Document {{ORG_PREFIX}}-002
Quality & OH&S Policy¶
1. Purpose¶
This policy is {{ORG_LEGAL_NAME}}'s single, top-level statement of intent for
the two outcomes its integrated management system (IMS) exists to deliver:
services that meet what customers and regulators actually require, and work
that does not injure people or make them ill. It is issued by
{{ROLE_TOP_MANAGEMENT}} and gives every other document in the IMS its
direction: the boundaries it operates within are set in ims-scope-statement,
and the concrete objectives that put these commitments into practice are set
and tracked in ims-objectives-improvement-plan.
[ORG-DECISION: add one or two sentences tying this policy to what {{ORG_NAME}} actually does and where it is heading, such as the markets it is growing into and the service reputation it trades on, so the policy reads as this organisation's own rather than as a template.]
2. Scope¶
This policy binds all employees, contractors, consultants, and third parties
performing work under the control of {{ORG_NAME}}, across every activity,
location, and service within the IMS scope defined in ims-scope-statement.
There are no exemptions by seniority: the commitments in Section 3 apply to
{{ROLE_TOP_MANAGEMENT}} in the same way they apply to every other worker.
3. Policy Statements¶
Each statement below is written to be independently testable — a reader can ask "is this true of {{ORG_NAME}} today?" and point to the register or record that answers it.
3.1 Quality commitments (customer focus)¶
3.1.1. The delivery promise runs end to end. Before {{ORG_NAME}} commits to any piece of work, the customer's requirements, and the statutory and regulatory requirements that attach to the product or service, are identified and understood, and their achievability confirmed; work is then delivered to those requirements. {{ORG_NAME}} actively monitors customer satisfaction through feedback, complaints, and delivery performance, and enhancing it stays a standing agenda item at management review, never a one-off exercise.
3.1.2. What could put that promise at risk is worked through the IMS's assessment method: {{ORG_NAME}} determines and acts on the risks and opportunities that could undermine conforming delivery or customer satisfaction, and keeps them under review rather than assessing once and filing.
3.2 OH&S commitments¶
3.2.1. No job {{ORG_NAME}} takes on is worth someone getting hurt or sick. Conditions for everyone doing work under {{ORG_NAME}}'s control are set up to stop injury and illness before they happen; responding well when harm occurs is necessary, and preventing it comes first. This commitment is sized to the actual nature of the organisation's OH&S risks, not to a generic industry profile.
3.2.2. Hazards are eliminated where possible, and where they cannot be eliminated, OH&S risks are reduced by working down the hierarchy of controls: elimination first, then substitution, engineering controls, administrative controls, and personal protective equipment only as the last layer — never as the default answer.
3.2.3. Workers and their representative ({{ROLE_WORKER_REP}}) are consulted on, and participate in, the decisions that affect their health and safety — including the development and review of this policy itself — and no worker faces reprisal for raising a hazard, reporting an incident, or stopping unsafe work.
3.3 Integrated commitments¶
3.3.1. {{ORG_NAME}} finds the legal requirements and other obligations that attach to its quality and OH&S activities, keeps that picture live through its compliance obligations process, and meets them; where one cannot yet be met, that gap is recorded and acted on rather than hidden.
3.3.2. Objectives do not float free of this policy: every objective in
ims-objectives-improvement-plan and the Objectives & Targets register
must trace back to a commitment in this Section 3, and objectives are
reviewed against these commitments at management review.
3.3.3. {{ORG_NAME}} continually improves the IMS itself and the quality and OH&S performance it produces; improvement in one discipline is never accepted as a trade-off against the other.
3.3.4. This policy ages with the business. Its frontmatter sets the review cadence, and management review re-examines it whenever {{ORG_NAME}}'s context materially changes, so the policy keeps fitting what the organisation is for and where it is heading.
3.4 Communication of the Policy¶
3.4.1. This policy is maintained as controlled documented information in the IMS repository and indexed in the Document Register; the version in the repository is the only current version.
3.4.2. {{ROLE_DOCUMENT_CONTROLLER}} runs an acknowledgement campaign for this
policy per the Document & Record Control Procedure, reaching every person
Section 2 binds. The campaign asks each worker to confirm they have read the
policy and know what it asks of their own work; each worker's acknowledgement
is captured in the Policy Acknowledgements register (Airtable), and a snapshot
record in docs/records/acknowledgements/ evidences that the campaign ran.
Consistent with the IMS operating principle of honesty, {{ORG_NAME}} claims
that its people know this policy and work to it only once a campaign has run
and its record is logged; until then the statement is a commitment the
organisation is working to rather than a fact it asserts.
3.4.3. {{ORG_NAME}} gives a copy of this policy, on request, to anyone outside the organisation with a real interest in how it manages quality and safety. The usual askers are customers deciding whether to engage the organisation, regulators, the hosts of sites where {{ORG_NAME}}'s people work, certification bodies, insurers, and clients running a tender process, and the list stays open: anyone else with that interest who asks gets a copy. [ORG-DECISION: choose the availability mechanism — publish a copy on {{ORG_DOMAIN}}, provide it on request to customers and regulators, or both — and note that the document's classification must be revisited if it is published externally.]
3.4.4. The policy is reviewed periodically (per its next_review_date) and
after any material organisational change, so that it stays relevant; it is
re-communicated, with a fresh acknowledgement campaign, whenever a review
produces a substantive change.
3.4.5. Because worker_consultation_required is true for this document,
consultation with workers via {{ROLE_WORKER_REP}} takes place before each
approval of this policy, and each consultation is evidenced by a record in
docs/records/consultation/ — the PR review checklist asks for the record
link.
4. Roles and Responsibilities¶
4.1 Leadership commitments¶
{{ROLE_TOP_MANAGEMENT}} does not delegate accountability for this policy. In practice, and at the scale of an organisation of {{ORG_NAME}}'s size, top management leads it personally, in three ways.
Setting and holding the direction. Top management:
- answers personally for the IMS delivering its intended results, and for the health and safety of workers, contractors included, while they work under the organisation's control;
- issues this policy and the objectives that flow from it, and keeps both aligned with where the business is actually heading;
- tells the organisation, plainly and repeatedly, why conforming to customer requirements and working safely matter, and acts consistently with that message;
- promotes thinking in terms of processes and of risk when decisions are made, and expects the same from anyone leading work.
Resourcing and integration. Top management:
- provides the money, time, people, and equipment the IMS needs, including the time workers need to participate in it;
- builds IMS requirements into the way the business already runs, through quoting, scheduling, purchasing, and delivery, and does not let a parallel "paperwork system" grow beside real operations.
Worker voice and culture. Top management:
- makes sure workers can raise issues, be consulted, and participate, and personally removes the barriers (time pressure, fear of reprisal, language or access issues) that stop them;
- drives continual improvement and fosters a working culture in which safe, conforming work is the norm rather than the audited exception;
- stays involved with the people who make the IMS run, steering and supporting their work, and backs other managers showing the same leadership in their own areas.
These commitments are demonstrated collectively — through management review records, resourcing decisions, and day-to-day conduct — rather than each being a separately documented duty.
4.2 Role-specific responsibilities¶
| Role | Responsibility under this policy |
|---|---|
| {{ROLE_TOP_MANAGEMENT}} | Approves this policy (frontmatter approver) and merges the approving PR — as ISO "top management", the merge is the act that establishes the policy; accountable for every commitment in Section 3; leads per Section 4.1. |
| {{ROLE_WORKER_REP}} | Reviews this policy (frontmatter reviewer); carries worker consultation on its content before each approval, evidenced in docs/records/consultation/. |
| {{ROLE_QUALITY_MANAGER}} | Owns this policy (frontmatter owner) — drafts and maintains it on {{ROLE_TOP_MANAGEMENT}}'s behalf; operationalises the quality commitments and reports policy-relevant performance to {{ROLE_TOP_MANAGEMENT}}. |
| {{ROLE_OHS_COORDINATOR}} | Operationalises the OH&S commitments, including hierarchy-of-controls practice, and reports OH&S performance to {{ROLE_TOP_MANAGEMENT}}. |
| {{ROLE_DOCUMENT_CONTROLLER}} | Keeps the policy's Document Register entry current and runs acknowledgement campaigns per the Document & Record Control Procedure. |
| All workers | Apply this policy in their own work; raise hazards, incidents, and nonconformities without delay. |
5. Compliance and Enforcement¶
A failure to follow this policy is treated as a nonconformity and handled through the Nonconformity, Corrective Action & Improvement Procedure; where the failure involves a hazard, incident, or near miss, it is also reported and investigated per the Incident Reporting & Investigation Procedure. Enforcement targets the system first — a breach is treated as a signal that a process, resource, or control needs fixing — and individual conduct measures follow the organisation's employment arrangements only where behaviour, not system weakness, is the cause. No enforcement action may be taken against a worker for reporting in good faith.
6. Related Documents¶
ims-scope-statement— defines the IMS boundaries and activities this policy governs.ims-objectives-improvement-plan— the objectives set within the framework this policy provides (Section 3.3.2).
7. Revision History¶
| Version | Date | Author | Description of Changes | Reviewed By | Review Date | Approved By | Approval Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.1 | 2026-07-16 | {{ROLE_QUALITY_MANAGER}} | Initial draft | — | — | — | — |
8. Document Control
| Document | {{ORG_PREFIX}}-002 |
|---|---|
| Type | Policy |
| Version | 0.1 |
| Status | Draft |
| Owner | {{ROLE_QUALITY_MANAGER}} |
| Reviewer | {{ROLE_WORKER_REP}} |
| Approver | {{ROLE_TOP_MANAGEMENT}} |
| Next Review | 2026-08-15 |
| Classification | Internal |
Held in the document frontmatter, mirrored to the Document Register.