The next ISO 45001 is in an international ballot now, and it puts mental health and psychosocial risk at the centre of workplace safety. South African employers have a three-year runway. The ones who start now build a capability. The ones who wait build a liability.
In brief
The Draft International Standard for the revised ISO 45001 entered its formal ballot on 16 June 2026, closing on 8 September 2026, with publication expected in mid 2027 and a three-year transition to roughly 2030 [1][2]. The defining change is the explicit treatment of psychosocial risk: stress, burnout, mental health, and the effects of remote and hybrid work [2][3]. The shift is not confined to the standard. The ILO reports South Africa strengthening labour inspection with a stated intent to address psychosocial risk [4], and a December 2025 enforcement case shows regulators already acting on stress management failures [5]. For South African employers, the strategic move is to build psychosocial risk capability during the transition window rather than after it.
Background
ISO 45001 is the international standard for occupational health and safety management systems. The current edition, ISO 45001:2018, is now under revision. The revised draft reached the Draft International Standard stage and opened for formal international ballot on 16 June 2026, with the ballot closing on 8 September 2026 [1]. Certification bodies expect the final standard to be published around the middle of 2027, followed by a transition period of about three years, which puts the practical compliance horizon near 2030 [1][2].
At the Draft International Standard stage, the structure and intent of a standard are largely settled, even if wording still moves. That makes this the point at which an organisation can plan with confidence. The clearest signal from the draft is the move to treat psychosocial risk as a core part of the management system, covering work-related stress, burnout, psychological well-being, and the effect of changing work patterns such as remote and hybrid arrangements [2][3].
Analysis
Two forces are converging, and they matter more together than apart.
The first is the standard itself. For three decades, occupational health and safety practice in South Africa has concentrated on physical hazards: fire, falls, machinery, and hazardous substances. These are visible, measurable, and well covered by the OHS Act 85 of 1993 and its regulations. Psychosocial hazards are none of those things. They are real but harder to see, harder to measure, and historically treated as a human resources concern rather than a safety duty. The ISO 45001 revision closes that gap by putting psychological health inside the safety management system, where it carries the same expectation of assessment, control and evidence as a physical risk [2][3].
The second force is enforcement, and it is not waiting for 2027. The International Labour Organisation has reported South Africa strengthening its labour inspection capacity, including a stated intent to address psychosocial risk at work [4]. Internationally, the direction is already concrete. In December 2025, the United Kingdom Health and Safety Executive issued a formal Notice of Contravention to a major university over its management of work-related stress, citing inadequate stress risk assessments, failure to follow its own policy, weak controls, and no monitoring [5]. That case is a preview of how a psychosocial failure gets written up: not as a vague cultural complaint, but as a specific management system deficiency.
There is a distinctly South African dimension that sharpens the point. Psychosocial hazard is not abstract here. A workforce operating through an intense enforcement climate, economic insecurity, and rapid change carries measurable stress. Credible international reporting documents a climate of fear and workplace discrimination affecting parts of the South African workforce [6]. Whatever an employer's view on the underlying issues, the duty of care runs to the whole workforce, and the resulting stress is a workplace hazard that an employer is increasingly expected to have considered.
What this means for you
The strategic response is not to rush toward certifying against a standard that does not yet exist. It is to build the underlying capability while the transition window is open.
Treat the three-year runway as a build period, not a grace period. Three years is enough to develop a genuine psychosocial risk capability. It is not enough to manufacture for one week; an auditor or inspector arrives.
Run a first psychosocial risk assessment now, even a simple one. Identify the stressors in your actual workplace, decide what is within your control, and record what you do about them. The existence of an honest, dated assessment is itself the evidence regulators look for.
Fold psychosocial hazards into your existing hazard identification and risk assessment, rather than running a separate, parallel process. The point of a management system is one integrated view of risk.
Brief your leadership now. The change lands at the decision-maker level because it touches workload design, management practice and culture, not just the safety officer's register.
Watch the timeline, but act ahead of it. The ballot closes on 8 September 2026, and publication is expected in mid-2027 [1][2]. The organisations that look prepared in 2030 will be the ones that started the assessment in 2026.
The GRC Shop view
Forecast. We expect psychosocial risk to follow the same path in South Africa that physical safety took a generation ago: from optional good practice, to expected practice, to an audited and enforced duty. The ISO 45001 revision is the formal marker, but the enforcement signals are already present locally and internationally. The advantage for a South African business is not being the first to certify. It is being able to demonstrate, before anyone demands it, that the organisation has looked its psychosocial risks in the eye and acted. On the GRC Shop platform, psychosocial hazards belong in the same HIRA and risk registers as physical ones, with the assessment, controls and review dates recorded as evidence, so an employer can show the work rather than promise it.
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Abbreviations
DIS: Draft International Standard
HIRA: Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment
HSE: Health and Safety Executive (United Kingdom)
ILO: International Labour Organisation
ISO: International Organisation for Standardisation
OHS: Occupational Health and Safety
References
- LRQA, "ISO 45001 revision update: DIS ballot now open", Jun 2026. Link
- NQA, "ISO 45001:2027 Revision and Transition Support", 2026. Link
- Bureau Veritas, "ISO 45001: Key Updates in the 2027 Edition", 2026. Link
- International Labour Organisation, "South Africa strengthens labour inspection amid calls to address psychosocial risks", 2026. Link
- Times Higher Education, "Birmingham reprimanded over its management of work related stress", Dec 2025. Link
- Human Rights Watch, "World Report 2026: South Africa", 2026. Link
Last updated: 25 June 2026