Improves Employee Safety: Demonstrates a commitment to a safe working environment.
- Reduces Workplace Risks: Helps to anticipate, reduce, and prevent workplace injuries and illnesses.
- Enhances Compliance: With national and international safety standards and regulations.
- Improves Overall Performance: By reducing downtime due to accidents and health issues.
- Demonstrates Responsibility: Shows a commitment to safeguarding the health and safety of employees.
Benefits of ISO 45001
- Enhanced Reputation: Demonstrates brand responsibility by committing to safe, healthy, and sustainable work.
- Increased Awareness: Raises awareness of occupational health and safety risks.
- Engaged Workforce: Involves employees in the decision-making process, leading to a culture of safety and continuous improvement.
- Operational Improvements: Integrates with other business processes to facilitate continual improvement and operational efficiencies.
- Legal and Regulatory Compliance: Helps to navigate the complexity of legislative and regulatory requirements.
How will ISO 45001 help my business?
Adopting ISO 45001 certification provides your business with a comprehensive approach to health and safety management, resulting in significant improvements across various domains, including:
- Risk Management: Provides tools to identify and control health and safety risks, reduce the potential for accidents, aid legal compliance, and improve overall performance.
- Cost Reduction: Decreases the cost of insurance premiums, incident investigation time, and downtime due to injuries and ill health.
- Cultural Change: Fosters a health and safety culture in which employees are encouraged to take an active role in their own OH&S.
- Improved Sustainability: Enhances sustainability efforts by protecting health and preventing harm, with benefits extending beyond the workplace into the homes of workers and the community at large.
- Competitive Advantage: Enhances your organisation’s reputation and can contribute to its ability to attract new customers or enter new markets by demonstrating compliance to a globally recognised OH&S standard.
Additional Support for SSIP (Safety Schemes in Procurement)
In addition to our ISO 45001 consultancy, we provide comprehensive support for Safety Schemes in Procurement (SSIP). These schemes are designed to streamline health and safety pre-qualification processes, ensuring compliance with industry-recognised standards while reducing administrative burdens.
Our team can guide you through the process of integrating SSIP requirements into your existing Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S) management systems, helping you achieve certification that demonstrates your organisation’s commitment to safety, competence, and best practices.
By meeting SSIP standards, your organisation can enhance its reputation, simplify procurement processes, and open up new business opportunities by demonstrating compliance with the rigorous health and safety standards expected across various sectors.
This service perfectly complements your ISO 45001 certification journey, providing additional assurance to stakeholders and procurement bodies.
Our guarantee
We guarantee no easier route to gaining, maintaining, and running UKAS Certified ISO Management Systems.
Part of our culture is that we don’t create work where we don’t have to. Thus, we look for conformity, not non-conformity.
We maintain a forward-thinking approach to be conscious of future implications and reduce the need for time-consuming amendments later.
ISO 45001 Frequently Asked Questions
What is ISO 45001?
ISO 45001 is the international standard for occupational health and safety management systems (OH&S). It provides a framework for organisations to prevent work-related injuries, ill health, and fatalities whilst creating safer, healthier workplaces. The standard applies to organisations of all sizes across any sector and focuses on proactive hazard identification, risk assessment, and continuous improvement of health and safety performance. For a more detailed explanation, read our guide on what ISO 45001 is and why your business needs it.
How long does it take to get ISO 45001 certified?
With EmmersonWills, UKAS-certified ISO 45001 certification can be achieved within 3 to 6 months, depending on their size, complexity, and current health and safety arrangements. Businesses with fewer employees and simpler operations may achieve certification faster, whilst larger organisations with multiple sites or high-risk activities may require longer. The timeline includes system development, implementation, internal auditing, and the two-stage external certification audit.
How much does ISO 45001 certification cost?
ISO 45001 certification costs vary based on organisation size, number of employees, complexity of hazards and risks, and the level of consultancy support required. Costs typically include consultancy fees for system development and implementation, certification body fees for external audits, and internal resources for staff involvement. EmmersonWills provides transparent pricing tailored to your specific health and safety needs. Contact us for a detailed quote based on your circumstances.
Do I need a consultant to achieve ISO 45001 certification?
Whilst organisations can pursue ISO 45001 independently, most benefit from expert consultancy support. Health and safety legislation is complex and constantly evolving, making it challenging to ensure full compliance without specialist knowledge. A quality consultant like EmmersonWills simplifies this process for you, bringing experience in hazard identification and understanding of certification requirements to help you establish effective controls, and creates systems that genuinely protect your people rather than just satisfying auditors.
What is UKAS accreditation for ISO 45001?
UKAS (United Kingdom Accreditation Service) is the national accreditation body that independently verifies certification bodies meet rigorous standards. UKAS-accredited ISO 45001 certification is recognised globally and provides assurance that your certification is legitimate and credible. Many clients, tender processes, and supply chain requirements specifically require UKAS-accredited certification, particularly in high-risk sectors like construction and manufacturing.
What are the main benefits of ISO 45001 certification?
ISO 45001 certification delivers multiple benefits including reduced workplace accidents and injuries, lower insurance premiums and compensation claims, improved employee wellbeing and morale, enhanced legal compliance and due diligence, competitive advantage in tenders requiring health and safety credentials, reduced absence and sick leave, better risk management of health and safety liabilities, and a framework for continuous improvement of workplace safety. Discover more about the comprehensive benefits of ISO 45001.
Does ISO 45001 replace OHSAS 18001?
Yes, ISO 45001 replaced OHSAS 18001 in 2018. Organisations previously certified to OHSAS 18001 have transitioned to ISO 45001. The new standard brings occupational health and safety into alignment with other ISO management system standards, making integration easier. ISO 45001 places greater emphasis on worker participation, leadership commitment, and context of the organisation compared to OHSAS 18001.
Can ISO 45001 work for small businesses?
ISO 45001 is designed to be scalable and applicable to organisations of all sizes. Small businesses often find ISO 45001 particularly valuable as it helps them manage health and safety systematically, demonstrate duty of care to employees, and compete for contracts that require health and safety credentials. The standard should be proportionate to your risks rather than creating unnecessary bureaucracy. EmmersonWills specialises in creating appropriately sized systems for businesses of all scales.
What hazards and risks do I need to consider?
ISO 45001 requires organisations to identify all hazards that could cause injury or ill health. Common hazards include slips, trips and falls, manual handling, working at height, machinery and equipment, hazardous substances, noise, vibration, fire, electrical risks, vehicle movements, lone working, workplace violence, and psychosocial risks including stress and fatigue. The standard requires systematic risk assessment and implementation of appropriate controls.
Does ISO 45001 cover mental health and wellbeing?
Yes, ISO 45001 explicitly addresses both physical and mental wellbeing. The standard recognises that occupational health extends beyond preventing injuries to supporting overall employee health, including psychosocial risks such as work-related stress, fatigue, bullying, and harassment. Organisations must identify and manage these risks alongside physical hazards, reflecting modern understanding of workplace health.
How does ISO 45001 help with legal compliance?
ISO 45001 provides a systematic framework for identifying applicable health and safety legislation, establishing processes to ensure compliance, monitoring regulatory changes, training staff on safety responsibilities, and maintaining evidence of compliance. The standard’s structured approach significantly reduces the risk of regulatory breaches, HSE enforcement action, and potential prosecutions whilst demonstrating due diligence.
What industries benefit most from ISO 45001?
Whilst ISO 45001 applies across all sectors, it’s particularly valuable for industries with significant health and safety risks including construction, manufacturing, logistics and transport, facilities management, waste management, utilities, healthcare, agriculture, oil and gas, and chemical processing. However, every organisation has health and safety risks, and any business can benefit from systematic management of these risks. Learn more about how ISO 45001 works for different sectors.
What is worker consultation and participation in ISO 45001?
ISO 45001 places strong emphasis on consulting and involving workers in health and safety decisions. Organisations must establish processes for worker participation in hazard identification, risk assessment, incident investigation, and determination of controls. This participative approach improves system effectiveness, enhances employee engagement, and ensures those closest to the work contribute their knowledge and experience.
How do I maintain ISO 45001 certification?
After achieving certification, you maintain it through surveillance audits (typically annually) and a full recertification audit every three years. Between audits, you must operate your health and safety management system, conduct internal audits, hold management reviews, monitor health and safety performance, investigate incidents, ensure ongoing legal compliance, and continuously improve. EmmersonWills provides ongoing support to help maintain certification effectiveness and prepare for external audits.
What happens during the ISO 45001 certification audit?
The certification process involves two stages. Stage 1 is a documentation review where the auditor examines your health and safety management system documentation to ensure it meets ISO 45001 requirements. Stage 2 is the main assessment where auditors verify your system is implemented effectively, review hazard identification and risk assessments, check legal compliance, interview staff, examine incident records, and observe workplace controls. Following successful completion, the certification body issues your certificate.
Can I integrate ISO 45001 with other management systems?
Yes, ISO 45001 shares the same high-level structure as other ISO standards including ISO 9001 (quality) and ISO 14001 (environmental). This common structure makes integration straightforward, reducing duplication and creating a unified management system. Integrated systems are more efficient to operate, streamline audit processes, and are more cost-effective to certify than maintaining separate systems for quality, environmental, and health and safety management.
What is the role of top management in ISO 45001?
ISO 45001 requires demonstrated leadership commitment to health and safety. Top management must establish the health and safety policy, ensure adequate resources are available, integrate health and safety into business processes, promote worker participation, and actively participate in management reviews. Leadership involvement is essential for creating a safety culture and ensuring the system protects people effectively.
How does ISO 45001 reduce workplace accidents?
ISO 45001 reduces accidents through systematic hazard identification, proactive risk assessment, implementation of appropriate controls, regular monitoring and measurement, incident investigation and corrective action, worker training and competence development, and continuous improvement of safety performance. The proactive approach prevents incidents before they occur rather than simply reacting to accidents, leading to measurable reductions in injuries and ill health.
What is a health and safety policy and why do I need one?
A health and safety policy is a formal statement of your organisation’s commitment to protecting workers and preventing work-related injury and ill health. ISO 45001 requires a documented policy that is appropriate to your organisation, includes commitments to legal compliance and worker consultation, provides a framework for setting objectives, and is communicated to all workers and relevant parties. The policy demonstrates leadership commitment and guides safety decision-making.
Will ISO 45001 help reduce insurance premiums?
Many insurers recognise ISO 45001 certification as evidence of robust health and safety management and may offer reduced premiums. Beyond insurance savings, the standard helps reduce the actual costs of accidents including compensation claims, sick pay, investigation time, productivity losses, and potential legal costs. The combined financial benefits of improved safety performance often significantly exceed the investment in certification.
What's the EmmersonWills approach to ISO 45001 implementation?
EmmersonWills specialises in simplifying ISO 45001 implementation. We guarantee no easier route to gaining, maintaining, and running UKAS-certified ISO 45001 systems. Our approach centres on understanding your hazards and risks, adapting the standard to fit your operations, creating practical systems that genuinely protect people, ensuring full legal compliance, promoting worker engagement and participation, and providing comprehensive support throughout certification and beyond. We focus on simplicity, compliance, and genuine safety improvement.