How a regulatory monitoring and compliance application boosts your compliance with ISO 45001 requirements

ISO 45001 is an international standard that sets out requirements for health and safety in the workplace.
For organizations keen to maintain regulatory compliance and improve their security practices, the use of a regulatory monitoring and compliance tool can be extremely beneficial.
In this article, we explore the advantages of using such a tool to maximize the effectiveness of the normative approach.

ISO 45001 requirements

The ISO 45001 standard contains a number of requirements concerning monitoring and regulatory compliance.
Paragraph 6.1.3 of the standard specifies the existence of 4 levels of requirements;

• The organization shall establish, implement and maintain a process to identify and have access to current legal and other requirements applicable to its hazards, OSH risks and OSH management system.
  Legal requirements are those with which the organization MUST comply, and other requirements are those with which the organization CHOOSES to comply, such as the requirements of the Group to which it belongs.
• The organization must determine how these legal and other requirements apply to the organization, and what needs to be communicated.
• The organization must take these and other legal requirements into account when establishing, implementing, maintaining and continuously improving its OH&S management system.
• The organization must maintain and retain documented information on its legal and other requirements, and ensure that they are kept up to date and reflect any changes.

Then, in paragraph 6.1.4, the organization must plan the actions to be taken in response to risks and opportunities, including the following requirements:

• The organization must plan the actions to be taken to meet legal and other requirements.
• The organization must plan the actions to be taken to anticipate or deal with emergency situations.
• The organization must plan how to integrate and implement these actions within the H&S management system processes or other business processes.
• The organization must plan how to evaluate the effectiveness/efficiency of these actions.

The regulatory watch required by ISO 45001, in practice

The aim is therefore to determine a body of regulatory texts:

1. comprehensive information on the company’s activities, products and facilities, as well as its structure, size, personnel, equipment and specific activities. Depending on the legal system, these may be Laws, Decrees, Orders, Circulars or regional or local regulations, including commitments made to the Authorities.
2. dealing with selected areas: room layouts, work equipment, products, ergonomics, etc.
3. and sort them by theme and sub-theme in a document that can be consulted by everyone

How the web application for regulatory monitoring and compliance facilitates the implementation of ISO 45001 SM

• The regulatory watch application meets the first requirement of collecting regulatory texts and keeping an effective watch, and enables you to keep your watch constantly up to date thanks to bi-monthly text updates.
• The online tool aids comprehension: thanks to a clear structure of the text, the web application first provides a global view of the applicable text (theme and applicability of the text) and then enables a more in-depth analysis. This reinforces the understanding and scope of the text, and therefore the applicability and communication of these requirements.
• NV Compliance offers the possibility of compliance and internal monitoring of ISO 45001 compliance through the creation and implementation of action plans assigned to a person, and monitoring from their creation to their complete execution.
• The app lets you store information, consult the history of actions taken and then export reports for communication to stakeholders, including easier preparation for management reviews.

One of the key points of ISO 45001 is to demonstrate continuous improvement in selected areas, and to demonstrate leadership commitment.

By using a web-based regulatory compliance monitoring tool, leadership has access to all the data relevant to the compliance of its company, whether it is present in one location or divided into several sites.

Companies embarking on a certification process can use the web application’s dashboards to prove their progress at any time.

In conclusion, the use of a regulatory intelligence application is a formidable tool for organizations in optimizing their regulatory compliance and reinforcing their workplace safety culture, particularly when implementing an ISO 45001 certification process.
Companies benefit from proactive management of regulatory obligations, access to real-time updates and compliance monitoring.