This is done for insurance purposes?
Corporate mandate.
The concern I have with ISRS is whether an organization develops a system that works for them or whether they develop a system with the intent to score more points.
Ideally, the two approaches would go hand-in-hand, but this is not always the case, and I find that sometimes we spend more time justifying our system rather than examining whether or not it meets the intent of a loss control system.
In ISO and OHSAS, you either meet a "shall" or you do not. It's quite simple. OFI's are generated when shall's are met, but there are areas for improvement.
In ISRS, there are some shall statements which are indicated with an XO score (XO = yes/no).
But there are also PJ questions...Professional Judgement. This can become extremely tiring having to justify why you believe, for example, you use effective techniques in an area.
ISRS 6th Edition - 10.4.4 said:
To what extent are effective communicatno techniques used in employee training programs [PJ-25]
This means the auditor can score us a maximum of 25 points based on his/her professional judgement of our effectiveness.
And as we all know that auditors aren't always consistent in their interpretations, I find that we sometimes lose the value-added activity within the audit.
That being said, ISRS does go into developing the foundations of a loss control system - more so than OHSAS 18001, in my opinon. There are 20 Elements covering areas such as :
- Leadership and Administration
- Leadership Training
- Critical Task Analysis and Procedures
- Emergency Preparedness
- Knowledge and Skill Training
- Engineering and Change Management
- Materials and Services Management
- Off-the-Job Safety
Each of those areas then breaks down into sub-elements, so using "Leadership and Administration" as the example includes such sub-elements like:
- General policy
- Senior and middle management participation
- Established loss control performance standards
- Management meetings
- Individual responsibility for loss control
- Refusal to work due to loss control hazards
- Document control
- External communications
ISRS 6th Edition is approximately 1" thick with 1/2 of it dedicated towards the requirements and on the pages opposite the requirements, some explanations and guidelines.