Relevant Interested Parties ISO 45001

Clause 4.2 is understanding the needs and expectations of interested parties and workers. An interested party can be a stakeholder, person or organization that can affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected by a decision or activity. Relevant interested parties are those that provide significant risk to an organization’s sustainability if their needs and expectations are not met. Examples of interested and relevant parties are:

• Suppliers
• Customers
• Partners
• Employees
• Investors
• Owners
• Bankers
• Regulatory bodies
• Unions
• Competitors
• Society
• Opposing pressure groups

When you are determining interested parties for your organization, you are only required to consider those that are relevant to your OH&S management system. After you have identified interested parties, you will then need to determine what their requirements are, and have a system to monitor and/or review those requirements.

You are not required to have a documented process for this, or records capturing your interested parties and their requirements, but keeping this records can be extremely beneficial. These documents help provide your auditor with objective evidence that you are meeting this requirement and your process.

Our packages include a documented procedure for meeting the requirements around the Clause 4 “Context of the organization”. This procedure can also be purchased individually or with our complete package.