OHS Certification as Tool and Strategy in Labour Inspection: Interaction between certification and regulation

Certification of Occupational Health and Safety as Tool and Strategy in Labour Inspection Presentation of the project Certification of Occupational Health and Safety as Tool and Strategy in Labour Inspection financed by Nordic Council of Ministers. The project has analysed the new role of occupational health and safety certifications in the Nordic countries as a result of the adaptation of regulatory practices to global market conditions. This implies a successive change from focussing on inspection and control towards an increasing dependency on voluntary approaches as stipulated in OHSAS 18001. Especially in Denmark this is the case, where certified companies a. o. are exempt from primary inspection, a development that can be seen as a slight successive privatization of regulation and inspection. The focused has been the validity of certification regarding to OHS performance of certified companies and on the interaction between certification and regulation. On the one hand it is substantiated that an OHS management system can optimize the performance in a proactive company, but on the other hand no proves has shown that a certified company always has a high performance or are in compliance with the legislation. Often the OHS authority has to give injunction to certified companies concerning obvious infringe the regulations with maters direct affect safety and health and often potential accidents. Based on literature review, interview with stakeholders and a workshop with selected Nordic stakeholders the project has compose several recommendations that can optimize as well the quality of the certification bodies audit and thereby the value for the company, the validity of the certificate, as the interaction between certification and regulation. The recommendations will be present and the experiences with validity of the certificate, the interaction with regulation and the general tendency towards increased self control via certification will be discussed.