Effectiveness of occupational health and safety management system interventions: A systematic review

A variety of OHSMS-based standards, guidelines, and audits has been developed and disseminated over the past 20 years. A good understanding of the impact of these systems is timely. This systematic literature review aimed to synthesize the best available evidence on the effects of OHSMS interventions on employee health and safety and associated economic outcomes. Eight bibliographic databases covering a wide range of fields were searched. Twenty-three articles met the study's relevance criteria. Thirteen of these met the methodological quality criteria. Only one of these 13 original studies was judged to be of high methodological quality; the remainder had moderate limitations. The studies' results were generally positive. There were some null findings but no negative findings. In spite of these promising results, the review concluded that the body of evidence was insufficient to make recommendations either in favour of or against OHSMSs. This was due to: the heterogeneity of the methods employed and the OHSMSs studied in the original studies; the small number of studies; their generally weak methodological quality; and the lack of generalizability of many of the studies. copyright 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved