Clause 10.3: Continual improvement
The organization keeps making its OH&S management system more suitable, adequate and effective.
What clause 10.3 asks
The organization keeps making its OH&S management system more suitable, adequate and effective. It does so by raising OH&S performance; fostering a culture that backs the system; encouraging workers to take part in carrying out improvement actions; telling workers, and their representatives, the relevant outcomes of continual improvement; and keeping and retaining documented information that shows continual improvement taking place.
Continual improvement includes the culture and the participation that make improvement stick. The clause asks for evidence that the system is getting better, not just that it is running.
Draft 10.1 Continual improvement, from clause 10.3. The continuous improvement requirement is consolidated into the new 10.1, together with the 2018 10.1 General. The public summaries report the intent unchanged.
The draft treatment of clause 10.3 has its own page: 10.1 Continual improvement.
Evidence for clause 10.3
An auditor will ask what improved in the system itself, and how workers took part.
- Continual improvementImprovement records with measured effect on performance
- Continual improvementEvidence of worker participation in improvement actions
- Continual improvementCommunication of improvement results to workers
- Continual improvementCulture initiatives and their evaluation
Where clause 10.3 commonly fails
- Improvement results not communicated to workers
- No evidence of a culture programme
- Improvements not measured
What to do about clause 10.3 before the revision
Move the improvement records into the consolidated 10.1 file. Show worker participation in an improvement action. Record the measured effect. Update references from 10.3 to 10.1 before the transition.
What the record shows for clause 10.3
An auditor working on clause 10.3 will start with Improvement records with measured effect on performance. The failure this record sees most often is Improvement results not communicated to workers. Both are carried into the kit as row 40, with an owner field and a dated action.
Read across from clause 10.3
Read the next clause in the group, or open the full index. The revision map shows the draft structure.
Source for clause 10.3: ISO 45001:2018, clause 10.3, retrieved 18 October 2026. The draft note rests on the public DIS contents and the two named summaries; the requirement, evidence and gaps are written from the held clause record. Every source.