Many organizations with health & safety programs want to drive compliance without the extra efforts associated with a health & safety management system.
They wish to make compliance part of what every employee should be concerned about while making it an important part of what they do every day. While compliance is very important, some organizations focus on the ethical aspects of business conduct. The proper attitude of the employees is critical to creating a strong safety culture. Organizations that separate the health & safety program as a compliance-driven effort often use the ISO 14001:2015 management system for their environmental program. In both cases, the ISO 19600:2014 guidelines can be used as a “plug in” module to strengthen the compliance focus of the two management systems listed above.
ISO 19600:2014 is a set of guidelines rather than a certifiable management system. This guidance is written in the same harmonized high-level structures as ISO 45001:2018 (the new ISO health & safety management system standard with a tentative release date in February 2018) and ISO 14001:2015. The compliance standard consists of guidelines on what organizations should do to address compliance obligations, irrespective of where they originate. The guidelines are often used to benchmark the organization’s framework against international best practice. It enables the organization to mitigate any potential penalties imposed by regulators and the courts in the same way as the corresponding management systems mentioned above.
Investors often demand that corporations require their suppliers to adhere to ISO 14001:2015 and ISO 45001:2018 (replaces OHSAS 18001) to reduce the level of uncertainty in their operations. ISO 19600:2014 is often seen as a way to get the suppliers to establishing a plan for continual monitoring by creating monitoring processes, schedules, resources and the information to be collected. This can be used to identify instances where non-compliance has occurred, and the standard process can be audited by a third party.
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