Recognizing and managing the health and wellbeing of your people has never been so important. All employers are required to assess risks have policies and procedures in place to ensure a safe working environment.

BSI is the world leader in occupational health and safety management systems.

We were the originators of the first guide on occupational health and safety in 1996 which laid the foundation for OHSAS 18001, the standard upon which the world’s first global occupational health and safety management system – BS EN ISO 45001 - was built.

Set the standard for occupational health

An effective occupational health and safety management system will help you to protect and enhance your most important asset, your people, to drive business excellence. It is especially important for organizations in the engineering sector to have stringent health and safety processes, as employees are working in higher-risk environments, such as workshops, factories, or laboratories.

Supervisors and managers should ensure that safe working practices are being followed and action taken if unsafe practices are observed.

Machinery should all be well maintained and have the correct safeguards. It should also only be used by those trained and competent to do so and organizations should be able to provide evidence to prove this.

Conditions will vary from clean workshops to those where machines are leaking fluids, emitting fumes, and swarf accumulates on the floor. General tidiness is often a good indication of how well other issues are being managed.

Many serious accidents that occur in engineering workshops could be avoided if the wearing of gloves was prevented whilst working close to rotating machinery such as drills and lathes. In addition, when operating engineering machinery avoid wearing loose clothing, long hair, or jewellery should be avoided when operating engineering machinery.

Using standards can offer a set of powerful business and marketing tools for engineering organizations of all sizes. You can use them to fine-tune your performance and manage the risks you face while operating in more efficient and sustainable ways; they'll allow you to demonstrate the quality of what you do to your customers, and they help you to see how to embed health and safety best practices into to your organization.

The benefits of implementing health and safety standards include:

• Increasing organizational resilience through proactive risk prevention, innovation, and continual improvement

• Strengthening of legal and regulatory compliance whilst reducing business losses

• Demonstrating brand responsibility by committing to safe, healthy, and sustainable work

• One global occupational health and safety system for all businesses, of all sizes

Meeting the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals

Organizations that are committed to sustainability are increasingly aligning their corporate strategies to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Effective health, safety, and wellbeing programs demonstrate an engineering organization’s commitment to ensuring decent work conditions, health, wellbeing, and equality practices, as well as other aspects of sustainability. For organizations seeking to enhance their ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) profile, positive and proactive health, safety and wellbeing culture send a powerful message to shareholders and stakeholders, including workers, that they truly care for their people. All our health, safety, and wellbeing standards support engineering organizations on their SDG journey.

To read more about achieving sustainability in the engineering sector, click here.

What are the key health and safety standards for the engineering sector?

There are several important health and safety standards that engineering organizations can implement:

• BS EN ISO 45003 Occupational health and safety management — Psychological health and safety at work: managing psychosocial risks — Guidelines.

• BS EN ISO 45001 Occupational Health and Safety Management.

• BS 45002 Series Occupational health and safety management systems. General guidelines on the application of BS EN ISO 45001.

• BS 8599-1:2019 Workplace first aid kits. Specification for the contents of workplace first aid kits.

• BS EN ISO 4007:2018 Personal protective equipment. Eye and face protection. Vocabulary.

• BS EN 1731:2006 Personal eye protection. Mesh eye and face protectors.

• BS EN 12464-1:2011 Light and lighting. Lighting of workplaces. Indoor workplaces.

Add these key health and safety standards to your collection today.

Discover BSI Knowledge

Get everyone in your engineering business involved in embedding a culture of health and safety. A BSI Knowledge subscription gives you instant access to the resources you need to improve your health and safety processes. The flexibility and visibility it provides of the best practices guidance enable you to get the most from your standards. Build your own custom collection of standards, or opt for access to our GBM07 Occupational & Personal Safety module and keep up-to-date with any relevant changes to your standards strategy. Request to learn more.