The Effectiveness of Workplace Health and Safety Management Systems - Assignment Example

WHS management systems Place Managing WHS In the present time materials, technologies and processes are used in the workplace with little awareness about the effect they make on people’s health and safety. New chemicals and extended working hours and non-standard employment options have increased the concern about how to make human working conditions better and how to adapt the employees to the new findings. The International Labour Organization and World Health Organization have defined that occupational health should promote and maintain “the highest degree of physical, mental and social well-being of workers in all occupations” (Archer, Borthwick, Travers & Ruschena, 2014). That means that employees should be safe from accident and injury. A Work Health and Safety Management System addresses work health and safety within an organization and manage its implementation. Australia as other countries measures its performance of health and safety using compensation claims and developing its health and safety strategy. However, much of legitimate claims are never made because employees do not know about their rights or whether their injury and illness are work-related, besides, workers are afraid to make a claim at all. In such a case, health and safety performance data enables organizations and the entire countries to track dangerous influence of certain occupations and industries on health and safety of their people and make improvement if needed. Evaluation and recommendations to WHS There is evidence that speaks on the effectiveness of Workplace Health and Safety Management Systems to be dependent upon the level of their implementation, where a more integrated approach is aimed to make the regulation and local co-operation work more efficient for improvement of work environment (Bohle & Quinlan, 2000). In this case, the success of a WHS management system requires high commitment from all levels and functions within a certain organization. Thus, Work Health and Safety Act 2011 No. 10 (2015) provides a balanced and nationally constant framework that secures health and safety of employees and their working places. Work Health and Safety Regulation 2011 (2015) gives practical guidance about the requirements of the Workplace Health and Safety. Besides, Safe Work Australia agency was also created to coordinate and develop national policy and strategies to provide safer work conditions (Archer, Borthwick, Travers and Ruschena, 2014). Australian Hardware organization, committed to the quality provision of hardware, homewares, garden and building supplies across Australia is among the companies that achieves its vision and business objectives through proactive management of risk, the policy of which was developed and implemented as a program at the Wollongong Store and then on the national level. So far, the main needs of Australian Hardware are considered to be the legal compliance across jurisdictions, safest possible workplace conditions for workers and bring Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate and Injury Rate to 10% below national averages, as well as integration with all other Australian Hardware management systems and advertisement and demonstration of its commitment to WHS. For that purpose, the company should assess its WHS data to address issues and improve its practices. Thus, one of the improvements in terms of WHS Management System can be detailed and accurate documents, such as procedures, work instructions and checklists available at all appropriate locations and employees. Effectiveness of WHS management can be also reached by the appropriate record keeping that is aimed to provide evidence of compliance with the corporate WHS Management System. Required records may be the project WHS Management Plan, Safe work procedures, Training records, First aid treatment and Hazard identification and risk assessment, according to Work Health and Safety Management Systems and Auditing Guidelines (2013). National Safety Council in Australia (2015) recommends work health and safety and risk management audit as a solution to assist Australian Hardware organization in reaching compliance to WHS. Work Health and Safety Codes of Practice recommends how to manage risks at the workplace such as exposure of standards for dangerous contaminants and managing risks in forestry operations. The Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (2015) indicate recommendations for the safety of workplace in the Code of Practice, First Aid in the Workplace (n.d.). According to Australian Hardware national WHS data, customer service staff suffers from hurting themselves while lifting lawn mower or falling from stacks of building supplies in warehouse, some had chemical burns or dropped leaf blower narrowly missing other customer service staff. While certain Lost Time Injuries were not solved and no action were taken to prevent possible happenings, other situations were recorded and certain actions such as disciplinary actions against employees or training and coaching sessions were organized for the employees and team leaders. Action plan for improvement implementation As records can be extremely important for organization as part of a health and safety activity, they should be stored in an orderly manner, be easily identifiable, according to the WHS Procedure of Document control and record management (2013). To improve the process of record keeping organization should archive the records to long-term storage for preservation. Responsible staff should be well-trained to ensure that important records will be kept in safety. As a part of Australian Hardware Risk Management Plan, risk of poor product quality from suppliers may be eliminated by continual audits of product quality and then monitored by means of audit of supplier quality and customer complaints monitoring on a monthly basis. Store general managers, general operations managers and marketing general manager will be responsible for completion of such action plan (Australian Hardware Risk Management Plan, 2013). Induction and training are among the main elements that ensure staff to be informed about the WHS risk management, according to Guide Document for Development of WHS Management Plans (2012). The plan should also describe how employees will be inducted on the health and safety requirements. In terms of prevention of incidents at workplaces, Australian Hardware organization should conduct team leader and employees’ remedial training and coaching sessions and safety action meetings. Besides, regular review and reporting as well as constant recommendations with respect to compliance of organizational requirements should be conducted. A written description of problems and solutions about every particular incident should be created in the way of action plan. For that purpose, open communication with employees will be an important step to the success of organizational efforts. The cooperation will depend on understanding what the injury and near miss incident is about and why it is important to prevent such situations. The objective of Australian Hardware is to bring Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate and Injury Rate to 10% below national averages. For that purpose, development and training of a relevant safety procedure will be the perfect action plan. The following plan of training and safety induction session will ensure all employees to understand and adheres to existing procedures and overall company aims and objectives. Goal Program Activities Timeline Participants Outcome indicators To create health and safe workplace Awareness campaign on health and safe workplace Handout pamphlets, posters, information for employees sent beforehand June All employees Less than 10% of LTIFR and IR across organization Improve health and safe workplace awareness Individual counselling Sept-Oct All employees Employees’ satisfaction with workplace conditions References Archer, R., Borthwick, K., Travers, M. and Ruschena, L. 2014. WHS: A Management Guide PDF, Cengage Learning Australian Hardware Risk Management Plan, 2013. Australian Hardware, [pdf] Available at: http://simulations.ibsa.org.au/australian_hardware/secure/docs/AH_Risk%20Management%20Strategy%20and%20Action%20Plan.pdf [Accessed in April 19, 2015]. Bohle, P. and Quinlan, M. 2000. Managing Occupational Health and Safety: A Multidisciplinary Approach, Macmillan Education AU Document Control & Record Management Procedure, 2013. WHS Procedure, University of Australia, V2.2, [pdf] Available at: http://w3.unisa.edu.au/safetyandwellbeing/SMS/procedures/document_control_and_record_management.pdf[Accessed on April 19, 2015]. First aid in the workplace, Code of Practice, n.d. Work Health and Safety (National Uniform Legislation) Act 2011, [pdf] Available at: http://www.worksafe.nt.gov.au/Publications/Code%20of%20Practice/first_aid_cop.pdf [Accessed on April 19, 2015]. Guide Document for Development of WHS Management Plans, 2012. Department of Construction and Infrastructure, [pdf] Available at: http://www.nt.gov.au/infrastructure/techspecs/specifications/documents/GuideDocumentNTGovernmentFinal120824_000.pdf[Accessed on April 19, 2015]. WHS Auditing Solutions, 2015. National Safety Council in Australia, [online] Available at: http://nsca.org.au/products-services/whs-auditing/ [Accessed on April 19, 2015]. Work Health and Safety Act No 1, 2015. NSW legislation, [online] Available at: http://www.legislation.nsw.gov.au/maintop/view/inforce/act+10+2011+cd+0+N [Accessed on April 19, 2015]. Work Health and Safety Regulation, 2015. [online] Available at: http://www.legislation.nsw.gov.au/maintop/view/inforce/subordleg+674+2011+cd+0+N [Accessed on April 19, 2015]. Work Health and Safety Management Systems and Auditing Guidelines, 2013. the Procurement Policy Framework of the NSW Government, [online] Available at: https://www.procurepoint.nsw.gov.au/before-you-buy/framework-construction/work-health-safety-management-systems [Accessed on April 19, 2015]. Read More