Background of AGL Energy Ltd
You are required to develop an occupational health management plan for an identified occupational health hazard in one identified workplace.
Occupational health hazards affect the worker’s capability and efficiency in delivering their services. Therefore, a proper health management program would be necessary to deal with this problem. This paper aims at establishing an effective occupational health hazard management program that could be used by AGL Energy Ltd to deal with diesel fumes exposure risks faced by employees in the course of their work. First, the workplace details of the company are laid out, the identified occupational health hazard is explained, details of the health program chosen to deal with the risk are provided before highlighting the evaluation tools that would be used to assess the effectiveness of the health program.
AGL is a public listed company in Australia, founded in 2006 has its headquarters in North Sydney, New South Wales. The company is involved in the generation and retailing of gas and electricity for both residential and commercial needs in the country. From the company’s website, it has 1001- 5000 employees by the year 2016. The company operates thermal generation plants, natural gas and storage plants, and also renewable power generation plants that include hydro-electricity, wind power, landfill gas, solar and biomass.
Workers in power plants are exposed to a number of health hazards. In the case of AGL Energy Ltd, those who work in the coal mines and hydropower plants are facing a number of health hazards. The most common occupational health hazard in this company’s electricity generation plant and coal mines is exposure to harmful gases such as diesel fumes and welding fumes (Johansson, Patwardhan, Nakicenovic, Gomez- Echeverri & International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, 2012).
Diesel plants are used as standby plants for steam and hydropower plants. The use of diesel engine plants in generating power leads to the emission of harmful diesel fumes that when inhaled by the workers pose significant risks to the workers’ health (Sivanagaraju, Reddy & Srilatha, 20101). Moreover, operators in underground coal mines use a wide variety of diesel engines (Bugarski, 2012)
Extensive use of diesel-powered equipment by AGL Energy Ltd workers in coal mines and hydropower plants expose them to diesel emission. These diesel engine operators, as well as other workers, spend most of their working time around these places where the diesel engines are used. As a result of this, they are exposed to fresh diesel aerosols and the gaseous components of diesel emissions, including carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide and nitric oxide. Inhalation of diesel exhaust causes a potential lung cancer risk to the workers. Exposures to diesel emissions in closed environments may lead to death as a result of carbon monoxide inhalation in cases where the worker is not properly protected with appropriate respiratory protection (Greenberg, 2013). Short-term exposure to diesel emissions leads to nasal and bronchial irritation, headache, dizziness and respiratory difficulties such as tightness of chest. Moreover, increased incidence of respiratory symptoms such as a cough and phlegm are reported from exposure to diesel fumes (Harbison, 2015).
Occupational health hazards at AGL Energy Ltd
The Workers Health and Safety Act 2011 (WHS Act) outlays a framework to guard the health safety and welfare of all workers at work. AGL is required to meet the requirements of the WHS together with supporting work health and safety regulation on such matters as notification of incidences, consulting workers and upholding workers safety within the company. AGL provides a guide for managing risks within the company and highlights the aspects and process of risk management (safework.com, 2017). The current risk management and control majorly focuses on reducing operational risks related to the fire. Development of a risk management plan towards diesel fumes exposure would help reduce the health effects of such risks.
According to Grammeno, 2009, an occupational health safety management program should be established to help identify and eliminate or control the cause of health hazards at the place of work. This will entail assessing the current position of the company in relation to health and safety management. The main aim of the health program is to provide a safe working environment that is free from occupational health hazards (Sharma, 2009). Other goals of the program are: identify and assess all potential health hazards; eliminating or controlling workplace hazards to avoid occupational injuries; ensure that the employees comply with the occupational and safety health standards and regulations; and to provide guidelines for occupational risk management.
Grammeno, 2009 highlights the various activities involved in the health program as; identification of the hazard, assessment of the risk, risk control and risk management.
Identification of the hazard
This is the process of recognizing the existence of the occupational health hazards and then defining the characteristics of the risks. For instance, identifying the areas or factors within the organization that create the chances for the risks and outlining the types of the risks from the various sources identified.
Risk assessment
This is the process of determining the gravity of the risk and making decisions on the actions to take towards eliminating the risks. Risk assessment process is primarily undertaken to provide information to the risk manager for the process of decision making through such activities as risk classification and identifying the health impacts of the risk (Torres & Bobst, 2015).
Risk control
Risk control refers to the process of risk mitigation or elimination. In cases where the identified risk cannot be eliminated, the company will engage into the work activity, appropriate controls that will limit the health impacts of the risks to the workers’ health controls such as personal protective equipment may be employed to control the identified risks. An effective hazard control process entails identification and maintenance of control measures to attain an efficient between the capabilities of the workers and the requirements of the work to reduce the likelihood of risk occurrence (Reese, 2008).
Establishment of an occupational health hazard management program
Risk management
This is the process of carrying out the whole process of identifying the risk, assessing the risk identifies, risk control and monitoring of the risk control measures to ensure effectiveness and making the necessary adjustments where necessary. The risk assessment strategy should be developed in such a way that the company becomes risk aversive and aware. Proper risk assessment strategy will enable the company not only to identify short-term risks but also the long-term ones (LAM, 2014).
Monitoring the risk
The process of monitoring the risk requires the risk managers to keenly access the occurrence patterns of the risk, the effectiveness of the risk mitigation plan or strategy in dealing with the respective risks. Through monitoring of the risks, areas in the risk management process and the risk mitigation strategy that require improvement are identified, then appropriate measures are taken to ensure effective and efficient use of the organization’s strategy to handle the occupational health hazards.
Implementing the health hazards management program would involve a number of activities that include:
- Definition of the problem- risk managers, should first explain the details of the risk occupational health hazard in terms of its origins, impacts and the need to implement a management program for the risk. The managers would further outline the objectives of the program in the initial stage or implementing the health program.
- Analysis or resources and support- secondly, it is important to identify and analyze the quantity types of human, financial and other resources that would be needed to support the implementation and ensure it becomes successful.
- Searching for previous effective similar interventions- it would also be helpful for the managers to search for and go through previous risk intervention programs that were successful. This would allow for comparison and adjustments where necessary in the program before it is implemented.
- Explaining the program- here, the managers would systematically highlight the various aspects of the program and the expected duration of the program. The assumptions, core components of the program and mechanisms that would facilitate the program are also explained.
- Team building and empowerment- team building, would facilitate faster implementation of the program. Through empowerment, the team would be focused towards ensuring the success of the program implementation.
- Establishing organizational infrastructure- for successful implementation, the organizational context should be developed in accordance with requirements of the program. Moreover, there should also be a commitment from the organization towards the success of the program. Therefore, the organization structure should be geared towards ensuring successful implementation of the program.
- Undertaking initial implementation and further development- once the required resources and organizational commitment has been attained, the risk managers would then direct the appropriate resources effectively towards implementation of the program. The program should be flexible enough to allow for further development.
To determine the effectiveness of the proposed program in dealing with the occupational risk, risk managers could apply different evaluation tools such as interviewing of the workers who are directly involved in the operations of the company in the risk area; and checking on the sick leave files to determine the number of workers who take sick leaves after implementing the program.
Conclusion
Establishment of a proper occupational health hazard management program could help the organization minimize occupational risks. An effective health program should have defined objectives to eliminate the risks or reduce its health effects, be clearly defined with mechanisms and core components set out clearly, are appropriately implemented and have a good evaluation system to determine its effectiveness and efficiency in addressing the risk.
References
Bugarski A. D. (2012). Controlling exposure to diesel emissions in underground mines. SME
Grammeno, G. (2009). Planning occupational health & safety. North Ryde, N.S.W.., CCH Australia.
Greenberg, M.I. (2013). Occupational, industrial, and environmental toxicology. St Louis, Missouri: Mosby
Harbison R. D. (2015). Harmilton and hardy’s industrial toxicology. John Willy & Sons Inc.
Johansson, T.B., Patwardhan, A., Nakicenovic, N., Gomez-Echeverri, L., & International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, (2012). Global Energy Assessment (GEA). Cambridge University Press
LAM, J. (2014). Enterprise Risk Management: From Incentives to Controls. John Willey & Sons.
REESE, C.D. (2008). Occupational Health and Safety Management: A Practical Approach. 2nd Edition. CRC Press.
Safework.com. (2017). Available at www.safework.nsw.gov.au/_…/AGL-Energy-Ltd. [Accessed on 25th May 2018].
Sharma, S. M. (2009). Occupational Health and Safety Manual. Shalini M. Sharma.
Sivanagaraju, S., Reddy, M.B., & Srilatha, D. (2010). Generation and utilization of electrical energy. Noida, India: Pearson.
Torres, J.A., & BOBST, S. (2015). Toxicology Risk Assessment for Beginners. Springer. Retrieved from https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12751-4. [Accessed May 27, 2018
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