A.5 Leadership and worker participation: guidance, not a requirement
Annex A.5 explains the leadership, policy, roles and participation clauses. It is informative guidance and adds no requirement. It is most useful where leadership has been reduced to a signature and consultation to a quarterly meeting.
What the guidance covers
- What top management accountability means in practice, beyond signing the policy
- How to build a culture that supports the system and protect workers from reprisal
- How to assign responsibilities at every level, not only in the safety function
- How to consult and involve non-managerial workers, including the barriers to remove
How to use it
Use A.5 to test whether the leadership evidence is real. The guidance supports questions such as which decision changed because a worker raised a concern, and what happened to the person who raised it. It also helps a management team distinguish consultation from information.
What it does not add
A.5 does not prescribe a committee structure, a charter or a culture programme. It does not make a worker representative mandatory where none exists. The requirements remain in Clauses 5.1 to 5.4.
The draft keeps the leadership clauses and, according to the public summaries, adds a role-model commitment in the policy and a stronger emphasis on a preventive safety culture and on encouraging reporting.
Read across
Source for Annex A.5: 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.