A review of international developments in occupational safety and health auditing practices

• Main Authors: Kang, Eng Thye, Aljunid, Syed Mohamed, Gopal Rampal, Krishna
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Department of Community Health, UKM 2004
• Subjects: T Technology (General)
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/162/1/A_REVIEW_OF_INTERNATIONAL_DEVELOPMENTS_IN_OCCUPATIONAL_SAFET.pdf; http://repo.uum.edu.my/162/; http://www.communityhealthjournal.org/detailarticle.asp?id=282&issue=Vol10(1):2004

Auditing is an integral component of the occupational safety and health management system (OSHMS). Why, how and who conducts the OSH audits vary. There are rapid developments in OSH auditing. These are in the context of standardization of the audit mechanism, eg. the development of international guidelines and OSH performance indicators. Criticism has been raised by different professionals in facing both old and new audit approaches occupational safety and health. Malaysia could learn from these experiences in developing the suitable auditing practices. In short, few key areas were learned from the literature review that found important as a good input to local audit practitioners. Firstly, the OSH MS audit should be conducted in the more value added to the organization than just merely conforming to the own disciplinary standard. For instance, OSH audit should incorporate or integrate with other main business functions. Secondly, OSH audit should be adopting more process based performance than just the downstream accident rate measurement. Thirdly, program audit approach should be replace with the system approach so that the real root cause problem could be identified rather then the symptom problem. Forth, there is no right set of OSHMS elements that means any effort to adopt any new standard should be tested thoroughly before blindly adopted it completely. Fifth, audit should go beyond merely comply to the laws and conformance to any standard procedures as well as its rigid definition. Off-job injuries statistic is in fact far more severe compare to the formal workplace injuries rate. Blindly abide to narrow laws definition or standard will result the bigger losses were fail to identify.