CHAPTER 3: OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY POLICY (CLAUSE 4.2)
The OH&S policy is a statement that describes the overall intention, vision and direction of an organisation, relating to its OH&S performance. It is formally expressed by the organisation’s top management, to reflect its commitment to protect health and safety of all personnel, to comply with all applicable laws, and to continually improve the OH&S performance of the organisation.
Summary of requirements
Establish an OH&S policy that includes:
1 Top management’s commitment to prevention of injury and ill health, as well as continual improvement of its OH&S performance.
2 Commitment to comply with all regulatory and other applicable OH&S requirements.
3 A basis for setting OH&S objectives.
The OH&S policy must be approved, documented, periodically reviewed, and made available to all interested parties. (The intention here is to ensure that individuals are aware of their OH&S obligations.)
How can these requirements be met by an organisation?
Putting together an OH&S policy is essentially the responsibility of top management, who must take the following steps in order to meet the requirements of this clause of the standard:
1 Identify the nature and scale of hazards and risks that are associated with the organisation’s occupational activities.
2 Define, document and approve an occupational health and safety policy that reflects top management’s vision and commitment for prevention of injury and ill health. Within the OH&S policy, top management must also state their commitment to comply with all applicable regulatory OH&S requirements, as well as a commitment to continually improve the organisation’s OH&S performance. This could be done by describing the parameters, or the direction along which the continual improvement of OH&S performance is visualised. These directions can also become the basis for setting, and reviewing, an organisation’s OH&S objectives.
3 Communicate the OH&S policy (after approval by top management) to all individuals within the organisation, along with their OH&S roles and responsibilities. An organisation could choose many methods to communicate its OH&S policy. These could include training sessions on policies and procedures, video messages, posters displayed at prominent locations, ongoing briefings, newsletters, e-mails, etc. The organisation must ensure that the language used for communicating its OH&S policy and procedures is easily understandable by all personnel.
4 Having defined and communicated its OH&S policy, the organisation must periodically review the policy for suitability and effectiveness. ‘Management review’ is one such platform which is normally used for review of OH&S policy. The frequency of review is a decision that must be made by an organisation itself.
An example occupational health and safety policy of Safe & Sound Inc. (SSI)
SSI believes in caring for the health and safety of all its employees, as well as other personnel who work for, or on behalf of, SSI. We commit to proactively work towards:
- Assessing the occupational health and safety risks, and to take steps to prevent injury and ill health to all personnel.
- Ensuring compliance to all applicable occupational health and safety regulatory requirements, as well as any other requirement to which SSI subscribes.
- Continually improving our OH&S management system, by setting and achieving higher performance goals. This shall include the reduction of OH&S incidents, providing a healthy work environment and moving towards becoming a zero injury organisation.
Chief Executive
Safe & Sound Inc.
Dated: 1April 2012 ver. 1