Occupational Health and Safety Standards Training Course

Course overview

Occupational health and safety has grown from a set of compliance checklists into a management discipline in its own right, one that touches operations, human resources, governance, and corporate reputation. This course treats OHS as that broader field: a way of thinking about how organizations prevent harm, measure their performance, and mature their culture over time. Instead of focusing on a single standard, it builds the vocabulary and reasoning that let you read, compare, and apply the many frameworks that shape modern workplace safety, from International Labor Organization (ILO) conventions to management-system standards used across industries.

Over twelve units you will move from the founding principles of OHS through hazard control, safety management systems, worker wellbeing, digital monitoring, and the growing link between safety and environmental, social, and governance reporting. The material draws on documented corporate cases and recognized reference points such as the hierarchy of controls, safety-culture maturity models, and the distinction between leading and lagging indicators. The result is a working understanding of how a credible health and safety function is designed, governed, and continuously improved, whatever sector you operate in.

Why this matters

Workplace injury and ill health carry a cost that few organizations fully account for, from lost time and insurance premiums to regulatory penalties and damaged trust. The ILO estimates that millions of workers die each year from occupational accidents and work-related disease, and its Convention 155 and the promotional framework in Convention 187 set the international expectation that prevention should be systematic, not incidental. Boards and executives are now asked to treat safety performance as a governance matter, reported alongside financial and sustainability metrics, which raises the bar for the people who manage it day to day.

That shift means safety professionals need more than technical knowledge of hazards. They need to interpret standards, benchmark performance against peers, and make the case for investment in a language executives understand. A mature safety function also depends on the human side of the discipline, which is why building trust, participation, and shared ownership matters as much as any procedure; our course on Developing Safety Culture in the Workplace explores that dimension in depth and complements the management focus taken throughout.

What you will be able to do afterwards

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Explain the principles of occupational health and safety.
• Map national safety requirements onto the international framework.
• Apply the hierarchy of controls to evaluate a workplace hazard.
• Compare ISO 45001 and ISO 45003 as complementary safety tools.
• Design the core elements of a safety management system.
• Interpret indicators such as TRIR, LTIFR, and near-miss rates.
• Assess safety-culture maturity using recognized models.
• Identify realistic steps toward safety-culture improvement.
• Connect safety data to environmental, social, and governance goals.
• Formulate board-level communication on safety performance.

Course outline

Unit 1: Introduction to occupational health and safety

• Prevention principles: moral, legal, and economic case.
• Global safety role of ILO Conventions 155 and 187.
• Case studies of workplace accidents and systemic failures.
• Building awareness of how small lapses escalate.

Unit 2: OHS standards and frameworks

• ISO 45001, national regimes, and ILO conventions.
• Linking OHS standards to corporate governance and risk.
• Building compliance-driven strategies across frameworks.
• Facilitated analysis of applying multiple standards.

Unit 3: Hazard identification and risk assessment

• Identification tools: task analysis and near-miss review.
• Prioritizing risk by likelihood and severity matrix.
• Assessments across office, industrial, and field settings.
• Hazard mapping and its link to the hierarchy of controls.

Unit 4: OHS compliance and governance

• Placing safety alongside financial and operational oversight.
• Board duties: due diligence and visible leadership.
• Meeting regulatory compliance and evidence of conformity.
• Integrating compliance into everyday decisions.

Unit 5: Safety management systems

• Designing safety systems: policy, planning, and control.
• Core elements of ISO 45001 and the plan-do-check-act cycle.
• Linking the system to operational strategy and resourcing.
• System design example for a mid-sized organization.

Unit 6: Workplace health and wellbeing

• Promoting employee wellbeing within the OHS mandate.
• Managing health hazards: noise, chemicals, and fatigue.
• Addressing psychosocial risk and mental health.
• Connecting wellbeing to a stronger safety culture.

Unit 7: Crisis response and emergency preparedness

• Designing risk-proportionate crisis and emergency response.
• Evacuation planning: routes and communication trees.
• Crisis leadership and clear communication under pressure.
• Scenario-based discussion of emergency response outcomes.

Unit 8: Safety audits and continuous improvement

• Conducting OHS audits and inspections against criteria.
• Planning corrective and preventive actions with ownership.
• Running continuous improvement cycles from audit findings.
• Example audit trail from finding to corrective action.

Unit 9: Digital tools for OHS management

• Dashboards consolidating leading and lagging indicators.
• Predictive analytics flagging rising risk early.
• IoT-enabled sensing for exposure and equipment condition.
• Case analysis of adopting a digital safety platform.

Unit 10: ESG and sustainability in workplace safety

• Integrating safety into ESG frameworks and disclosure.
• Addressing climate hazards: heat stress and extreme weather.
• Building sustainability-driven safety strategies.
• Safety data in a published sustainability report.

Unit 11: Global best practices in OHS

• Benchmarking practices from top safety performers.
• Lessons from multinational companies across regimes.
• Adapting practice to local law, culture, and resources.
• Discussion of mature versus compliant safety culture.

Unit 12: Capstone analysis of a documented OHS program

• Reviewing a named organization's safety framework.
• Evaluating findings against the hierarchy of controls.
• Assessing safety-culture maturity via the Bradley Curve.
• Drawing out executive-facing strategy and judging its gaps.

How the course is delivered

Teaching runs as facilitated discussion built around documented cases, so each concept is anchored to something that actually happened in a real organization. The facilitator leads worked examples and guided walkthroughs of published safety frameworks, audit records, and indicator data, pausing to draw out the reasoning behind each decision. Participants compare approaches, test them against the standards introduced in earlier units, and leave with reference material they can adapt to their own workplace.

Who should attend

This course is written for professionals who own or influence workplace safety performance, including:

• HSE managers and safety officers responsible for the management system.
• Compliance and risk officers who report on OHS obligations.
• Facility and operations managers accountable for safe working conditions.
• HR wellbeing leads integrating health and psychosocial risk into people strategy.
• Safety consultants advising clients across sectors.

About EuroQuest International Training

The institute behind this course, EuroQuest International Training, dates to 2015 and works from a base in Bratislava, Slovakia. Its published catalog now runs past a thousand titles. More than 15,000 professionals have studied with the team so far, joining sessions across seven delivery hubs: Dubai, London, Barcelona, Istanbul, Vienna, Paris, and Geneva.

Frequently asked questions

Will I receive a certificate for completing this course?

Yes. Everyone who finishes receives a EuroQuest certificate recording attendance and study of the material. It is an educational record, not a management-system certificate; ISO 45001 and comparable standards are certified only by an independent body following a formal audit.

Do I need a technical safety qualification to join?

No formal safety qualification is required. The course is designed to be accessible to managers, HR leads, and risk officers as well as safety specialists. A general familiarity with how your organization operates is enough, and the early units establish the shared vocabulary everyone needs before the more detailed material begins.

Does the course focus on one standard or several?

Several. This is a management-discipline course rather than a single-standard course, so it treats ISO 45001, ISO 45003, ILO conventions, and national regulation as connected reference points. If you need an in-depth study of one specific framework, a dedicated course is a better fit; here the aim is to help you navigate the whole field with judgment.

Related courses

Where this area matches your responsibilities, the options below go deeper into adjacent safety topics:

• Industrial and Workplace Safety Management
• Occupational Health and Safety in HR
• Safety Engineering and Risk Analysis
• Health and Safety Management in Construction

Register for this course

To join, contact the EuroQuest team and they will confirm available dates, help you choose a host city, and arrange any group bookings. Get in touch to hold a seat and receive full joining instructions.