ISO 45001

ISO 45001 is the international standard for occupational health and safety management systems. It asks organisations to determine risks and opportunities systematically, put controls in place, involve their people, and evaluate how the whole thing works at regular intervals. In the Netherlands it replaced the earlier OHSAS 18001.

On competence the standard is concrete: the organisation has to determine what capability is needed, provide for it, and evaluate the effectiveness of what it does. That last word is where most organisations fall short, because recording attendance is not evaluation.

At an audit the question is rarely whether training took place. The question is how you know it worked. An organisation that can only show completion rates has no answer. One that can demonstrate that scores on a specific failure mode have risen, or that near-misses in a category have fallen, does.