WHSMS and Its Key Objectives
Work Health Safety Management System (WHSMS) is critical for any particular workplace to ensure that the safety of the employees is guaranteed to them. IT generally offers a framework, procedures, plans and plans aimed at management of safety and health of various workers in the workplace. There are various key objectives of the WHSMS such as the provision of a framework for compliance with the legislative requirements, the creation of safer workplaces and enhancement of the workers’ morale, reduction of incidents and injuries in the workplace and enhancing of efficiency among others. It can, therefore, be concluded that WHSMS focuses on ensuring that the safety and health of employees in a workplace are provided by the employers. The paper seeks to analyse the establishment, maintenance, implementation and assessment of the Work Health and Safety Management System by the Australian Hardware and this mainly for their Hobart, Tasmania Store.
Activity One
Establishment of WSH
There are three typical steps which are to be used to develop a WHS by the Australian Hardware, and they are as follows;
Such policies should aim at stating clearly the commitment of the hardware to compliance with the legislation of the WHS. The model WHS laws which had been established by the Safe Work Australia for every particular state should be implemented by the Australian Hardware. The model entails, Work Health and Safety Regulations 2012, Work Health and Safety Act 2012 and Workers’ Relief Fund Act 1954 (Vatani et al.,2016). Also, during the establishment of WHSMS, the consultation process of the WHS should be taken into account which includes, identification of the duty holders and workers, identification of various communication channels, development of health and safety committee and the establishment of health and safety representatives. Moreover, the establishment process of the WHS will entail taking into consideration the key communication strategies such as reporting of hazard, notice boards, provision of information during the staff inductions, registration of injuries books, consultation meetings of WHS and company newsletters.
The various duty holders as specified in the WHS Acts are officers, a person conducting business, workers and any other individual in the workplace. The above mentioned persons should be considered during the establishment of the Australian Hardware. The other duty holders could be trainees, volunteers, employees and the contractors. Apart from the identification of the duty holders, the key responsibilities should also be identified such as;
- Compliance with the instructions provided by the PCBU to abide by the WHS Act.
- Taking care of own safety and health
- Cooperating with the policies and procedures of the PCBU concerning work safety and health
The roles and responsibilities of any other person in the workplace should also be considered, and they entail, compliance with the instructions provided by persons conducting business or undertaking and taking care of own safety and health (Scanlon et al., 2015). Moreover, the responsibilities of the senior executives making viable decisions which affect a business or an undertaking should be taken into account during the establishment of WHS. Such responsibilities include the provision of better sustainability and enhancement of the performance of WHS, ensuring that there is compliance of the business or undertaking with obligations and duties as required in the WHS Act and ensuring due diligence in matters relating to WHS responsibilities in the organization. After the identification of the roles and responsibilities of various individuals in the workplace, they should be documented. The documentation is to be done in WHS manual, WHS procedures, WHS policy, tender documents and handbooks for the contractors and workers.
Activity 1: Establishment of WSH
The key purpose of finance entails development of procedures and policies of the WHS, conducting WHS audits by identification of some of the key elements of WHS that should be tackled, the arrangement of inspections of hazards and establishment of the recording system, a test of equipment. The machinery so that it works based on the safety and health standards and making sure that all the workers are given necessary training and guidance (Sanz-Calcedo et al., 2015).
Identification and Approval of the Human Resources Required by WHS
According to Sujan et al.,(2016), during the establishment of the WHS by the Australian Hardware, the staff members who should be taken into account include, workers, health and safety representatives, supervisors, management and senior staff members, health and safety committees, WHS advisors and specialists and the customers, contractors and suppliers among others.
There are various steps and procedures which should be followed by the organization to maintain the WHS. Such steps entail the following;
Setting Up and Maintenance of Participation Arrangements based on Legislation of WHS
Upon setting up the participation arrangements on the basis of the WHS legislation, the Australian Hardware should ensure that the employees participate through a number of ways as indicated below;
- Equipment maintenance
- Training and Induction programs
- Personal protective equipment
- Attendance of meetings aimed at encouraging the sharing of various perspectives on matters relating to WHS.
- Supervision of the less experienced business visitors and other colleagues
- Reporting of hazard and incident
- Following job instructions and procedures.
The establishment of the participative arrangement comes and in hand with certain benefits which should be considered by the Australian Hardware to maintain the WHS. The benefits are, promotion of increased trust, openness and respect between the workers and management by the creation of understanding, enhancing of decisions of management in regards to health and safety and allows different employees to offer a variety of suggestions on addressing problems relating to health and safety (Rachid, Ion, Irina & Mohamed, 2015).
The other benefits are that it aids in reducing disease and injury due to timely intervention and helping the person conducting business or undertaking to be aware of the health, safety and hazard matters which workers experience (Podgórski, 2015). To maintain the WHS, the Australian Hardware can carry out the training sessions using the internal training personnel, WHS management specialists and external training personnel. There are also various aspects of the WHS training which should be taken into account by the organization such as risk management, maintenance of work-life balance, getting WHS help when required, safe operation of the equipment which is relevant to their work role and personal protective equipment.
Resolving of Issues Identified through Participation Arrangement and Consultation
Identification and Approval of the Human Resources Required by WHS
According to P?ci??o (2016), the key steps which are involved in the resolution process of various issues which have been identified during the participation and consultation include;
- Bringing into attention the identified issues to the line manager in charge of the work area.
- The identified issue could also be resolved promptly in case that is possible
- Prior to obtaining a long term solution which is to be enforced, a temporary solution should be identified and implemented by the officers in charge of the organization.
- The HSRs could issue a provision improvement notice and order work cessation especially in a life-threatening situation.
- The risk and hazard management process should be complied by the long term resolution of issues.
- A record should be kept.
According to Maguire (2017), the WHS issue resolution process can be recorded by the organization using various records such as risk registers, inspection and audit records, written summaries, emails, reports and minutes on issue resolution action plans and meeting of minutes among others. Besides the records of the outcomes of the participation and consultation, there are various ways of communicating the outcomes which should be taken into account by the Australian Hardware. Such ways include the use of translators and interpreters, taking part in the team and individual meetings, provision of presentations, the offering of reports, memos, emails, written summaries and letters and the presentation of the issue resolution findings to the relevant health and safety committee.
Establishment and Maintenance Procedures for Identification of Hazards and Assessment and Control of Risks
According to et Zhou t al.,(2016), there are various types of hazards which should be considered by the organization such as radiation, chemical, physical, biological, ergonomic and psychological. Further, the procedures for the identification of the risks entails;
- Brainstorming which involves conversing with the employees prior to the setting of tasks to be conducted
- Provision of training to ensure that the workers become aware of the various common hazards
- Making available the hazard reporting forms to all the employees
- Conducting safety audits and inspection of the workplace regularly
- Review of the current workplace audits
- Evaluation of the work system
Circumstances, when the risk evaluation is done, include, when there is unusual poor work performance, occurrence of changes at the workplace, uncertainty on the means by which a hazard may cause illness or injury and when there are many different hazards involved in a particular work activity (Loeppke et al.,2015). The above mentioned situations for carrying out a risk assessment should be considered by the Australian Hardware during the establishment of the WHS.
The evaluation of risk in a workplace comes with a variety of benefits as indicated below;
It aids in;
- Identification of factors which result in the risk
- Evaluation of the severity of the risk
- Analysis of the possibility of occurrence of a risk
- Identification of records to be kept for control and elimination of risks
- Identification of the action to be taken to control a particular risk
- Identification of the urgent needs to be taken to eliminate a risk
There are three levels of a hierarchy of risk control. At level 1, the risks are controlled through the elimination of the hazards. In level 2, the risk is controlled by reduction of the risks using engineering controls, isolation of hazards from people and substitution of the hazard with something safer (Kim, Park & Park, 2016). Lastly, at level 3, risk control is done by the use of personal protective equipment and reduction of exposure to the hazard by use of administrative actions. The three levels mentioned should be considered by the Australian Hardware to help in the control of risks in their new store.
Identification and Action on Requirements for WHS Expert Advice
Activity 2: Maintenance, Implementation and Assessment of WHS
WHS advice should be provided in various circumstances such as during the introduction of new workers when making physical changes in the workplace, an introduction of new legislation, carrying out of organizational reviews of WHS and inadequacy of risk controls (Wager, Lee & Glaser, 2017).
It is usually critical for an organization to monitor and measure various aspects of its activities and operations. It entails, a review of requirements for elements such as waste disposal, relevant legislation, radioactive sources as well as operations of a building which are all under WHS.The measurement and evaluation process entails a number of steps such as corrective and preventive action, workplace inspections, records management, WHS management system audit and last the management reviews the implementation of the various needs of WHSMS.
According to Gholami et al., (2015), the WHS record keeping of the Australian Hardware should relate to hazards and incident report forms, inspections and audit reports, induction, training and instruction records and consultations which entails, work team meeting agendas and meeting of safety and health committees. Additionally, the records of WHS should be done based on the relevant legislation, and this should be in regards to;
- Monitoring of environment
- Equipment and plant testing and maintenance reports
- Rehabilitation and workers’ compensation records
- Supplier and manufacturer information such as dangerous goods storage lists
The Australian Hardware should also aim at maintaining the WHS records on the basis of the relevant legislation. Consequently, there will be a need for the management to make certain decisions in regards to the records such as who will be responsible for the maintenance of the records, the records which should be kept, how the records should be filed and the records to keep (Boustras et al.,2015). Other decisions include the time the records should be retained and how to dispose of the records of the WHS. Additionally, the WHSMS should be monitored, and this is to be done in line with the quality systems framework of the organization.
The Australian Hardware should ensure that the review takes into account various aspects such as audits, objectives, WHS policy, legislation and WHS reports (Yazdani et al., 2015).
During the measuring and evaluation of the WHS, there are certain activities which are to be conducted such as carrying out of health checks, verifying the training needs, review of the types and number of hazard and incident reports provided, carrying out of workplace audits and inspections (Duckett & Willcox, 2015). Other activities could include, conduction of regular discussions and meetings to address safety and health matters and monitoring of the existing WHS procedures and policies to make sure that they are up dated with the existing legislation.
Setting Up and Maintenance of Participation Arrangements based on Legislation of WHS
Identify and detail relevant WHS Acts, regulations and codes of practice
The WHS Acts include, the Workplace Health Act 2011, while the regulations used for the WHS is the Work Health and Safety Act 2012.The code of practice on the other hand used is the TAS Codes of Practice.
Specify relevant WHS organisational policies, procedures, programs and practices
The relevant WHS policies and procedures include, conflict resolution, rehabilitation policy, housekeeping procedures, manual handling and workplace bullying as well as harassment policy. The above mentioned policies and procedures can be found in the manual as well as an organization’s intranet.Moreover,there are certain key principles relating to the WHS procedure and policy such as auditing and planning, communication and consultation, commitment and accountability, emergency plans and WHS reporting, performance monitoring. The other principles are, skill development and training, system implementation and resource requirement and modifications and change. Also, there are various codes of practice which offers information reference and recommendations for best practice in an organization.Generally,the code of practice tends to focus on specific matters.Besides,such practice of codes are used in the attainment of health,safety as well as welfare which is a requirement of the WHS Act including the WHS regulations.
Hazard identification is a process which involves an assessment of a particular situation which may cause harm. In simple terms, it is a risk assessment process which entails identification of hazards and the risk factors (Duckett & Willcox, 2015). There are a variety of hazards such as fatigue, biological, chemical, bullying, physical, workplace stress and ergonomic. The risk management process on the other hand is a process which entails, the identification, review and management of potential risks with the aim of reducing the negative effect of such risks on an organization. It is usually a four step process which entails first, the identification of various hazards in the workplace, then the evaluation of such hazards. Later, the control measures are enforced to help in control of the hazards and reviewed to ensure the control measures are fully implemented.
At level 1, the risks are controlled through the elimination of the hazards. In level 2, the risk is controlled by reduction of the risks using engineering controls, isolation of hazards from people and substitution of the hazard with something safer. However, at level 3, risk control is done by the use of personal protective equipment and reduction of exposure to the hazard by use of administrative actions. The risk controls are usually ascertained based on the hierarchy of control according to a reasonable practicality.Also,the risk control are ranked on the basis of a standard risk controls which are significant to the disability sector put in place which could inclide,safety information, first aid, communication equipment, planned maintenance systems, behaviour support plans as well as safe work procedures.
Resolving of Issues Identified through Participation Arrangement and Consultation
The in house and WHS legislative reporting requirements include, monitoring of environment, equipment and plant testing and maintenance reports, rehabilitation and workers’ compensation records, supplier and manufacturer information such as dangerous goods storage lists (Duckett & Willcox, 2015)Also,the WHS legislative reporting requires that the report to be timely, robust and relevant and this is to ensure that a full information is provided to allow for decision making which would have an influence on an ongoing performance of a particular business.
The planner is set to begin from 11.12.2018 and this will be done by 4 planners and 4 individuals. Based on the report, the WHSMS of the hardware will be prepared based on the Australian WHS hardware store. The report is further explained as indicated below in the paper.
The planners complied with all reuiments of WSH
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