As the U.S. member body to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) encourages its members and relevant stakeholders to comment on a new ISO work item proposal focused on standardization in the field of occupational health and safety (OH&S) management by close of business on January 19, 2018.
BSI, the ISO member from the United Kingdom, submitted the proposal for a new technical committee, to focus on the field of occupational health and safety management to enable an organization to control its OH&S risks and improve its OH&S performance. The technical committee will be responsible for maintaining and updating ISO 45001, Occupational health and safety, following its initial publication (expected publication 2018).
According to the proposal, the voluntary standard will provide guidance for organizations of all sizes and in all sectors for the development, implementation, maintenance, and continuous improvement of a psychologically safe and healthy workplace environment. The standard will have additional direct benefits, including improving an organization's ability to recruit and retain workers, reducing absenteeism and employee turnover rates, reducing the costs of incidents, downtime, and productivity losses, and reducing short- and long-term disability claims and insurance premiums.
The proposal suggests the expansion of work into other areas of occupational health and safety management and the conversion of ISO (Project Committee) PC 283, Occupational health and safety management systems,into a technical committee. ANSI will seek the position of the U.S. Technical Advisory Group (TAG) for ISO Technical Committee (TC) 283 on this new proposal.
All interested stakeholders can review the proposal, which includes a listing of relevant products, existing documents at the international, regional, and national levels, and stakeholder categories.
Please submit comments to Steven Cornish, ANSI director of international policy ([email protected]), by close of business on January 19, 2018.
ANSI has published an explanatory information document outlining the process used to develop U.S. positions on issues and activities under consideration by ISO and IEC.