Last week's article took a brief look at two of the leading safety management systems: OHSAS 18001 and ILO-OSH 2001. At the end of the piece, I made reference to the recently published U.S. standard, ANSI Z.10. Let's now take a closer look at the new American standard.

Does the World Need ANSI Z.10?

Many organizations have already adopted OHSAS 18001 or ILO-OSH 2001. Or they've fashioned their own management systems based on their own circumstances. So does the world need another standard from the U.S.? And does it need it now?

Some of the rationales for the development of ANSI Z.10:

• To help U.S. businesses by promoting harmonization;
• To protect the health and safety of American workers more cost-effectively;
• To integrate quality, environmental and health and safety systems;
• To enhance U.S. influence in the international safety community; and
• To represent a product of consensus that benefits organizations of all types and sizes.

Safety Systems a la Amèricain

One reason for developing ANSI Z.10 was to offer American businesses an American standard. What, if anything, about ANSI Z.10 is uniquely American?

"One aspect of the standard that's American is the strong emphasis on management leadership and employee involvement," notes James Geiger, associate director of occupational health and safety for Cornell University and a participant in the drafting process.

"The draft standard provides general criteria rather than specific requirements to allow for maximum flexibility for organizations of all sizes," says Geiger. "We deliberately tried to make the standard attractive to small and mid-size organizations." The drafters also tried to make the standard compatible with existing management systems that companies might already be using.

Conclusion

It remains to be seen whether U.S. safety professionals will embrace the new ANSI Z.10 standard. Ultimately, as with any other safety management system, ANSI Z.10 could help organizations reduce risks and improve health. But each organization will have to decide for itself whether the standard is suited to its own needs and compatible with the systems it already uses.

MEMBER REPLY

Making Sure All Safety Professionals Speak the Same Language

Mr. Pardy's article on safety management systems is very good. But I believe, globally speaking, before we can move the profession forward, we first must try to standardize our terminologies. This would be a very difficult task but I believe, through communication on a site like SafetyXChange, it could be done.

For example, in incident investigation and analysis, most of us use drop down menus with descriptors in the menu. First we should standardize what broad categories to use. Unsafe condition, unsafe act, root cause, etc. Then we should standardize the descriptors that fit that condition. Each industry would need its own data base. Lumber, transportation, manufacturing, refining communications, etc. Once we agree to a base number of descriptors each company could have a few of its own unique descriptors.

I know this would be a massive job, but I believe it would be worth tackling.

ddament@edmontonexchanger.com

THE BUSINESS CASE FOR MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

ISO 9001 & Financial Performance

Adopting a safety or any other kind of management system can be a huge investment for a company to make. Is it worth it?

Some evidence strongly suggests that it is - at least in the realm of ISO 9001. Recent studies have shown that companies that have achieved ISO 9001 certification have seen significant improvements in financial performance. Examples:

1999: Northern Ireland Study By McAdam and McKeown: A survey of small companies in Northern Ireland showed that businesses were five times more likely to experience some benefits from ISO 9001.

2002: UCLA Study By Corbett et al.: Suggests a causal link between ISO 9001 and performance. The study authors paired organizations with similar return on assets (ROA) and showed what happened when one of the organizations adopted ISO 9001 and the other didn't. The former organizations had substantially higher ROAs in the subsequent 10 years.

2002: Basque Region Study By Heras et al.: A study of 800 businesses, 400 of which had adopted ISO 9001 and 400 of which had not. The former companies had significantly better financial performance than the latter.

2003: U.S. Study By Rajan and Tamimi: Suggests that publicly traded companies that achieved ISO 9001 certification had higher stock price growth. The study found that $100,000 invested in a portfolio of non-ISO companies would have been valued at $424,000 nine years later. But the same $100,000 invested in ISO companies over the same period would have been valued at $814,000.

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