Occupational Health and Safety in Australian Companies
Discuss About The Employee Workplace Level Validation Study.
The essay helps in analysing the various complexities in the Australian workplace while managing the health and safety of the individuals. Proper and accurate analysis is done as to analyse the importance of the occupational health and safety processes adopted by various companies in Australia to resolve the issues effectively. management, this has been noticed that there are different complexities found in different areas of organizations.
The main purpose of the essay is to manage the various kind of complexities in different organizations in Australia with implementation of the strategies. Occupational health and safety plays a major role in improving the health of the individuals in organizations. The analysis is essential to resolve the issues faced by employees in organizations by the different employer appropriately.
Occupational health and safety is defined as the workplace health and safety which included involvement and assessment with mitigation of the risks that impacts the welfare and safety of the individuals in Australian organizations. Xiang et al. (2014) has commented in the article that the employees in the organizations faces different unwanted sexual advances at work and the risk is greater for employed workers who are precariously in comparison to the ones who are permanent or the continuing employment.
In the year 2003, it was found in a survey that more than 43% of the women and 13% of the men faced sexual abuse at the workplace that was a huge harassment for them in the workplace (Phillips et al. 2015). The employers of different organizations did not interfere in the well being of the individuals and this was the main issue in the organizations and there is no such prevention of the employees from any kind of injury or illness. On the other hand, Ackermann et al. (2014) has commented that health and wellbeing of the individuals has to be checked by the employer of organizations at regular intervals by providing training to employees in different field in which they belong as this will assist them in handling the future consequences in a proper manner.
There are various articles in which it included the different types of violence that has been caused to employees in organizations working in Australia. The article has included different instances of bullying along with discrimination among the workers due to age and religion of the individuals. The legislative changes and means has to be adopted by different companies in maintaining work life balance and wellbeing of the employees (Healy et al. 2016).
Main Complexities in Australian Organizations
Furthermore, Terry et al. (2015) has commented that effective management of the occupational healthcare and safety continues to be a huge challenge to many Australian organizations. Proper legislative actions are required to be implemented to confront the bullying activities at workplace and this is the crucial responsibility of the employers to provide proper and safe workplace to the employees as this helps them in increasing the overall productivity of the organization.
In many Australian workforce, it has been seen that the improper work life balance among the employees and this has affected their morale of the employees as well. The different changes in the labour market has posed significant challenges for the management of occupational health and safety and this contributes to the psychological injury among the individuals. In the present scenario, there has been increase in workplace risks and this demotivated the employees (SmartCompany, 2018).
In the respective scenario, the different articles and news reports has suggested that there are various complexities in the organizations. The main issue that has been found in the workplace is related to bullying of the employees and this was noticed that only 13% of the companies comply with the different safety policies codes on first aid. Furthermore, there were different cases of sexual harassment among female employees in which the organizations have more than nine out of ten employees who are the victims of the sexual harassments. These types of issues have been crucial as the number of suicides and this increased the risk among the employees to work in organizations safely (Shea et al. 2016). There was an article that was released regarding Woolworths Supermarket that was ordered to pay more than $230,000 in the form of compensation to the different employees who are injured. However, the company addressed the same issue after the long battle of more than four years (SmartCompany, 2018).
From the respective article, it can be identified that the companies do not take much pressure on analysing the issues faced by employees and this is reducing the trust among the employees on the organization wherein they are working. The welfare provided to the employees are being affected in a negative manner and this affected the morale as well. There was another article in which the survey was taken under the United Voice Trade Union. In this respective survey more than 86% of the employees who were female and they were left unsafe in the workplaces (Peel et al. 2016). The article commented that more than 350 employees in hospitality industry has experienced the sexual harassment in the companies (The Conversation, 2018).
Ways in improving occupational health and safety laws in Australian Organizations
From such scenarios, it can be analysed that the different female employees in the organizations are not receiving much support from their workplace and this is decreasing the morale and productivity of employees along with the organization as well (Arnetz et al. 2015). Lastly, the organizations along with employer are not taking much care of the employees which is affecting the achievement of goals of the organizations.
With the help from different articles, this can be identified that the workplace health and safety is the right of all the workers as this is the moral right and the employer needs to adhere to all the rules and regulations to meet their expectations. Furthermore, the communication is very essential in nature in order to understand the differences felt by them and solve them in a more appropriate manner (Thrasher et al. 2016). Lastly, encourage to provide training to workers is a proper idea as this will reduce the employees’ turnover and this will retain the employees to increase the productivity of the company.
The various employers of different companies in the Australian society has to analyse the issues faced by the workers in the respective organizations. The analysis is required to be adopted by companies in operative manner. The occupational health and safety is essential in maintaining long term success of organizations that assists the companies in retaining staffs and maximising productivity of the entire organization as well. The occupational health and safety assists in minimizing illness and injury in the company. It is the duty of the employer of the companies to meet different legal obligations along with meeting the different responsibility of employers in the organization.
The program of health and safety will assist the employees to understand the hazards that are causing illness to employees in organizations. The operative type of health and safety program includes the workers in development of policies along with procedures to meet different demands of employees and make the system simpler in nature. It has been noticed and identified that the employer in the workplace needs to create plan that helps in promoting workplace safety and wellbeing of the employees along with talk at regular intervals with the different employees to understand their issues and solve them by sitting one to one.
The Australian companies need to make safety and health wellbeing of the individuals the primary objective as this will encourage good communication among both employer and employees. Secondly, the proper training needs to be encouraged as this is the practical solution to identify the potential hazards in the workplace. The training provided in the companies can provide confidence among the employees to face different difficulties and solve the issues. The implementation of the health and safety program is the ongoing process that requires constant monitoring as the adjustment is essential to be analysed to implement the workplace health and safety in the workplace.
Conclusion
Therefore, it can be concluded that effectual and efficient workplace health and safety is essential in the workplace as these assists in meeting the demands of the employees appropriately. It has been observed that there are different complexities in the Australian workplace such as discrimination, bullying along with no such motivation provided to the different employees. However, it has been noticed that the companies did not implement any kind of strategies and this created turnover of the employees as well. Lastly, the employees and employers created cordial relationship as this reduced the discrimination among employees effectually.
Furthermore, the organizations in Australia needs to understand the different requirements of the employees by having a proper communication as this has provided confidence among the workers to handle the issues in much matured manner. Furthermore, the companies need to inspect the workplace and the issues of employees and after analysis of the issues, the problems have to be solved. This will provide motivation to different employees in order to maintain well maintained along with safe workplace to work.
References
Ackermann, B.J., Kenny, D.T., O’Brien, I. and Driscoll, T.R., 2014. Sound Practice—improving occupational health and safety for professional orchestral musicians in Australia. Frontiers in psychology, 5, p.973.
Arnetz, J.E., Hamblin, L., Ager, J., Luborsky, M., Upfal, M.J., Russell, J. and Essenmacher, L., 2015. Underreporting of workplace violence: Comparison of self-report and actual documentation of hospital incidents. Workplace health & safety, 63(5), pp.200-210.
Healy, G.N., Goode, A., Schultz, D., Lee, D., Leahy, B., Dunstan, D.W., Gilson, N.D. and Eakin, E.G., 2016. The BeUpstanding Program™: Scaling up the Stand Up Australia Workplace Intervention for Translation into Practice. AIMS public health, 3(2), p.341.
Peel, A.J., Field, H.E., Reid, P.A., Plowright, R.K., Broder, C.C., Skerratt, L.F., Hayman, D.T., Restif, O., Taylor, M., Martin, G. and Crameri, G., 2016. The equine Hendra virus vaccine remains a highly effective preventative measure against infection in horses and humans:‘The imperative to develop a human vaccine for the Hendra virus in Australia’. Infection ecology & epidemiology, 6(1), p.31658.
Phillips, J.A., Holland, M.G., Baldwin, D.D., Gifford-Meuleveld, L., Mueller, K.L., Perkison, B., Upfal, M. and Dreger, M., 2015. Marijuana in the workplace: Guidance for occupational health professionals and employers: Joint guidance statement of the American Association of Occupational Health Nurses and the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Workplace health & safety, 63(4), pp.139-164.
Shea, T., De Cieri, H., Donohue, R., Cooper, B. and Sheehan, C., 2016. Leading indicators of occupational health and safety: An employee and workplace level validation study. Safety science, 85, pp.293-304.
SmartCompany. (2018). Report shows 89% of hospitality workers experience sexual harassment: How can your business help prevent it? – SmartCompany. [online] Available at: https://www.smartcompany.com.au/people-human-resources/workplace-health-safety/report-shows-89-of-hospitality-workers-experience-sexual-harassment-how-can-you-help-prevent-it/ [Accessed 2 May 2018].
SmartCompany. (2018). Woolworths ordered to pay injured worker 0,000 in compensation after four-year long legal battle – SmartCompany. [online] Available at: https://www.smartcompany.com.au/business-advice/legal/woolworths-ordered-to-pay-injured-worker-230000-in-compensation-after-four-year-long-legal-battle/ [Accessed 2 May 2018].
Terry, D., Lê, Q., Nguyen, U. and Hoang, H., 2015. Workplace health and safety issues among community nurses: a study regarding the impact on providing care to rural consumers. BMJ open, 5(8), p.e008306.
The Conversation. (2018). Australia’s occupational health and safety regime needs first aid. [online] Available at: https://theconversation.com/australias-occupational-health-and-safety-regime-needs-first-aid-12794 [Accessed 2 May 2018].
Thrasher, A.D., Wells, A.M., Spencer, S.M., Cofie, L. and Yen, I.H., 2016. Workplace Discrimination Is Associated With Alcohol Abuse Among Ethnically Diverse Hospital Staff. Workplace health & safety, 64(5), pp.202-209.
Xiang, J., Bi, P., Pisaniello, D. and Hansen, A., 2014. The impact of heatwaves on workers? health and safety in Adelaide, South Australia. Environmental research, 133, pp.90-95.
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