The past three decades have witnessed the emergence of OHS management system standards – with variants created around the globe by a number of different non-governmental and governmental organizations, intended for generic or industry-specific application. These “recipe books” for OHS management represent a directional shift from prior prevailing approaches, such as management system designs based on the scheme of the International Safety Rating System™. More recently in Canada, the Ontario Ministry of Labour has proposed a voluntary OHSMS accreditation standard, based almost entirely on existing OHSMS standards. Despite the widespread acclaim that seems to accompany these standards, and their presumed value, the jury is still very much “out” on whether they have been a positive or negative influence. This course does three things: (1) provides a comprehensive overview of the more common OHSMS standards, (2) discusses issues and challenges inherent in adoption and implementation of the requirements contained in those standards, and (3) reviews the available published evidence relating to implementation success (and failure), and apparent impacts on OHS outcomes at the micro and macro levels. It is not a “how to” course, but rather a “should we”, and “if so, what to expect” course. The course should be of interest to (i) any OHS practitioner or manager considering the design / redesign and development of an organization’s OHS governance, policy and management framework; (ii) persons tasked with auditing an organization against an OHSMS standard, and (iii) anyone with an interest in rapidly acquiring a broad and deep understanding of the general topic of OHSMS standards and organizational experience with same.