Demonstrating Management Commitment

WHS Due Diligence for CEOs, Directors and Managers – NSW edition

Demonstrating Management Commitment

(AS 4801 superseded in 2018)

Every organization ought to have what’s called an Occupational Health and Safety Management System or OHSMS, which is essentially a structure for managing your policies and procedures.
Such a system ought really be designed against an industry accepted standard such as ISO standard 45001 – Occupational health and safety management systems. This standard replaced the well known Australian standard 4801 in 2018.
ISO 45001 is the world’s first international standard on occupational health and safety (OH&S) management, containing agreed good practices from across the world. The primary focus of implementing an OH&S management system is to prevent any kind of work-related injuries, illness or loss of life.
This standard provides a framework to increase safety, reduce workplace risks and enhance health and well-being at work, enabling an organization to proactively improve its OH&S performance.

The ISO organization has also produced a handbook on the ISO 45001 standard. This handbook pays particular attention to the needs of small businesses and provides explanation, as well as practical examples to the main clauses of ISO 45001.
So in other words, management system standards can now be applied to all organizations regardless of size, industry or nature of business.
Critical to this management system is to have it regularly reviewed by an independent body and this review will tell you how well your management system is ticking over and it will also inform you with regards to whether any improvements should to be made to your safety management systems, including documentation.

Documentation is what you are going to rely on if you ever get challenged on your safety practices. However, it must be understood that compliance with a management system standard like ISO 45001 does not necessarily mean that you are compliant with the WHS Act.
However, it should be clear that this Occupational Health and Safety Management System becomes an important tool to demonstrate management commitment to safety.

Although the primary purpose of the management system is to improve workplace safety, implementing this ISO standard has many more additional benefits such as improved worker morale through increased worker participation & reduced incident rates which in turn, leads to improvements in product quality and overall business efficiency.

In your handbook you will find additional information with regards to Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems.