ISO 45001 Future Changes

Although I am not on the technical committee, and cannot say for certain what will happen, I can predict a bit from what I know. In general, the Iso technical committees will look at the standards about every 5 years to see what changes are needed. If we look at the oldest management system standard (ISO 9001), this followed the cycle of a major release (1987), minor changes (1994), a major change (2000), minor changes (2008), and then a major change in 2015 to align with other management system standards. So, following this I would expect minor changes in the net revision of ISO 45001, but nothing major. This will also be delayed a bit due to the delayed transition from OHSAS 18001 for the pandemic, and future major changes will likely be harder to do where they affect the alignment with other ISO management system standards or to change how any management system utilizes the management principles (such as the process approach).

In short, I don’t see any revolutionary changes to being ISO compliant in the next 5 years.

For a bit more on the crucial management principle of the process approach, see the article:

• Process approach application in ISO 45001 implementation of health & safety https://advisera.com/45001academy/blog/2017/03/15/process-approach-application-in-iso-45001-implementation-of-health-safety/