Clause 4.1: Understanding the organization and its context
The organization works out which external and internal issues bear on its purpose and on whether its OH&S management system can deliver what it is meant to deliver: safe and healthy workplaces, prevention of injury and ill health caused by work, and continual improvement of OH&S performance.
What clause 4.1 asks
The organization works out which external and internal issues bear on its purpose and on whether its OH&S management system can deliver what it is meant to deliver: safe and healthy workplaces, prevention of injury and ill health caused by work, and continual improvement of OH&S performance. Since Amendment 1 (2024) it must also decide, as part of this analysis, whether climate change is one of those issues for it. Where the answer is yes, auditors expect the effect of climate change on workers (heat stress, extreme weather, smoke, flooding, shifting disease patterns, disrupted emergency arrangements) to flow on into hazard identification, risk assessment and emergency planning.
Context is not a document written for the auditor. It is the working list of outside and inside conditions that can stop the system from preventing harm, from weather and labour markets to shift patterns and contractor mix. The clause asks for a decision, not a folder.
Distributed work as a context issue. The public scope covers work at workplaces not under the direct control of the organization, including a workplace the remote worker selects. The context analysis therefore has to take in where work is actually done, how often, under whose control, and which jurisdiction the worker sits in, not only the sites the organization owns. The consultation release names isolation, reduced supervision and a wider range of physical, psychosocial and environmental risks as the conditions that make remote work different.
Basis: BSI Standards Development, BSI. For clause 4.1, the public record is a draft guideline and does not state a requirement in terms that this site can quote. The clause 4.1 overlay is our reading of the public scope and the named summaries, not the draft text.
Evidence for clause 4.1
An auditor will ask to see the issue that changed a control or a plan, and the date it was last reviewed, not a list of categories.
- Context analysis Context analysis record naming external and internal OH&S issues, with a dated entry stating the climate change decision (relevant or not) and the reasoning behind it
- Context analysis Issue register with review dates, linking any climate-related issue to the hazard register and the emergency plan
- Context analysis Management review minutes showing the context, including the climate change entry, was revisited
Where clause 4.1 commonly fails
- No recorded decision on climate change since the 2024 amendment, or a bare yes or no with no reasoning
- Climate change judged relevant but heat, storm or flood exposure never reaches hazard identification or emergency preparedness
- Context copied from a quality system with no OH&S-specific issues and never revisited after certification
What to do about clause 4.1 before the guidance lands
Add a remote working line to the context analysis: worker groups, locations, frequency, jurisdictions and the dependencies that remote work creates. Record how each one changes a hazard, a control or an emergency arrangement, and re-date the analysis when the pattern changes.
For clause 4.1, do the work that will be right under either instrument. The current requirement for clause 4.1 is ISO 45001:2018, and the certificate, if you hold one, is issued against it. The clause 4.1 remote working preparation is an extension of the existing duty to a group of workers the system already covers, not a new system and not a reason to rebuild around a draft.
Read across from clause 4.1
Open the full index. The public record behind clause 4.1 shows the scope and the themes.
Source for clause 4.1: ISO 45001:2018, clause 4.1, retrieved 20 October 2026, record at the standards library. The clause 4.1 remote overlay rests on the public 45008 record named above. The clause 4.1 requirement, evidence and gaps are written from our clause record. Every source.