Work Health & Safety

It’s everyone’s responsibility to ensure a safe workplace. Directors, managers, and the people on the ground all play a role.

Unfortunately, sometimes things go wrong, and someone gets hurt.

Having excellent WHS processes and policies, (and training on them,) safe work method statements, regular risk identification and assessments updates, and workplace inductions can go a long way to helping you or your business avoiding an injury in the workplace. At times people do silly things. And at those times, the excellent records which you should keep for these things can help you to demonstrate to an investigator, and if necessary, a Court, that you did everything reasonably practicable to ensure a safe workplace. Afterall, the penalties for a breach are sever – jail and or fines of between $50,000 and $3,000,000.

SafeWork recommends a six-step approach which will assist you as an employer to meet your duty of care and thereby avoid the risk of an accident:

1. Develop appropriate WHS policies and programs;
2. Set up a mechanism to consult your employees about WHS matters;
3. Establish training strategies and records of attendance;
4. Establish hazard identification and workplace assessment processes;
5. Develop and implement risk control strategies, and
6. Promote, maintain, and improve these strategies.

Just as you have responsibilities to your workers, your employees also have responsibilities to you under work health and safety laws. Generally, employees are required to:

• Follow instructions and rules in the workplace -that is, to comply with instructions designed to ensure that work is carried out safely;
• Work and behave in ways which are safe and do not endanger the health and safety of anyone in the workplace.

If a workplace injury occurs at your business, collect your records, document everything, and urgently bring it to an appointment with the team at ALG.