Workplace Health and Safety Compliance for Small Business

Workplace Health
and Safety
Compliance For
Small Businesses
Vivek Naidu
KOHSSAFETY

Contents
Introduction 3
Injury Costs to the Economy 5
WH&S Importance in Business 6
Eight Steps for Businesses:
Step 1: Definitions under the
Health and Safety Act 2011
Step 2: Workplace Health and
Safety Policy
12
Step 3: Consultation 14
Step 4: Hazards and Risks 15
Step 5: Workplace Training 17
Step 6: Keeping Records 19
Step 7: Safety Management System 20
Step 8: Monitoring & Review 21
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Workplace Health and Safety
Compliance for Small Businesses

KOHSSAFETY
Introduction
In Australia, there are approximately 650,000 small family businesses
according to the 2017 Australian Bureau of Statistics and these small
businesses comprise a very sizeable proportion of the business
community. A small business is a business that employs less than fifteen
full-time equivalent employees.
While many of the workplace health and safety challenges facing small
businesses are industry-specific, there are similarities across all small
businesses and can be adapted to any individual mall businesses who
often find it hardest to manage Work Health and Safety issues.
The aim of this booklet is to
explain the Eight (8) Essential
Steps that Small Businesses
should be familiar with in order
to comply with the ‘Model’ laws
namely the Work Health and
Safety Act 2011 No 10 (herein
called the Act) and Workplace
Health and Safety Regulation 2017 (referred herein as the Regulation).
The Act and Regulation can be confusing to small business owners.
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The eight steps will raise awareness of small business owners across
Australia to meet their legal requirements imposed by the Act and the
Regulation. The Regulation underpins the Act, and it provides practical
steps that should be followed to have a safe and secure work
environment and prevent injury and illness while at work.
It is time consuming and burdensome especially on small businesses,
who have limited resources to manage Work Health and Safety.
However having an increased Work Health and Safety outcomes will
positively benefit and improve the success of many businesses by having
higher quality products, increased productivity and lower workers
compensation costs to name a few. Also, Importantly, addressing health
& safety issues add value to businesses, workplaces and protect workers
on the job. This a win -win situation for all business owners, workers and
their customers.
There are WHS regulators in the Commonwealth and in each State and
Territory who are responsible for regulating and enforcing the laws in
their jurisdictions. Businesses operating in NSW, Queensland, the A.C.T,
the N.T, South Australia, Tasmania and (the Commonwealth) are all
subject to the WHS Act. However, businesses operating in Victoria and
Western Australia have their own Safety Act, which are the OHS Act
2004 and OSH Act 1984 respectively. These two states have yet to
embrace the 2011 Act and 2017 Regulation.
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Injury Costs to the Economy
Work-related injuries, illnesses and deaths impose costs on employers,
workers and the community. These include both direct costs and
indirect costs:
• Direct costs include items such as workers’ compensation premiums paid by
employers or payments to injured or incapacitated workers from workers’
compensation jurisdictions.
• Indirect costs include items such as lost productivity, loss of current and future
earnings, lost potential output and the cost of providing social welfare
programs for injured or incapacitated workers.
• The level of costs borne by each business owner varies with the severity of the
injury or disease. While measures of direct costs are understood and
reasonably simple to measure, these costs cover only a fraction of the total
cost of work-related injury and disease.
Did you know that in 2008-2009 and in 2012–13, work-related injury
and disease cost the Australian economy respectively $60.6 and $61.8
billion, according to Safe Work Australia? This is the most recent data
available. However the costs to the economy for 2016-2017 according to
Safe Work Australia will be available in the near future as they are
updating their 2016-2017 data. The breakdown of the 2012-2013 figures
was as follows:
• The majority of the cost (95%) was borne by individuals and society.
• Workers bore 77%, the community 18% and employers 5%.
• Injuries accounted for $28 billion (45%) of the cost.
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WH&S Importance in Business
So Why is Work Health and Safety So Important for Businesses?
The reasons being:
• It is the law in Australia and employers (PCBUs) are responsible for providing a
safe and secure workplace for all their workers, contractors and visitors
• Reduced medical expenses and saves money that would otherwise be costing
businesses in lost time and or illness/injury costs at work
• It improves productivity
• Increased morale
• It keeps workers safe at work by eliminating or reducing hazards
This booklet proposes eight steps that all businesses across Australia
can proactively implement to add value to businesses, workplaces and
importantly to the lives.
Step 1 explains the definition of terms used in the Act such as PCBU, an
Officer, Workers and Due Diligence.
Steps 2, 3 & 4 relates to the H&S Policy, Consultation and Hazards in the
Workplace respectively while Steps 5, 6 & 7 refers categorically to
Workplace Training, Record Keeping, Safety Management System (SMS).
Step 8 directs attention to Continuous SMS Monitoring importance.
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STEP
1
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Definitions under the
Health and Safety Act 2011
Who is responsible for health & safety under the act?
The following persons have responsibilities under the WHS Act: “PCBU”,
“Officers” and “Workers”
What is PCBU (formerly employer)?
The term ‘employer’ has been replaced by ‘Person Conducting a
Business or Undertaking’ (PCBU).
Although an employer is a PCBU, the term PCBU is much broader and a
PCBU can be:
• a corporation
• an association
• partners in a partnership
• a sole trader
• a volunteer organisation which employ one or more people to carry out work
• householders where there is an employment relationship between the
householder and the worker.
A PCBU may conduct a business or undertaking alone or with others i.e.
each member in a partnership is a PCBU as defined above. The business
or undertaking can operate for profit or not-for-profit. The definition of
a PCBU focuses on the work arrangements and the relationships to carry
out the work.
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Workers
A worker is defined as an employee, contractor who has been assigned
to work in the PCBU or sub-contractor, an apprentice or trainee,
employee of a labour hire company, student on work experience, a
volunteer or an out worker (workers who perform their work at home
or at a place that would not be a business premise).You could also be a
PCBU and be a worker working for another PCBU.
While at work, workers must:
• take reasonable care for their own health, safety and wellbeing
• take reasonable care that what they do, or what they do not do, does not
adversely affect the health and safety of other people
• comply (so far as they are reasonably able to) with any reasonable instruction
given by management
• co-operate with any reasonable policy or procedure for work health or safety
that has been communicated to them
• not misuse or interfere with anything provided for work health and safety
• engage in consultation with management to identify, assess and control
hazards and the effectiveness of such controls
• report all known or observed hazards to their supervisor or manager as soon
as possible.
Officers
An Officer is a person who makes decisions, or participates in making
decisions, that affect the whole or a substantial part of a business or
undertaking or a person who has the capacity to significantly affect the
financial standing of the business or undertaking.
An officer of a PCBU must exercise due diligence to ensure that the
PCBU delivers on its duty to exercise all reasonable and practicable care
to avoid injury or damage to health of workers at a workplace.
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Due Diligence
Due Diligence refers to taking reasonable steps:
• to keeping up-to-date on WHS matters that concern the PCBU
• to gain an understanding of the nature of operations of the PCBU and hazards
and risks arising out of the PCBU’s operations
• to ensure that PCBU has appropriate resources and processes to eliminate or
minimise risks arising out of PCBU’s operations
• to ensure that PCBU has processes for receiving and considering information
regarding incidents, hazards and risks and responding in a timely way to that
information
• to ensure PCBU has processes for complying with any of its duties or
obligations under the WHS Act
• to ensure that the PCBU has the processes for complying with any duty of care
and use of resources and processes referred in the above paragraphs
What is Reasonably Practicable?
Reasonably practicable means you are legally expected to take every
reasonable step you can to control risks to health and safety.
It is important to note that if the risk is NOT foreseeable, it will generally
not be reasonably practicable to control it. The duty to provide a safe
workplace is enshrined in the legislation. If the risk is foreseeable you
must eliminate it and if that is not possible, you need to minimise it as
much as possible.
You are required by law to proactively identify hazards in the workplace
and then take positive steps to eliminate or reduce the risks before an
incident occurs.
You can be prosecuted for failing to maintain a safe workplace even
when no accident or injury occurs. The duty can be breached by simply
exposing others to a hazard or risk. The prosecution does not have to
prove that any persons were actually endangered, only they could have.
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Here is an example in Case Law to demonstrate WHS significance:
In Thesis Pty Ltd v Industrial Court of NSW (2010) a company appealed a
conviction for breaching OHS obligations. The charges arose out of an
incident where the body of a worker, who suffered a heart attack, was
found at the bottom of a sediment pond at a construction site. The
prosecution accepted that the presence of the sediment pond did not
contribute to the death of the worker, it argued that the incident had
exposed the fact that inadequate signage and barriers around the
sediment pond exposed persons to risk of injury.
The Company argued that it should not have been convicted as no
person had actually been exposed to an identified risk, and that it was
not enough for the prosecution to merely demonstrate the existence of
a generalised risk in the workplace.
The NSW Court of Appeal up held the conviction finding that as long as
persons were exposed to possible risk, it does not matter that no
persons were actually endangered by the hazard.
The above is an example where Courts take obligations very seriously.
Are you responsible for the actions of your employees?
You are generally liable for the behaviour of your employees. If an
employee or other person is exposed to a risk due to carelessness of
one of your employees, you and your company may be charged with
breaching your general duty by not providing a safe workplace.
The fact that an employee steered away from established procedure in
your workplace will not generally be a successful defence. You are
expected to take responsibility for the fact that employees can be
careless and disregard established procedures.
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Can you rely on someone else to take the necessary action?
While duties prescribed by the Act require the PCBU to ensure health
and safety outcomes, they do not necessarily require the PCBU to
provide everything to achieve these outcomes.
For example, it is a common practice for a PCBU to engage a specialist or
technical expert to carry out work and in these situations the PCBU is
entitled to rely on the expertise of the specialist or technical expert.
However, the PCBU still carries responsibility for ensuring the
requirements of the WHS Act are met. For example, the PCBU must
ensure as far as reasonably practicable to ensure that the specialist or
technical expert does:
• have the relevant skills, experience, licence (if required) expertise to carry out
work safely
• has systems, processes and procedures in place to carry out work safely
• is carrying out work in a manner which does not create a health & safety risk
for the PCBU’s own workers or others in the workplace
How do you define a workplace?
A workplace means any place where work is performed may it be a
building, vehicle, client’s premises or a structure where workers or selfemployed
persons carry out work. Regardless of which industry your
business operates in, safety is of utmost importance. Health and safety
legislation requires every workplace to ensure the safety of its workers
and every worker in return also plays their part in maintaining a safe and
secure workplace.
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STEP
2
KOHSSAFETY
Workplace Health and
Safety Policy
Why have a WH&S Policy?
The purpose of a WHS Policy is for management to ensure all work
activities be carried out safely, without risks to the health, safety and
welfare of workers, contractors, authorised visitors, and anyone else
who may be affected by the business or undertakings.
The policy also ensures that the workplace is free from risks to health
and safety and to protect workers’ health, safety, mental and social
wellbeing.
What needs to be written in a H&S Policy?
A written H&S policy should be simple and developed by the business
owner, in consultation with the workers, will go a long way to achieving
this. A written policy should:
• Identify the duties and responsibilities of all parties
• State the commitment to improving WHS and consider how best to achieve a
safe workplace
• Be dated and signed by the owner
• Be displayed at all workplaces
• Be accessible to all workers, and
• Be reviewed regularly (once a year) to ensure it remains relevant and effective
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How do you communicate the Policy?
Once you’ve developed your policy, sign it and display it prominently in
the workplace.
Tell everyone involved with your business about it so they know what
they should expect and what is expected of them. Just handing your
workers something to read and getting them to sign it may not be
adequate. So, go through it at a staff or toolbox meeting and include it
in inductions for new workers. Be mindful that people have varying
levels of literacy, education and/or understanding; or they may speak a
different language.
All workers, contractors and others at the business undertaking should
be provided with a copy of the Policy by their manager/supervisor and
new workers should be provided with a copy of the Policy as part of
their induction
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STEP
3
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Consultation
Are you consulting with your workers?
Consulting comes under Part 5 Division 2 of the Act: Business owners
must consult with workers and managers about health & safety issues
under the Act. Effective consultation encourages greater awareness of
issues and can lead to improved safety culture and outcomes.
What are the ways for Consultation?
Consultation can occur through Work Health and Safety Committees,
meetings or toolbox talks. General WHS information can be delivered
through briefings, noticeboards, emails or newsletters.
Do you need a Health and Safety Representative or a WHS Committee
in a workplace?
This depends entirely on the workplace. Some workplaces may decide
to ask the PCBU to facilitate the election of one or more Health & Safety
Representatives (HSR) to represent them (workers) or if majority of the
workers decide to request the PCBU to establish a Health and Safety
Committee.
The function of a H&S Committee may be to assist the company to
resolve H&S issues arising out of the workplace. A committee can be
made up of workers representing each work area and management
representatives
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STEP
4
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Hazards and Risks
What is a Hazard?
Hazard is any situation, activity, event or thing that has the potential to
cause harm to a person, injury or ill health. Hazards at workplace to
mention a few may include noisy machinery, confined spaces, working
at heights, uneven or slippery surfaces, extreme temperatures,
electricity, hazardous chemicals and wastes, moving forklift and manual
handling.
What is a Risk?
Risk is the likelihood of injury or harm or even death resulting from
exposure to a hazard.
What can you do to identify and manage hazards in your workplace?
A good starting point to identifying hazards is to conduct a workplace
inspection, a walk-through of your premises and to find anything that
can cause injury or illness.
Once the hazard has been identified, the next step is to assess the
likelihood whether that the hazard may likely cause an injury, illness or
death.
The next step is to eliminate the hazard and if that is not possible then it
must be minimised so far as is reasonably practicable by finding ways to
reduce it. We can apply a series of control measures to minimise the risk
by introducing a hierarchy of controls.
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What is hierarchy of control?
It is a structured approach to selecting control measures to eliminate or
reduce the risk of certain hazards you have identified in your workplace.
The most preferred approach is to Eliminate the hazard or the risk of
exposure to the hazard followed by Substitution, Isolation, Engineering,
Administration and Personal Protective Equipment.
Examples of how to apply the above six (6) stages are discussed in depth
in my next presentation – A Risk Management Guide - “How to Manage
Work Health and Safety Risks ”.
Workplace
Health and
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STEP
5
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Workplace Training
What is workplace training?
Workplace training is training in internal policies, procedures and
practices that apply within a workplace. WH&S Regulations prescribe
training requirements for specific work areas for e.g. Manual Handling,
Chemical Safety, Risk Management and First Aid to name a few.
Who provides the training?
Training can be provided by a competent person i.e. supervisors or
managers within a company however it is critically important that they
have experience or expertise in the areas they provide the training.
You might want to use Approved Training Organisation for some specific
areas of training. Also, relevant national and state regulators in each
state could be contacted for assistances on training needs.
Who needs to be trained and in what areas?
H&S Regulations prescribe training requirements for specific work areas.
A training needs survey should be conducted annually and all employees
such as supervisors, managers and health & safety representatives
should be trained. This training should be tailored to meet the needs of
the employees, supervisor and managers in all relevant aspects of their
work areas and duties.
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Areas of training should include:
– First Aid Certification
– PPE Personal Protective Equipment
– Risk Management
– Safe Handling of Chemicals
– Safe use of Forklifts
– Safe Use of Machinery & Equipment
– Manual Handling/Ergonomics
– Bullying & Harassment – how to
treat other staff and report any
inappropriate behaviour
– Handling Hazardous Substances e.g.
Asbestos and Dangerous good
– Working in confined spaces
– Office Safety
– Managing Stress
– Accident & Emergency Procedures
– Training for Construction Workers
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STEP
6
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Keeping Records
Records are essential because:
• They enable a business to demonstrate its compliance to the WH&S
activities, as well as meeting its legal obligations
• To keep a record and provide supporting documents on its WH&S
performance when Regulators investigate or when prosecutions are
initiated
• For the business to prove it has taken positive steps to promote
health & safety
What records need to be kept?
You will need to keep the following records:
• incidents and injuries, including near misses
• hazardous chemicals and asbestos register (if they are present at
your workplace)
• plant & equipment registration documents
• tests e.g. for workplace noise or dusts or chemicals exposure ,
maintenance, inspection and other records for specific types of
plant.
It may also be useful to keep records of:
• hazard identification, risk assessment and control processes
• WH&S training records
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STEP
7
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Safety Management System
What is a WH&S management system?
WH&S management system (SMS) is a comprehensive systematic way to
manage and protect safety of workers in the workplace. It includes
management commitment, health & safety policies, objectives, plans,
safety programs and procedures, organisational responsibilities and
accountability such as maintaining records and implementing all of the
eight (8) strategies outlined in this brochure. In other words
incorporating your health & safety activities and program into your
business plans and processes. Having an effective management system
allows the PCBU the ability to continuously identify workplace hazards
and control risks in your workplace.
Why is having an SMS important?
• So that businesses can manage their health & safety risks by
implementing strategies outlined above to protect its workers’
health, safety, mental and social (psychosocial) well-being.
• It is the law in Australia and employers are responsible for providing
a safe and secure workplace for their workers, contractors and
visitors
• It reduces costs to the business in lost time and or illness/ injury
costs to workers at work,
• It improves productivity and efficiency
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STEP
8
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MONITORING & REVIEW
Review and monitoring of the Safety Management is a continuous
ongoing process. The reason being your safety processes, operations
and workers may change over time and so can the risks. Therefore
monitoring all eight elements identified in this booklet will provide a
means to systematically review the health & safety performance and to
make necessary adjustments to keep it up to date.
Why is Continuous Improvement necessary?
All eight steps of the SMS should be monitored and reviewed regularly
to ensure continuous improvement. Continuous Improvement occurs
when the amendments or corrective actions identified are acted upon
and improvements being made so that the value of the Safety
Management System could be further improved.
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For further information please contact via
email at kohssafety@gmail.com
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