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You’re on the right track, but there is more you can do to help with defining safety roles and responsibilities.

Your responses indicate that you need to be more consistent with your approach to health and safety. Ask yourself: Are safety responsibilities effectively communicated? Have you allowed adequate resources to meet safety responsibilities? Are you involved in safety issues?

What you can do to improve:

Ensure safety responsibilities are clearly defined and understood

Your workers will contribute to safety if they understand their responsibilities; and have the skills to meet those responsibilities.

Are your workers given induction training that includes safety information and outlines their safety responsibilities? Do they have clear instructions on how to deal with safety issues? Do supervisors understand their role in ensuring safety in the workplace?

Review resources to support safety initiatives

Demonstrate your commitment by providing enough time and money to deal with safety problems and to fix problems when they arise. Where problems cannot be fixed immediately, provide an alternate solution.

Demonstrate your commitment

Get actively involved with safety issues when they arise. Attend workplace meetings regularly. Speak with your workers and act upon their feedback. Ensure solutions to safety problems are implemented promptly by those responsible.

Useful links

• Work health and safety policy template

Your consultation arrangements are effective and workers are involved in decisions regarding safety.

Your responses indicate that you have implemented effective consultation processes and that you actively encourage your worker’s participation and value their views.

What you can do to maintain this:

Review your consultation arrangements periodically with your workers and ensure the arrangements continue to work effectively

Ensure that all of your workers including young workers, workers from a non-English speaking background or workers with literacy difficulties are adequately represented in the consultation process and that their views are sought and valued.

Useful links

• Record of safety discussions template

You identify and control some or most of your hazards and risks but you may not have effective safe work procedures in place for all of them.

Your responses indicate that you have started to address the risks associated with work tasks but you may need to look more closely at the tasks, identify any hazards you may have overlooked, and ensure that your safe work procedures are appropriate and help your workers do their jobs safely.

What you can do to improve:

Review work tasks

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.

Plan your approach

Sometimes, business pressures or uncertainty about what to do next may delay the development and implementation of safe work procedures.

Plan the process carefully so that you are able to develop safe work procedures gradually, within the constraints of your business demands. You should prioritise those tasks with the highest risk and involving the entire workforce in a structured way will help a lot with time. A good plan will help you overcome the limitations in time and resources and will let you track progress against targets.

Ensure procedures are up-to-date

If you find that your workers are not always following safe work procedures, review the procedures to ensure they are still relevant and are up to date. Sometimes procedures are not followed because they use old methods or talk about steps or machines that are no longer in use. If procedures are up to date, have your workers been trained in their use? Are your workers being properly supervised? Do your supervisors and managers make sure they always follow the procedures?

Useful links

• Hazard list and risk assessment template
• Action plan template

Your business views health and wellbeing of employees as a priority and plans and programmes are in place which address both physical and mental health issues.

Your responses indicate that you have a wellbeing program in place which actively encourages healthy lifestyle options, standard reporting systems include the reporting of workplaces issues that could contribute to work-related stress and measures are in place for the prevention of bullying and harassment.

What you can do to maintain this:

Put in place measures to review the effectiveness of your wellbeing program to ensure it continues to meet the needs of the workforce and any changing circumstances

Ensure leadership continues to take a visible and active involvement in the health and wellbeing program and staff are consulted so that the wellbeing program continues to address the needs of the workforce.

Monitor incident reporting systems to ensure work-related stressors are being reported and appropriate controls are put in place.

Continue to look for opportunities where health and wellbeing can be integrated and embedded into organisational systems and processes such as induction programs, WHS systems, education programs and overall business plans.

Consider how your business can evaluate the health and wellbeing program such as through changes in knowledge and attitudes of workers, records of participation, staff surveys, staff engagement levels and in the longer term, staff retention rates, absenteeism rates and workers compensation claims/premiums.

Your workers are adequately trained and supervised to be safe at work.

Your responses indicate that you have good processes in place for education and supervision of your workers.

What you can do to maintain this:

Continuously review your process of training, induction and supervision

Changes in the workplace including new equipment, new ways of doing things and even new workers can render old processes obsolete. Make sure you keep reviewing your hazards and risks to make sure your education and supervision remains effective.

Useful links

• Induction checklist template
• Training plan template
• Training record template

You have processes in place to maintain a safe workplace but there may be some gaps in your system that could mean that your workers are exposed to an increased risk of injury.

Your responses indicate that you undertake some measures towards providing a safe workplace but that there are some gaps in your system.

What you can do to improve:

Carry out regular safety checks

You should perform regular inspections of your worksite. These inspections should be scheduled and it is a good idea to have a regular rotation of people doing the inspection including managers, supervisors and workers.

Any issues you note as part of these inspections should be documented and actioned. Always inform workers that this has occurred as it will help keep them involved in safety and also demonstrate your commitment to keeping them safe.

These regular inspections do not take the place of your normal incident reporting procedure and you should continue to report incidents as normal.

Implement a preventative maintenance schedule

Make sure that you register all of your plant and equipment (including hand tools). This register should form the basis of your regular preventative maintenance schedule. Make sure you check the schedule regularly to ensure that any faulty plant or equipment is in good working order.

Put simple and effective incident and accident reporting procedures in place

Put in place reporting procedures that make it easy for your workers to let you know whenever an incident occurs, and encourage them to do so. Make sure that any investigations that need to be done after an incident involve the reporting worker(s) and ensure that the theme of any investigation is to fix any issues – not to apportion blame to anyone.

Make sure you train all of your workers and managers in these procedures.

Implement an emergency plan for all types of emergencies – not just fire

Most organisations have a fire emergency and evacuation plan but there are other kinds of emergencies that can arise. Make sure you have plans in place for medical emergencies, bomb threats, chemical spills or other major events.

Useful links

• Hazardous and risk register template
• Incident hazard report template

Incidents are being reported but this may be inconsistent and they are not always investigated. More could be done to analyse trends and drive continuous improvement.

Your responses indicate that you are aware of the benefits of incident reporting and investigations but that there may be an inconsistent application of your procedures or that your workers do not always report incidents promptly or at all.

What you can do to improve:

Make sure your workers are aware of your incident reporting procedures and how those procedures help to keep them safe

Some workers don’t report what they consider minor incidents because they do not feel as though they are important enough. Other workers may delay reporting because they feel that an incident means they have done something wrong. In order to encourage your workers to report incidents you can:

• train your workers in your procedures from induction onwards – make sure they are aware of the importance of reporting incidents
• make sure you emphasise the link between incident reporting and safety – you cannot address an issue you are unaware of and lodging an incident report can help you improve systems and make your workplace safer for your workers
• reinforce the fact that incident investigation is not about finding someone to blame but rather to find any issues and fix them so no one gets injured.

Monitor your incident reports and investigation outcomes so that you can identify any trends or emerging safety issues

When an incident or injury occurs it may mean that:

• you do not have a safe work procedure in place for the task
• the current procedure is insufficient, old or incorrect – it may be that the task or equipment used has changed, that the original procedure did not cover all risks or it has not been reviewed for a long time
• your workers are not following the procedure properly.

In all of these cases there is a danger of recurrence or more serious incident if nothing is changed. By investigating the incident and identifying root cause you can put preventative actions in place that will keep your workplace safe.

Provide regular reporting to senior management on incidents, injuries and investigation outcomes

Regular management reporting and review will assist the senior management team in ensuring that business resources are directed to the best areas to improve workplace safety. It will also provide managers with the ability to track progress against safety targets and to make sure those with safety responsibilities are held accountable.

Useful links

• Health and safety checklist template