What’s the difference?
The world’s first International Standard to address workplace psychosocial health was published in June 2021. ISO 45003 Occupational health and safety management – Psychological health and safety at work – gives guidance on managing psychological health and safety risks to align with ISO 45001 occupational health and safety management system. It addresses the many areas that can impact a worker’s psychological health, including ineffective communication, excessive pressure, leadership, and organizational culture.
What’s the same with ISO 45001 and ISO 45003?
Both standards ISO 45001 and ISO 45003:
- Follow management system principles and structure of Plan-Do-Check-Act.
- Emphasise the importance of leadership commitment, risk management, roles, resources, and planning.
- Provide guidance on competency, change, procurement, methods of monitoring, responding and review.
A clear distinction is ISO 45001, has great emphasis on both workplace health AND safety (WHS). To understand how to measure WHS refer to the Health and Safety Index article, “An integrated approach for Health AND Safety”.
What is different about ISO 45003?
ISO 45003 provides more specific psychosocial risk guidance on how to identify:
- Conditions, circumstances, and workplace demands that have the potential to impair the psychological health and well-being of workers.
- Human and organisational factors, their assessment and potential actions required to improve the working environment.
- Work-related hazards of psychosocial nature to address social and work factors, such as role conflict, job control, change, time pressures poor communication.
- Primary, secondary, and tertiary interventions, e.g., prevention, training, incident reporting, investigations, rehabilitation and return-to-work considerations.
So, what to do?
Given work-related hazards of psychosocial nature are often invisible, we recommend:
- Normalising psychosocial risk
- Applying surveys based on evidence-based research
- Conducting focus groups led by expert facilitators
- Evaluating performance to identify trends and risk factors.
FEFO Consulting has partnered with the Health and Safety Index to design integrated online assessments to measure health AND safety performance supported by reliable benchmarks.
We appreciate organisations have different needs, so have developed a range of Diagnostic (Dx) surveys along a spectrum of being broad to more specific.
Check out our short Mental Health & Wellbeing Organisation Assessment video covering 17 psychosocial factors is designed to align with a Job Demand-Job Resource-Worker Outcome Model with a particular focus on mental health.
To understand more about our deep dive organisation assessment services into Mental Health & Wellbeing, refer to our Case Study or contact us at [email protected].
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