Workplace health and safety
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Workplace health and safety
Managing health and safety in the workplace is essential as it ensures that the business does not create health and safety problems to different people including the employees, visitors, and customers. Business owners should ensure that health and safety is a high priority in the workplace by providing safe work premises and providing and maintaining safe machinery and materials.
Establishing and managing health and safety processes for the organization requires an adequate collection of the relevant information about health and safety legislation and requirements. The information may be collected by looking at the various legislations applicable in Australia. Therapists in Australia are protected by Commonwealth and state or territory health and safety legislation. Therefore, the collection of the legislation will involve research on the relevant requirements for the organization. The next step is communicating the information stakeholders by indicating the expectation of each stakeholder to ensure compliance with the legislation. Apart from having various government and industry regulations, guidelines and standards on workplace health and safety, it is important to collect, collate, present and use information on health and safety requirements, trends and risk controls.
The different information relating to workplace health and safety will include policies and procedures, documents, forms, signs, and equipment. As the manager, it is essential to understand what this information is and where it is applicable. Since each workplace conducts its business slightly different, having a thorough working knowledge of implementing workplace health and safety in an organization is critical. Collating and evaluating the information requires the manager to gather all the available information that is relevant and assess it regarding its accuracy, efficiency and its applicability.
The other important aspect of managing health and safety is by putting into practice consultative and participative processes. Therapists should be involved in policy development, decision-making and assessments to improve safety. Individuals who work with the processes understand them better and thus are in a position to know the different factors that relate to those processes. A manager with a genuine concern for safety needs to consult with the people with the best knowledge to create an inclusive work culture where the workers will feel valued. Developing the consultative and participative processes help in identifying the health and safety requirements in the context of the particular workplace. It also ensures that the work group members are provided with an opportunity to contribute to decisions that could affect their health and safety.
The processes can be achieved by creating open communication channels in the organization where workers can voice their opinions. Managing the health and safety of the workplace should also involve mechanisms that facilitate a prompt resolution of issues raised through consultation. The different stakeholders in the organization should have clear communication channels whereby they can be able to follow up on various issues to ensure their resolution. The workplace health and safety management should also include clear and concise reporting processes and hierarchies. Establishing sufficient and detailed reporting processes that include a hierarchy of control is critical. The process will involve setting up a reporting process amongst workplace that allows for reporting of all incidents.
The setting up of the hierarchy of control is important as it will ensure that the responsibilities are appropriately distributed so that it will always lead back to the staff member most adequate to the responsibility. The hierarchy of control will also play a critical role in ensuring the provision of information and feedback from consultation to workers in readily accessible and understandable formats. The management should also ensure that there are a record keeping and reporting procedure. It is critical that any incidences in which there is a health or safety risk within the workplace are reported in a precise manner. The clarity can be achieved by having a reporting system such as that of an incident report.
The incident reports should document exactly what has occurred, the date, time, extent of the incident and the level of severity. The reports should then be filled and kept on record. All the workers working together should be made aware of the procedures of the workplace including reporting and record keeping. The new workers should be briefed while a procedure manual should always be available to read for the staff members. The management of the workplace health and safety will also include the creation of a hierarchy of control that will monitor the hazard, incident, and injury reporting investigations to ensure they achieve what they were intended to achieve. The workplace health and safety regulations require the duty holders to work through this hierarchy when managing risks.
The aim should be to eliminate a hazard, which is the most effective control. However, where the elimination is not practicable, then the next plan should be to minimise the risk by working on the other alternatives in the hierarchy of control. The management should also ensure that the workers have appropriate training and development to perform to the expectations of the organization. The workers will also benefit in understanding the different aspects of workplace health and safety when the management puts in place mechanisms that make it possible to access the knowledge and skills of experts. Such skills are important in helping the different stakeholders in maintaining safety at the workplace. The knowledge will also assist stakeholders in the continuous improvement of the various processes.