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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

There are consultation procedures in place but these may not be working effectively or capturing all of your workers’ input.

Your responses indicate that you do consult with your workers but that it is inconsistent or that you may not reach all of your workers. You may also not provide feedback or consult with all relevant workers about health and safety matters.

What you can do to improve:

Make sure that your consultation process is suitable for the workplace

Your consultation process may need to be changed to take into account the different needs of your workers, the size of your business, the location of your site or sites if you have more than one, shift arrangements, transport workers or workers who work at client sites or any other special arrangements you may have with your workers. Some workers may not be able to attend regular meetings and may be missing vital information about their safety or changes in the workplace. You may need to introduce alternative methods of consulting with these workers.

Encourage workers to consult and always provide feedback

Sometimes workers can appear to lack the desire to consult but that may be as a result of the process of consultation rather than the consultation itself.

You can help address this by:

• Scheduling safety meetings as a priority. If safety meetings are held at the end of the day or a shift, you can run out of time and workers may feel rushed or too tired to contribute. Schedule safety meetings at the start of the day or shift so that there is enough time and workers are fresh and alert.
• Show that you value your workers’ views. You can develop a method to demonstrate to your workers that their concerns and feedback are considered. This could be in the form of an action plan or some other method that clearly shows you are listening. Sometimes workers are told about decisions rather than being consulted. If your workers believe their concerns are ignored they will be reluctant to participate in the consultation process. Don’t make safety decisions without regard to your workers’ feedback. If a decision is made that is contrary to worker views, provide reasons that clearly outline why.
• Involve your entire workforce. Some of your workers may be unaware of their WHS responsibilities. Train all of your workers in WHS consultation procedures, including your supervisors and managers. Workers from non-English speaking backgrounds and those with special needs should be consulted individually to ensure their concerns are addressed.
• To be effective, consultation needs to be consistent and inclusive and safety issues need to be addressed in a timely way. Discuss safety concerns as part of your regular workplace meetings rather than ad-hoc meetings. Making safety part of the regular agenda and having meaningful discussion will go a long way to integrating safety into the normal business culture and demonstrating to your workers that it is an important aspect of business operations.

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 are providing and maintaining a safe workplace for your workers.

Your responses indicate that you are regularly checking workplace work health and safety and identifying any changes or issues that may require you to reconsider existing procedures or processes.

You have a regular documented preventative maintenance programme in place and you ensure your plant and equipment is in safe working order.

You have an effective incident and injury reporting process in place. Your workers are trained in the process and all are notified of any outcome.

Your workplace has appropriate emergency procedures in place and these are tested regularly.

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

• 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