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A safety management system (SMS) is designed to manage safety risk in the workplace, occupational safety being defined as the reduction of risk to a level that is as low as is reasonably practicable or ALARP to prevent people getting hurt.
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A safety management system (SMS) is designed to manage safety risk in the workplace, occupational safety being defined as the reduction of risk to a level that is as low as is reasonably practicable or ALARP to prevent people getting hurt.
A SMS provides a systematic way to continuously identify and monitor hazards and control risks while maintaining assurance that these risk controls are effective. [1] SMS can be defined as:
...a businesslike approach to safety. It is a systematic, explicit and comprehensive process for managing safety risks. As with all management systems, a safety management system provides for goal setting, planning, and measuring performance. A safety management system is woven into the fabric of an organization. It becomes part of the culture, the way people do their jobs. [2]
There are three imperatives for adopting a safety management system for a business – these are ethical, legal and financial. There is an implied moral obligation placed upon an employer to ensure that work activities and the place of work are safe; there are legislative requirements defined in every jurisdiction on how this is to be achieved and there is a substantial body of evidence which shows that effective safety management can reduce the financial exposure and damage to the reputation of an organisation by reducing accidents.
To address these three important elements, an effective SMS should:
The foundation to an effective safety management system is that of effective risk management. The defined process within an organisation for the identification, assessment, evaluation and control (or risk treatment) of risk will be key, must be carefully considered and then documented within the safety management system. As with safety management, there are a number of risk management models that can be used depending on the risk profile of an organisation, but the internationally recognised standard ISO 31000 - Risk management – Guidelines [3] is a common starting point. Interestingly, there is no reference to safety within the standard.
Safety management evolved as a counterweight to the exploitation of workers in industry through the 19th and 20th centuries. As the industrial revolution opened up substantial commercial opportunities in Western societies, the financial imperative of business owners and industrialists lead to the use of an exploited, unskilled and uneducated workforce including child labour and rural migrant workers, often in working conditions where injury and death were day to day occurrences.
It became the remit of legislators with a social conscience to understand that governments had a moral and legal responsibility to protect workers using general and industry specific safety legislation. In the UK, the early 19th century Factory Acts were a significant development for gradually improving occupational safety through the decades, in fact the last iteration was made in 1961. This evolving environment was also the driving force behind the formation of the trade union or labour union movements and worker representation in the early 19th century across Europe and America which developed through the decades into representation in wage and working condition negotiations, but also in protecting the health, safety and welfare of workers.
One clear example of how unsafe and dangerous work conditions had become during the industrial revolution can be seen in this extract relating to an early 20th century mining disaster in West Virginia, USA.
As the 19th century closed out and the 20th century began, West Virginia had become a more dangerous place to mine than most.
West Virginia fell far behind other major coal-producing states in regulating mining conditions. Between 1890 and 1912, West Virginia had a higher mine death rate than any other state. West Virginia was the site of numerous deadly coal mining accidents, including the nation's worst coal disaster. On December 6, 1907, an explosion at a mine owned by the Fairmont Coal Company in Monongah, Marion County, killed 361. One historian has suggested that during World War I, a U.S. soldier had a better statistical chance of surviving in battle than did a West Virginian working in the coal mines. [4]
The drivers that were to positively influence mine safety as the 20th century progressed included; improvements in mining legislation with regulatory oversight and in occupational health and safety legislation, involvement by trade unions to improve workers’ rights and working conditions, developments in mining technologies and a more general acceptance in wider society that such high levels of fatalities were no longer acceptable. [5]
As research into occupational medicine improved, it had become possible to start to identify industrial diseases and illnesses caused by exposure to industry specific hazards such as coal dust in mining (miners black lung or Coalworker's pneumoconiosis), asbestos in construction (asbestosis and mesothelioma), exposure to physical agents such as occupational noise from industrial machinery (hearing loss, tinnitus or deafness) and vibration hazards from tools and equipment (hand-arm vibration syndrome and vibration white finger). These disabling and often fatal hazard vectors could then be targeted by legislation to reduce worker exposure to these dangerous substances and activities.
As more industry specific and general safety, health and welfare related legislation started to be introduced, it became necessary for employers to have a framework within which these safety regulations could be understood, managed and the legal requirements implemented. This was necessary, not just to comply with regulations but to also avoid fines and legal costs for non-compliance, increased insurance and workers compensation costs due to accidents and especially in the U.S. increasingly expensive criminal and civil liability lawsuits for death and injury caused at work.
The ILO guidance document is one of the most basic and adaptable models for organisations to utilise when developing a safety management system. In the ILO guidance document, [6] the basic safety management components are:
Although other safety management models may use different terminology, the basic components and workflow for safety management systems will be the same. The desired outcome is an effective Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) process where the goal is that of continual and measurable improvement.
A SMS is intended to act as a business administration structure for an organization to effectively meet its legal obligations under applicable occupational safety and health laws. The scope of the organization's operations and therefore its risk profile will determine how the SMS is structured and what resources are required to manage occupational health and safety risk effectively. Some organizations may also have to dovetail other management system functions, such as process safety, environmental resource management or quality management together with safety management to meet both regulatory requirements, industry sector requirements and an organizations own internal and discretionary standard requirements.
Safety management should be considered as a part of the overall business management system of an organization and not an add-on to it. Increasingly, management standards across a range of business functions such as environment, quality and safety are now being designed so that these traditionally disparate elements can be integrated and managed within a single business management system and not as separate and stand-alone functions.
Due to the close association between health and safety, safety management systems (SMS) are also increasingly known as occupational health and safety management systems (OHSMS); these two terms can to the greater extent can be used interchangeably.
An SMS is only as good as its implementation – effective safety management means that organisations need to ensure they are looking at all the risks within the organization as a single system, rather than having multiple, competing, ‘Safety Management Silos.’ [7] If safety is not seen holistically, it can interfere with the prioritization of improvements or even result in safety issues being missed. For example, after an explosion in March 2005 at BP's Texas City Refinery (BP) the investigation concluded that the company had put too much emphasis on personal safety thus ignoring the safety of their processes. [8] The antidote to such silo thinking is the proper evaluation of all risks, a key aspect of an effective SMS. [8]
Over time, particular safety management models can become a preferred standard within an industry sector which is an approach often driven by industry representative bodies or trade associations. In industries where public safety is a prime consideration or where organisations operate in a high risk industry sector, specific regulations may be introduced which detail requirements that fit the industry risk profile, such as the OSHA requirement for a process safety management system. [9]
Industry specific safety management include:
Regulatory requirements for a safety management system include:
Independent safety management standards include:
Many countries have developed national safety management models that have become adopted by organisations across a wide range of industries. National standards draw on experience and knowledge from a wide variety of organisations and individuals and can provide a uniform and consistent framework in which to work. In addition, such standards can be externally accessed and certified, which for many organisations is a very desirable goal.
These standards have a number of benefits:
The Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series, commonly known as OHSAS 18001 series standard from 1999 was an attempt to consolidate and establish a definitive certifiable standard internationally, taking lessons and best practice from many national standards. It was widely adopted with a revision undertaken in 2007. The OHSAS Project Group was independent of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). OHSAS 18001:2007 was withdrawn and replaced by the ISO standard ISO 45001:2018 Occupational health and safety management systems — Requirements with guidance for use [21]
One significant development that ISO 45001 has introduced is compatibility with the ISO 14001 environmental management and the ISO 9001 quality management standards.
Risk management is the identification, evaluation, and prioritization of risks followed by coordinated and economical application of resources to minimize, monitor, and control the probability or impact of unfortunate events or to maximize the realization of opportunities.
The ISO 9000 family is a set of five quality management systems (QMS) standards that help organizations ensure they meet customer and other stakeholder needs within statutory and regulatory requirements related to a product or service. ISO 9000 deals with the fundamentals of QMS, including the seven quality management principles that underlie the family of standards. ISO 9001 deals with the requirements that organizations wishing to meet the standard must fulfill. ISO 9002 is a model for quality assurance in production and installation. ISO 9003 for quality assurance in final inspection and test. ISO 9004 gives guidance on achieving sustained organizational success.
ISO 14000 is a family of standards related to environmental management that exists to help organizations (a) minimize how their operations negatively affect the environment ; (b) comply with applicable laws, regulations, and other environmentally oriented requirements; and (c) continually improve in the above.
A management system is a set of policies, processes and procedures used by an organization to ensure that it can fulfill the tasks required to achieve its objectives. These objectives cover many aspects of the organization's operations. For instance, an environmental management system enables organizations to improve their environmental performance, and an occupational safety and health management system enables an organization to control its occupational health and safety risks.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is a large regulatory agency of the United States Department of Labor that originally had federal visitorial powers to inspect and examine workplaces. Congress established the agency under the Occupational Safety and Health Act OSH Act, which President Richard M. Nixon signed into law on December 29, 1970. OSHA's mission is to "assure safe and healthy working conditions for working men and women by setting and enforcing standards and by providing training, outreach, education, and assistance". The agency is also charged with enforcing a variety of whistleblower statutes and regulations. OSHA's workplace safety inspections have been shown to reduce injury rates and injury costs without adverse effects on employment, sales, credit ratings, or firm survival.
In general, compliance means conforming to a rule, such as a specification, policy, standard or law. Compliance has traditionally been explained by reference to the deterrence theory, according to which punishing a behavior will decrease the violations both by the wrongdoer and by others. This view has been supported by economic theory, which has framed punishment in terms of costs and has explained compliance in terms of a cost-benefit equilibrium. However, psychological research on motivation provides an alternative view: granting rewards or imposing fines for a certain behavior is a form of extrinsic motivation that weakens intrinsic motivation and ultimately undermines compliance.
Quality management ensures that an organization, product or service consistently functions well. It has four main components: quality planning, quality assurance, quality control and quality improvement. Quality management is focused not only on product and service quality, but also on the means to achieve it. Quality management, therefore, uses quality assurance and control of processes as well as products to achieve more consistent quality. Quality control is also part of quality management. What a customer wants and is willing to pay for it, determines quality. It is a written or unwritten commitment to a known or unknown consumer in the market. Quality can be defined as how well the product performs its intended function.
Environment (E), health (H) and safety (S),EHS is an acronym for the set that studies and implements the practical aspects of protecting the environment and maintaining health and safety at occupation. In simple terms it is what organizations must do to make sure that their activities do not cause harm to anyone. Commonly, quality - quality assurance and quality control - is adjoined to form the company division known as HSQE.
ISO 22000 is a Food safety management system which is outcome focused, providing requirements for any organization in the food industry with objective to help to improve overall performance in food safety. These standards are intended to ensure safety in the global food supply chain. The standards involve the overall guidelines for food safety management and also focuses on traceability in the feed and food chain.
American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP), formerly known as American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) until June 2018, is a global organization of more than 37,000 occupational safety and health (OSH) professional members who manage, supervise, research and consult on work-related OSH concerns in all industries, government and education. The Society's members use risk-based approaches to prevent workplace fatalities, injuries and illnesses.
ISO 31000 is a family of standards relating to risk management codified by the International Organization for Standardization. ISO 31000:2018 provides principles and generic guidelines on managing risks that could be negative faced by organizations as these could have consequence in terms of economic performance and professional reputation.
Nigel Howard Croft is Chairman of the ISO Joint Technical Coordination Group for Management System Standards, having been appointed by ISO's Technical Management Board in December 2020. He was previously Chair of the ISO Technical Committee TC 176/SC 2 from February 2010 until December 2018, with overall responsibility for the ISO 9001 standard, used worldwide as a basis for certification of quality management systems, and the ISO 9004 guidelines standard aimed at improving organisational performance, among others. In 2019 and 2020 he led the revision of "Annex SL" of the ISO Directives, that forms the basis for over 40 management system standards including those on environmental management, Occupational Health and Safety, Information Security, Anti-bribery, Food Safety and many more.
OHSAS 18001, Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series, was an international standard for occupational health and safety management systems that was subsequently adopted as a British Standard. Compliance with it enabled organizations to demonstrate that they had a system in place for occupational health and safety. BSI cancelled OHSAS 18001 to adopt ISO 45001. ISO 45001 was published in March 2018 by the International Organization for Standardization. Organizations that are certified to OHSAS 18001 were able to migrate to ISO 45001 by March 2021 to retain a recognized certification.
A lone worker (LW) is an employee who performs an activity that is carried out in isolation from other workers without close or direct supervision. Such staff may be exposed to risk because there is no-one to assist them and so a risk assessment may be required. Lone workers are now often supported by cloud-based automated monitoring systems and specialised monitoring call centres - often referred to as an 'Alarm Receiving Centre' or 'ARC' in the UK, or 'Emergency Dispatch Center' or 'EDC' in the US.
Occupational safety and health (OSH), also commonly referred to as occupational health and safety (OHS), occupational health, or occupational safety, is a multidisciplinary field concerned with the safety, health, and welfare of people at work. These terms also refer to the goals of this field, so their use in the sense of this article was originally an abbreviation of occupational safety and health program/department etc.
Permit-to-work (PTW) refers to management systems used to ensure that work is done safely and efficiently. These are used in hazardous industries and involve procedures to request, review, authorise, document and most importantly, de-conflict tasks to be carried out by front line workers. Permit to work is an essential part of control of work (COW), the integrated management of business critical maintenance processes. Control of work is made up of permit to work, hazard identification and risk assessment (RA), and isolation management (IM).
ISO 45001 is an ISO standard for management systems of occupational health and safety (OHS), published in March 2018. The goal of ISO 45001 is the reduction of occupational injuries and diseases, including promoting and protecting physical and mental health.
A psychosocial hazard or work stressor is any occupational hazard related to the way work is designed, organized and managed, as well as the economic and social contexts of work. Unlike the other three categories of occupational hazard, they do not arise from a physical substance, object, or hazardous energy.
The Annex SL is a section of the ISO/IEC Directives part 1 that prescribes how ISO Management System Standard (MSS) standards should be written. The aim of Annex SL is to enhance the consistency and alignment of MSS by providing a unifying and agreed-upon high level structure, identical core text and common terms and core definitions. The aim being that all ISO Type A MSS are aligned and the compatibility of these standards is enhanced.
MS 1722:2011 – Occupational Safety and Health Management Systems – Requirements is a Malaysian Standard that provides requirements on Occupational Safety and Health Management Systems (OSHMS) and basis for the development OSH systems in an organisation. The MS 1722 standard enable an organization to manage its OHS risks and improve its OHS performance. The requirements of the standard are intended to address OHS for employees, temporary employees, contractors and other personnel on site rather than the safety of products and services. The standards provide a more effective method of protecting employees and others from workplace injuries and illnesses and demonstrate management commitment in meeting OHS requirements.