A.10 Improvement: guidance, not a requirement
Annex A.10 explains continual improvement, incidents, nonconformity and corrective action. It is guidance, not a requirement. It supports the shift from closing a finding to removing a cause and checking that the fix worked.
What the guidance covers
- How to identify improvement opportunities from performance evaluation and other inputs
- How to investigate an incident and find the cause rather than the immediate fault
- How to involve workers and revisit the risk assessment
- How to review the effectiveness of a corrective action and change the system when needed
How to use it
Use A.10 when investigations stop at the person who was closest to the event. The guidance supports a cause analysis that reaches the design of work, the control and the decision that allowed it. It also supports an improvement register that is wider than audit findings and records the measured effect of each action, not only the action itself.
What it does not add
A.10 does not require a particular root cause method, a five-why or a fault tree. It does not make every incident a formal investigation. The requirements remain in Clause 10.
The draft consolidates continual improvement into 10.1 and keeps nonconformity and corrective action at 10.2, with the title shortened. The public summaries report the intent unchanged.
Read across
Source for Annex A.10: ISO 45001:2018, Annex A, informative, retrieved 18 October 2026. The draft note rests on the public DIS contents and the named summaries. Every source.