Building Safety Into Your Business

For many reasons, occupational health and safety (OHS) has become an important item on the senior management meeting agenda. The last five years has seen increased political focus and legislative change across Australia including:

• increasing maximum fines (up to $1.65M for corporations in some States);

• the introduction of industrial manslaughter and the ‘workplace death offence’ in some States and Territories; and

• increasing numbers of prosecutions.

However, it’s not just the legislative obligations and increased enforcement that’s driving the change. More importantly, employers are accepting the social and moral responsibility to ensure people’s safety at work in addition to the adverse effect and costs on the business if OHS is not properly managed.

So how does an employer build safety into their business?

Make it part of the business

OHS must become part of the business and not something which is separate and distinct to it. Safety policies, procedures and implementation tools need to be built into existing operational systems and procedures rather than being stand-alone documents which are not likely to be referenced in practice.

Document how you will manage workplace safety

Document how your company will manage workplace safety and conduct regular reviews of your OHS Management System. Ensure that staff are consulted in order to continually improve your System and make it relevant to your workplace and its culture.

Implementation of this system

This is the most important component. A company can have the best documented safety management system in the world, but it will be worthless unless it’s implemented and enforced. A detailed implementation plan with clear responsibilities and timelines is required.

Some tips to effective implementation include:

• Be proactive when managing OHS risk. Employers need to search for, detect and eliminate or control risks;

• Have an effective consultative mechanism in place with your staff;

• Regularly monitor and review your OHS controls to ensure their effectiveness;

• Develop lead performance indicators to measure your system’s effectiveness and report back to senior management;

• Develop a “safety” culture at work;

• Be prepared to enforce your safety policies and procedures; and

• Have an independent third party audit conducted on your system.

Culture of safety

Many businesses have developed well documented OHS management systems. These have been supported by individuals within the business who have worked hard at its implementation, only to find barriers in the organisation to its effective implementation.

These barriers can most often be attributed to the organisation’s culture, which is ultimately driven by:

1. Executive commitment; and

2. Employee ownership.

A business must have both before implementation of the system can be truly effective. The executive must give more to safety than just “lip-service”. In larger organisations, the executive needs to proactively measure their OHS management systems effectiveness with “lead performance indicators” and not lag indicators alone such as “lost time injury frequency rates”. Actions are always more important than words.

Employees need to “own” the OHS system. To own it, they need to be consulted and be responsible to drive the implementation of the risk management initiatives.

Motivating employees to support your safety initiatives

Supervisors and line managers are critical to the effective implementation of OHS at your workplace. The influence and commitment of a supervisor or line manager can work for you or against you. To make it a strength, ensure you motivate them and the employees under them by:

• Providing effective leadership - actions and not just words;

• Providing relevant information, training and instruction required for them to safely carry out their work;

• Communication – ensure that your consultative mechanism is effective;

• Introduce reporting on actions that encourage proactive safety behaviour.

Other proactive strategies

The safety legislation does not require employers to ensure that workplace risks do not exist or that workplace incidents do not happen. It requires employers to do all that is reasonably practicable to ensure workplace risks do not exist or that incidents do not occur. This can be achieved by:

• Systematically scrutinising new and established work practices to identify reasonably foreseeable risks to safety, even when these practices conform with industry practice;

• Adopting a flexible and proactive approach when implementing measures to guard against workplace risk in recognition that some workers will be careless, inadvertent, inattentive, unreasonable or disobedient. Wherever possible, isolate or engineer the human element out of the work practice;

• Where it’s not reasonably practicable to isolate or engineer the human element out of the work practice, it is essential that a robust and coherent safe system of work is developed. Instruction and training must be provided in those systems such that they are understood by the staff and a clear chain of supervision and management is in place to enforce those requirements;

• Demonstrating the importance of your system to all within the company by providing reward for compliance and discipline for non-compliance;

• Undertaking safety surveys to keep informed of employees views concerning established systems of work and act in a timely fashion where opportunities for improvement are identified;

• Where an incident occurs or there is a “near-miss”, conduct a comprehensive investigation to identify the underlying systemic causes leading to the risk and consider the remedial measures to prevent a recurrence.

Conclusion

As with any effective system in a business, employers and employees need to plan, consult, develop implementation actions and time lines and then work hard to ensure that the system is implemented and then monitored over time.

Good systems in businesses are measured and monitored regularly and the results are analysed for continual improvement. It should also be remembered, that there is an abundant amount of information and support resources available to assist and support businesses to manage workplace safety risk.

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