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Section 3 - Outcome 1 - 0-3pts

It is likely that you have not identified your key risks and hazards and that they are not adequately controlled. This puts your workers in serious danger of injury.

What you can do to improve:

Inspect the workplace and review all tasks

Check for risks including:

  • using chemicals
  • lifting and moving products
  • working at heights
  • slips, trips and falls
  • electrical equipment
  • housekeeping.

Make sure you talk with your workers and involve them in identifying hazards associated with their work. Develop and implement safe work procedures for those tasks that pose a risk.

Prioritise the tasks based on risk

Time and money can be in short supply in a business. It is therefore important to prioritise tasks and make sure that the highest risks are controlled immediately and lesser risks are addressed as time goes on. You will need to document this via an action plan so that you make sure you get all of the risks controlled systematically.

Develop safe work procedures

Follow these steps:

  • Involve your workers. Workers are more likely to follow a procedure if they have been involved in its development. Workers are usually the best placed to understand the tasks they do every day and their experience will help with developing a safe, practical procedure.
  • Identify each element that makes up a task. A task may contain several steps such as lifting and carrying product or goods, bending, use of machinery or tools, repetitive processing and many other individual elements.
  • Identify the hazards and risks that these elements pose. Ask yourself; are there any risks from lifting and carrying? Does machinery or plant have moving parts that could cause injury if not guarded? Are there any environmental hazards like noise, fumes, heat or cold? As above your workers are an excellent source of this kind of information as they perform the work every day.
  • Control the identified risks. Once hazards and risks have been identified they must be controlled. Generally the best method of control is to eliminate (remove) the risk entirely, however this is not always possible so ask yourself: How can the risk be best controlled? Is there a mechanical lifting alternative to manual lifting and carrying? Is there a less hazardous substance that can be used instead of the current chemical? Can guarding be fitted to machines to cover moving parts? Is there personal protective equipment available to help mitigate the risk of exposure to noise, fumes, sparks etc? Safety data sheets, manufacturers manuals, employer associations and the SafeWork SA website can all be used to help decide on controls and to provide practical suggestions.
  • Document the safe work procedures. Safe work procedures are meant for workers to use every day. They should be simple and easy to understand. There is no set format that they need to be in – you know your workforce and what they are likely to be able to understand. Remember that having a safe work procedure that is difficult to follow or not practical is exactly the same as not having a safe work procedure at all!
  • Have workers review your draft procedures. Have your experienced workers review the procedures and make amendments as necessary. If you have a safety committee this is also a good forum for procedures to be reviewed.
  • Train workers in the use of the procedures and safe work practices in general.

Once procedures have been developed and agreed, train your workers in their use. Ideally this training should involve workers demonstrating that they understand the procedures and can work safely.

It is not enough to simply distribute the procedures and ask your workers to sign a piece of paper saying they have read them.

Review procedures regularly

Review procedures whenever there is a change in the workplace and after any incident or near miss. Regardless, you should have a regularly scheduled review that makes sure the procedures remain relevant to the task.

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