TUC raises concerns on New draft ISO guidance on Psychological Risk
The international committee behind ISO 45001 has drawn up a new draft guidance standard on psychological risk in the workplace.
The international committee behind ISO 45001 has drawn up a new draft guidance standard on 'psychological risk in the workplace', a document that it says could be converted to a new management standard in three years.
The new draft has been produced by International Standards Organisation Technical Committee 283 (ISO TC 283), the same international committee responsible for delivering ISO 45001 last year, which is now responsible for future revisions to the standard.
Under its new chair Martin Cottam, group technical assurance and quality director at Lloyd's Register, ISO TC 283 met in September in Coventry, England with around 90 experts from 36 participating countries and 10 liaison organizations involved. The participants were divided up into working groups, in which they were to write technical texts on two priority topics:
- ISO 45003 draft standard on "Occupational Health and Safety Management - Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace - Guidelines
- Draft manual for the implementation of ISO 45001 for SMEs, based on the manual relating to the ISO 14001 standard on environmental management
The second plenary meeting of ISO/TC 283 will be held from 4 to 8 March 2019 in Texas. The meeting will among other things have to address issues from the TUC where a senior policy officer Hugh Robertson recently criticised the draft guidance particularly the references to employees' 'competence' in managing their own psychological risks. Robertson argued that ISO standards are not appropriate to dealing with stress and psychosocial risk at work.
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