It is your responsibility as an employer to provide and maintain a safe workplace for your employees. This doesn’t just apply in factories with lots of dangerous machinery. An office can also be a dangerous place, with potential hazards including tripping, falling, incorrect lifting and repetitive strain injuries.
What is a safe workplace?
A safe workplace is one that is free from hazards and compliant with all Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) regulations. It is an environment where employers and employees work together to prevent workplace injuries from occurring and the key to maintaining such an environment is communication.
How to create a safe workplace:
The first thing you need to do to provide a safer working environment is to develop an organisational health and safety policy, setting out your procedures for:
- The safe performance of all work carried out on your premises
- The safe storage and maintenance of all machinery, tools and equipment
- The safe storage, handling and disposal of any dangerous goods or substances on your premises.
This OHS policy should be developed in consultation with your employees and then put into practice in the workplace by:
- Appointing a workplace health and safety officer and clearly defining the responsibilities of everyone involved
- Monitoring procedures on a regular basis and recording and reporting problems or incidents so they can be addressed
- Providing industry and role specific training for staff in the safe performance of particular tasks
- Providing regular ongoing OHS compliance training for all staff
- Providing all new employees with a workplace health and safety induction.
The recent introduction of the new federal Work Health and Safety Act means that, as an employer, you are subject to greater scrutiny with regard to occupational health and safety.
More consultation with employees is required than previously, greater penalties for non-compliance have been introduced and the group you must provide a safe workplace for has been widened to include contractors and casual staff as well.
All the more reason to make sure the lines of communication on health and safety are wide open and that the message is getting through loud and clear.
You can be in breach of the Workplace Health and Safety Act simply by not doing enough to ensure a safe workplace, such as failing to keep yourself informed on the latest OHS matters or failing to provide adequate training for your staff. At the very least, you should be conducting compliance training for all staff as part of your OHS management system.
Your staff need training on the following safety issues:
- Safe manual handling
- Hazard identification and control
- Office safety
- Mandatory training such as first aid and certificates of competency
- On the job training for specialised roles.
You also need to be up to speed with the legislative requirements relating to bullying, discrimination and harassment, which are also classed as workplace hazards.
The bottom line is you need to approach OHS seriously and put some concrete policies, procedures and training in place, because providing a safe and secure workplace for your employees is now the number one priority in any risk management strategy.
