Implementing an occupational health and safety management system

How to improve prevention at your workplace with tools such as COR^® and the Health and Safety Excellence program.

If you’ve recently been to an IHSA event, spoken to an IHSA consultant, or even flipped through an issue of IHSA Health and Safety Magazine, you’ve no doubt encountered the term “occupational health and safety management system.”

But what is this system, often shortened using the acronym OHSMS? What is its purpose? How do you apply it to your business? What are its benefits?

Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) defines it as “a coordinated system of procedures, processes, and other measures that is designed to be implemented by employers in order to promote continuous improvement in occupational health and safety.”

Put simply, an OHSMS is a comprehensive plan that helps keep your employees safe and healthy while they’re on the job. It’s the policies and practices they adhere to, the training they take, the inspections they participate in, and the emergency procedures they follow if something goes wrong. It’s everything your business does—consistently and systematically—to prevent workplace illnesses, injuries, and fatalities.

An effective OHSMS is typically based on recognized health and safety standards. One such standard is COR^®, which verifies the successful implementation of your company’s OHSMS through internal and external auditing. More than 700 businesses in Ontario currently have systems that are certified under the COR^® banner; many others are working toward COR^® certification.

The building blocks of an OHSMS

• Policy and commitment: A clear health and safety policy with strong leadership support.
• Planning and risk assessment: Identifying hazards, assessing risks, and ensuring legal compliance.
• Implementation and operation: Training, safe work procedures, personal protective equipment, communication.
• Monitoring and evaluation: Regular audits, incident reporting, and performance reviews.
• Continuous improvement: Corrective actions, policy updates, and efforts to foster a strong safety culture.

When properly implemented, an OHSMS helps you to be proactive about eliminating and controlling hazards because it accounts for all aspects of your company’s operations and is incorporated into every decision you make. It also builds in processes to evaluate how well it’s working—and to make improvements wherever gaps are found.

An OHSMS helps you improve continuously

Using the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle is among the most common ways to continuously improve both specific aspects of workplace health and safety and your complete OHSMS. (For example, PDCA is a foundational part of the COR^® standard.)

The four-step cycle follows this general approach:

• Plan: Analyze the problem; set goals and establish priorities; assign responsibilities; decide how performance will be measured.
• Do: Implement plans and procedures; communicate goals; train staff, if necessary.
• Check: Monitor and measure data; collect and assess worker feedback; document and report results.
• Act: Review findings; use knowledge to make improvements.

Each stage builds upon the last and informs what comes next. The cycle encourages open communication and engagement with employees, involving them directly in workplace prevention initiatives and reinforcing a culture of health and safety problem solving.

When used appropriately, PDCA helps confirm that what you’ve implemented—be it a specific procedure or a broader aspect of your OHSMS—is actually producing positive health and safety outcomes for workers.

Where to start with an OHSMS

Before you can improve an occupational health and safety management system, you need to have one in the first place. This starts with taking a clear-eyed look at your company to identify what you need to do to integrate health and safety into your everyday business operations.

Some questions to consider as part of this process are:

• How many people does the company employ?
• Where does it operate?
• What hazards are present at the workplace(s)?
• What job tasks do workers perform? What equipment is used?
• What legislation applies to the company and the work it does?
• Does everyone understand their health and safety responsibilities?
• What health and safety practices and procedures are currently in place (whether they’re documented or informal)?

From there, you’ll also benefit by digging deeper into the jobs that your workers commonly perform—and the specific hazards associated with each task. For example, ask yourself:

• What inspections (of equipment, tools, facilities, etc.) need to take place before work starts?
• What procedures are in place for identifying and reporting hazards?
• What training do workers need (as required by law and as a workplace best practice)?
• What first-aid supplies are necessary—and what are the emergency plans in case of a workplace incident?

Using HSEp to help

When it comes to these health and safety considerations, you may already be doing more than you realize. Implementing an OHSMS formalizes the steps you take to keep workers safe—and connects those actions to ensure they’re consistently applied, compliant with legislation, and communicated to everyone at your company.

One way to determine where you stand? Download the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) Health and Safety Excellence program (HSEp) manual from ihsa.ca/hsep and review its individual topics.

HSEp is designed to provide businesses with a path for improving their health and safety processes and systems. Companies that participate in HSEp work toward the completion and implementation of specific health and safety topics. Each of these topics contributes to the overall effectiveness of an OHSMS.

The HSEp manual highlights more than 40 topics, which are classified in three levels. Foundation topics are those that help you improve your understanding of basic health and safety requirements and get started developing an OHSMS. Intermediate topics build on the basics to make your OHSMS more robust. Advanced topics focus on continuously improving your OHSMS once it has been fully implemented—and, potentially, certified using a standard such as COR^®.

Once you’ve decided what topics you want or need to work on, you’ll have to allocate resources to the task. For example, you’ll need to determine who at your company will lead the improvement and implementation efforts. You’ll also need to figure out if you have sufficient capabilities internally to successfully complete the topics. If that’s a concern, a WSIB-approved HSEp service provider such as IHSA can deliver assistance in the form of training, resources, and guidance.

Participating in HSEp can clarify and organize the work of building your company’s OHSMS. It can also offer financial rewards: businesses that successfully complete HSEp topics can qualify for rebates on their WSIB premiums.

And because many HSEp topics are aligned with the elements of COR^®, it’s possible to work toward COR^® certification while participating in HSEp. In other words, HSEp can serve as a roadmap to successfully building your OHSMS with the COR^® standard.

Certifying your OHSMS

Once your company has established a strong OHSMS, you may choose to pursue certification under the COR^® standard. Doing so not only validates your commitment to workplace health and safety but also offers proven benefits, including superior safety performance, enhanced reputation, and the ability to bid on projects that require COR^® as a condition of contract.

Achieving COR^® certification involves completing comprehensive internal and external (third-party) audits and then demonstrating an ongoing commitment to COR^® requirements through annual maintenance audits.

IHSA offers a number of resources to help you on your COR^® journey, including training and workshops, consultation services, and a variety of templates, checklists, and guidelines.