Many organizations have a structured and implemented a safety management system. Some have been developed 'in house', some have been adapted and modified based on experience and others models they are familiar with, while some have been based onother models or Standards which are well-known nationally and internationally (i.e. CSA Z-1000, ANSI Z10, OHSAS 18001:2007, OSHA VPP, ILO-OSH 2001, Petersen's Challenge of Change 21 catagory model, etc.).

A well-designed and effectvely implemented safety management system provides a systematic way to identify hazards and control risks while maintaining assurance that these risk controls are effective. A Safety Management System 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.

So which safety management system is right for you, what does it look like,  and how you you go about conceiving, structing and implementing a sound safety management system? The following ILO guidance on safety management system might be of benefit in helping to make this decision:

Are Management Systems good for OSH?

Occupational Ssafety and Health Management Systems (OSHMS) should not be regarded as the panacea for increasing the performance of the organization in ensuring and sustaining a safe and healthy working environment. As any method, OSHMS has both advantages and weaknesses, and its effectiveness is very much dependant on how it is understood and applied. While most organizations will probably benefit from a full OSHMS, some might consider using a scaled down, less formal approach to the management of OSH. The decision of moving to OSHMS may be sometimes difficult to justify as the distinction between a program and a system is a potentially weak one.

Programmatic approaches, such as that promoted in the ILO OSH Convention, 1981 (No. 155) do in fact contain systems’ features and similarly, systems’ approaches do in fact contain programmatic features. This is also the case in a large number of national OSH legislation. However, systems management brings to OSH the possibility of establishing mechanism for not only continual assessment and improvement of OSH performance, but also for the building of a preventative safety and health culture, as defined in the ILO Global Strategy on OSH (2003) and the ILO Convention on a Promotional Framework for Occupational Safety and Health , 2006 (No. 187). The performance of an OSHMS can only be as good as the performance of the overall management of the organization. Like all methods, it has both strengths and weaknesses which should be known. It is therefore important to be aware of the pitfalls that may derail the operation of an OSHMS, but also know what elements must be in place to ensure a good performance and benefit from the important advantages of OSHMS for safety and health. It must be kept in mind that these strengths and weaknesses apply mostly to medium and large organizations which have the necessary technical and financial resources for a full implementation of OSHMS.

It is very important to remember that OSHMS is a management method and not an OSH program in itself. Therefore, a management systems’ approach is only as good as the OSH framework or program in place in the organization. OSHMS programs must function within the national OSH legislation framework and the organization must ensure that the system include a review of regulatory requirements and is updated accordingly to integrate them.

Strengths of OSHMS

It is now recognized that the management systems’ approach brings a number of important advantages to the implementation of OSH, some of which have been already identified further above. A systems’ approach also adjust the overall safety and health program over time so that decisions on hazard’s control and risk reduction improve progressively. Other key advantages are:

• The possibility of integrating OSH requirements into business systems and aligning OSH objectives with business objectives, thus resulting in a better taking into account of implementation’s costs related to control equipments and processes, skills, training and information (i.e. quality, environment, security, etc.);
• Harmonizing OSH requirements with other related requirements, particularly those pertaining to quality and environment;
• Providing a logical framework upon which to establish and run an OSH program that tracks all the elements requiring action and monitoring;
• Streamlining and improving communication mechanisms, policies, procedures, programs, and objectives according to a set of rules applied universally;
• Applicability to differences in cultural and national regulatory systems;
• Establishing an environment conducive to the building of a preventative safety and health culture;
• Strengthening social dialogue;
• Distributing OSH responsibilities along the line management, involving all: managers, employees and workers have defined responsibilities for an effective implementation of the system;
• Adapting to the size and activity of the organization, and to the types of hazards encountered.
• Establishing a continuous improvement framework; and,
• Providing an auditable baseline for performance evaluation.

Limitations of OSHMS

While the potential of OSHMS for improving safety and health is undeniable, there are many pitfalls which, if not avoided, can very rapidly lead the exercise toward failure. The usefulness of OSHMS has been questioned in several studies on the subject, and a number of potentially serious problems have been underlined, such as:

• The production of documents and records needs to be controlled carefully to avoid defeating the purpose of the system by drowning it in excessive paperwork. The focus on the human factor can be easily lost if the emphasis is more on the paperwork requirements of a formal OSHMS than people.
• Imbalances between management processes (quality, OSH, environment) must be avoided to prevent dilution of requirements and inequalities in focus. The lack of careful planning and full communication prior to the introduction of an OSHMS program can raise suspicions about and resistance to the change.
• OSHMS usually puts greater emphasis on safety rather than health and with the risk of missing the onset of occupational diseases. Occupational health surveillance of workers must be incorporated in the system as an important and effective tool for monitoring the health of workers over the long term. Occupational health services, such as defined in the ILO Occupational Health Services Convention, 1985 (No. 161) and its accompanying Recommendation (No. 171) should be an integral part of OSHMS. Depending on the size of the organization the resources that are required to set up an OSHMS can be significant and should be the object of a realistic appraisal of overall costs in terms of implementation time, skills and human resources required to install and run the system. This is particularly important when the work is outsourced.

The ILO guidelines are fast becoming the most referenced and used model for the development of OSHMS programs at the national and enterprise level. Their generic format makes them easy to use together with other OHSMS standards or to include them in integrated management systems, as well as facilitating the implementation of OSH requirements by both multinational international organizations.

Many of the voluntary standards, whether developed by national agencies or professional bodies have used the ILO-OSH 2001 Guidelines as a model because it reflects the principles promoted by ILO OSH standards and it was developed and adopted on a tripartite basis and represents therefore a very wide consensus on the most effective way to manage OSH.

Although organizations may use various versions of OSHMS standards depending on national requirements and the sector involved, all these standards integrate the PDCA model mentioned before.  A number of OSHMS technical standards and guidelines designed for organizations have been developed by private bodies such as the American National Standards Institute (ANSI Z10), CSA (Z1000) or the British Standards Institution (BS OHSAS 18000 series). In the last 20 years, a large majority of countries have been introducing the implementation of OSHMS in organizations through a number of voluntary or regulatory mechanisms which can be:

• Mandatory through regulatory measures, at least for specified undertakings (Indonesia, Norway, Singapore);
• Nationally applicable voluntary standards with the support of certification mechanisms (Australia and New Zealand, China, Thailand);
• Voluntary through promotion of national OSHMS guidelines issued by a national body (Japan, Korea);
• Voluntary through the adoption of internationally recognized OSHMS such as ILO-OSH 2001 (India, Malaysia).

During the last decade, the approach of OSHMS has become popular and has been introduced in both industrialized and developing countries. The ways for promoting its application vary from legal requirements to voluntary use. Experience shows that OSHMS is a logical and useful tool for the promotion of continual improvement of OSH performance at the organization’s level. Key elements for its successful application include ensuring management commitment and active participation of workers in the joint implementation. It is expected that more and more countries integrate OSHMS in national OSH programs as a means to strategically promote the development of sustainable mechanisms for OSH improvements in the organizations.

(Source:  ILO OSH MANAGEMENT SYSTEM: A TOOL FOR CONTINUAL IMPROVEMENT)