A.6 Planning: guidance, not a requirement
Annex A.6 explains hazard identification, risk and opportunity assessment, legal requirements, planning action and objectives. It is guidance, not a requirement, and it is where most of the draft's expected change is concentrated.
What the guidance covers
- How to identify hazards continuously, including psychosocial, ergonomic, remote-work and climate-related hazards
- How to assess OH&S risks and opportunities, and the risks and opportunities to the system itself
- How to determine legal and other requirements and keep them current
- How to plan action in the hierarchy of controls and set objectives that can be measured
How to use it
Use A.6 when the risk register has become a scoring exercise. The guidance supports a simpler test: what can harm someone, what is already in place, how do we know it works, and what are we doing about it. It also supports the link from a legal requirement to the hazard it governs.
What it does not add
A.6 does not require a particular scoring method, a five-by-five matrix or a risk number. It does not make every hazard a documented risk. The requirements remain in Clause 6.
The draft consolidates hazard identification and assessment into 6.1.2, adds 6.3 Planning of changes and expands the factors to consider. The public summaries name new and changing technology, platform work, remote workers, psychosocial hazards, occupational health hazards and climate impacts.
Read across
Source for Annex A.6: 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.