Comparison of ISO 14001 and ISO 45001

ISO 14001 is an Environment Management System that provides a framework for organisations to implement an EMS and improve its environmental performance whereas ISO 45001 is Occupational Health and Safety Management System that provides a framework for organisation to manage its OH&S risks and improve its OH&S performance. Previously ISO 45k standard was OHSAS 18001, which in recent times have been revised and changed to ISO 45001.

After ISO 9001:2015, one of the most implemented standards is the ISO 14001:2015 i.e. Environment Management System. Organisations soon realised customers didn’t just want a standardised product but also were wanting to understand if the product produced in the same organisation is compliant to environment management system and if it adheres to practices that make up for environment regulatory compliances. With further evolutions, when humans were seen as more than just a resource, there came into picture was ISO 45001:2018 which was for occupational health and safety management system. With exploitation of workers for more productivity and inhumane working conditions, this too varied across countries thus creating a discomfort among customers and investors. This is when ISO 45001:2018 (previously OHSAS 18001) came in to being.

The background of ISO 45001 coming into picture is also interesting. Most big names in the industry used to source material from industries set in either under developed or developing countries where labour and other materials were cheap, norms were flouted or not adhered to. Such finished goods or partially finished goods would be bought in to countries and final packing and labelling would done in the respective location before final dispatch. These industries set up in under developed or developing countries were either owned or a third party. Such transactions with these industries either work in the model of Buy-to-sell (which means an external vendor would do everything from manufacture to pack and then parent company just markets it through own channel) or outsourcing (a part of on process if offloaded to a different vendor and when done, it goes back to parent company to finish the rest of the processes). When OHSAS certification used to be done previously, the clauses didn’t cover the part of “outsourcing” and hence only a corporate building or a manufacturing set up under the scope would be audited, here was the biggest gap. It excluded a major junk of any industry.

Both the standards adhere to the high-level structure i.e. 10 Clauses with plan do check act as the base principle.  Previously ISO 45001 was known as OHSAS 18001, it was not in line with high level structure. But it was revised recently in 2018 and now it is named as ISO 45001:2018 called the Occupational Health and safety Management Systems.

There is a mix of many requirements that are similar and some are unique. On one hand ISO 14001 aims at implementing environmental framework in the organisation where product is being developed and manufactured whereas on the other hand ISO 45001 aims to help organizations create a safer and healthy work environment for its employees and visitors. Similar to all ISO Standards, these two standards also can be implemented irrespective of product, organisation size, type of industry, etc 

In the table below Table 1, shows a clear comparison between ISO 14001:2015 and ISO 45001:2018, clause wise. In the first column with header as “U/I” where U stands for Unique requirement and “I” stands for similar requirements that can be integrated under one header.

Table 1: Comparison between ISO 14001 and ISO 45001