Importance of Employees in Organizations
Antonsen (2017) stated that employees are the most valuable asset of an organization as they works for accomplishing the organizational goals. The staffs work hard for developing the products, representing the brand and fuel the success. Thomas and Galla (2013) furthermore highlighted that poor safety environment at the workplace resulted in high absenteeism, serious injuries and employee turnover rates. This report thus highlights the importance of safe workplace for the organization Bruno Smallgoods, which is a provider of finest quality meat in the Australian market. The company is facing a series of issues like front line worker removes blockage of mincers while the machine is still operating, poor utilization of safety equipments in the workplace, improper knowledge in handling manual practices, hazardous objects are not put into desired places after use, dangerous use of forklifts and removal of safety barriers in order to fasten the production process.
This report will highlight the legal responsibilities which should be followed by both employers and employees to ensure a safe workplace. Moreover, importance of safety culture along with recommendation and justification to improve the safety culture in Bruno Smallgoods will also be demonstrated.
The fatality rate in agricultural industry is more than the construction industry and other remaining. In the year 2016, the fatality rate comes down to almost 12 per 100,000 workers compared to the rate of 16.2 for the previous year 2015 (Safeworkaustralia.gov.au 2018).
Australian Government formulated many work and safety regulations like Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (ACT) (Business.gov.au 2018). The main benefits to consider these legislations at the workplace can be witnessed through retaining staffs, maximizing the employee’s productivity, minimizing injuries and ensuring obligations (Business.gov.au 2018). The WHS legislations and policies also provide education and training regarding work health and safety along with the procedure to incorporate safety management in business operations. Moreover, if the management got genuine complaints for employee accidents in the workplace showing that theyhave been injured while working or handling the equipments used in the production prcess, the employer has to offer the employee compensation by abiding the legislation of Safety Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988 (SRC Act) and WHS Act (Comcare.gov.au 2018).
The legal responsibilities that should be followed by the employer are providing safe work premises, assessing risks and then implementing relevant measures, ensuring safe handling of goods, maintaining safe machinery and materials, assessing workplace layout and strictly follows insurance and workers compensation. The worker should also require complying with the legislation formulated for the health and safety perspectives, use provided safety equipments, no interference with health and safety equipment and do not go to risky place and injure themselves willfully (Business.gov.au 2018).
The Need for Safe Workplace for Bruno Smallgoods
Thomas and Galla (2013) expressed that the beliefs, attitude and perceptions that employees share concerning the safety of the workplace is referred as safety culture. The presence of safety culture, demonstrates prioritizing health and safety over production needs, isolation of machinery and equipment, supervise workers with specialist knowledge and complying with health and safety requirements. The importance of safety culture can be witnessed through the positive outcome of the financial performance as employee are more focused on the work they are doing rather than on the injuries they obtained from the workplace (Milios et al. 2014). Employee involvement is another benefit that can be attained from safety culture as people found the organization more ethical and transparent to the accidents and compensations policies. Poole (2013) highlighted that improved industrial relations can also be obtained for maintaining safety culture in the business environment.
Schofield et al. (2014) on the other hand highlighted that if a company do not maintain a safety culture, WHS Act provides some graduated enforcement options like- issuing a non disturbance notice, issuing a prohibition notice, issuing an improvement notice, issuing an undertaking, issuing an enforceable undertaking, issuing an injunction and issuing a penalty notice. Moreover, prosecutions for the breaching the elements of WHS Act are under criminal law (Comcare.gov.au 2018). The amount of penalty that incurred by an organization can be high as $3 million; while, in case of individuals on finding breaching these regulations resulted a fine of $300,000 to other individuals (Comcare.gov.au 2018).
The issues that have been identified in the working environment of Bruno Smallgoods are that the employee of the company handles the mincer machinery ineffectively. These workers usually remove any kind of blockage while the machine is operating which results in accidents due to moving machinery. These workers might have been lost their limbs while doing such work. It has been also seen that many workers are not using safety equipment provided to them which also leads to serious injuries in the workplace. Moreover, many of the workers also do not know the handling procedure if the forklifts for products transfer and also leads to accidents due to moving vehicles (Santos et al. 2017). Employees are also not aware of the proper handling of knifes and they keep the knife open in the surface that might other employees, who are not aware of the dangerous products. Lastly, but the most dangerous incident that is witnessed in the Bruno Smallgoods’ workplace is that in order to increase the production process, removal of safety barriers is opted from the supervisors and middle management. This shows the poor attitude of the senior management towards safety amongst front line staffs.
Work and Safety Regulations in Australia
Apart from using mincing machines, other dangerous machines are cowl choppers, bandsaws, circular knife slicers and machines with circular saw blades (Farouk 2013). Dicers and Cubers are also used in this industry that has some hazardous outcome like- access to the rotating blades at the discharge end, open access to feed chamber and hopper, trapping between the loading device and the machine and blades handling during the cleaning and maintenance. The employees should maintain the safest distance with the machines and they should maintain gap of at least 120mm between the base of the machine and the loading device (Purnell 2013).
In order to improve the behaviors in utilizing the safety equipment, employee should know the use of all the safety equipments and must have the knowledge concerning emergency first aid (Zhou et al. 2012). The safety equipment offered to the employees are Cut Resistant Gloves, Cut Resistant Gloves with stainless steel core, arm guards, stainless steel mesh gloves, sound ear cuffs and eye glasses for the safety of the eyes (Dolez et al. 2012). The workers of the Bruno Smallgoods should be assigned with safety equipments, checked for continued functionality and effectiveness, recognize the deficiencies and restrictions of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), identify the situation when these equipments need to be changed or repaired and procedures for replacing PPE.
Leps et al. (2013) stated that the employees should know the correct use of the knife for performing meat cutting along with identification of the correct knife out of the many in order to easy accomplishment of the desire job. The employees should also know how to sharpen the knife in case they find that the knife has become blunt (Musavian et al. 2015). Employees are also liable for using and storage of the knives. The employees should only use knives that are easy to clean and have non-slip handle, have anti-slip guard, suitable blade that can cut the flesh, smallest blade that can be used to complete the task for avoiding pressure and reducing excessive bending of the wrist (Worksafe.vic.gov.au 2018).
The machines should also be equipped with a conveyor belt so that employee could not be in direct contact with the blades. Moreover, interlocked grids, trip bars or light barriers should also be incorporated for preventing the access to the danger points (Wyness and Mooney 2012). These barriers should be properly used and incorporated in the processing system. Employee should know the complaint process of they found anyone switching off the safety barriers or removing them from the process.
Legal Responsibilities for Employers and Employees in Ensuring Safety
Employee training should be given training on using and selecting the suitable knife, storing knives in good condition, correct holding of the knife, correct cutting methods, techniques of cutting meats, body gesture while holding the knives and using it and putting the knives in appropriate place when not in use. This training is required for safeguarding the employees and also helps others to follow the safety concerns. Employee should also be provided with the training for logging complaints without any hesitation. This training should be offered for handling the policies and regulations. Experts should teach them about gaining knowledge of all the safety regulations and its importance, understandability of the health and safety policies and filing complaints if anyone breaching the legislations.
It is required for the organization to give proper induction process to the new employees after their recruitment. The induction process should comprise of the knowledge of type of risks related to the machineries, plants and equipments present. The induction process should also include details about electrical safety, safe working from heights, utilizing hazardous chemicals and effective management of risks. The benefits of the string induction process are that employees know the values the organization is following and the actions that the company can take if the safety rules are not followed properly. Moreover, when these new members come to know the safety culture of the environments, the desire to stay in the company gets higher resulted in high retention rate.
Including a member from the Australian Meat Processor Corporation (AMPC) or from government for regular inspection allow the managing people to follow the safety rules. Since, high penalty can be imposed on not following the safety culture in meat industry, the safety barrier removals or improper use of dangerous equipments can be reduced. Another solution is to hire an auditor to prepare an unbiased report on the safety management twice in a year. This will help the official to measure their progress and the required changes they have to incorporate to ensure the extreme safety for the employee. The result is beneficial as there is always an assistance and invigilation of an expert from the desired field.
Conclusion
Thus it can be found that in order to diminish the problem of removing blockage of mincers while the machine is still operating, poor utilization of safety equipments in the workplace, improper knowledge in handling manual practices, hazardous objects are not put into desired places after use, dangerous use of forklifts and removal of safety barriers can be overcome through employee training, effective induction process and including governing personnel for regular inspection. The important legislation for maintaining safety culture in meat industry are Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (ACT) and Safety Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988 (SRC Act). It is also found that following these legislations for incorporating a safety culture resulted in retaining staffs, maximizing the employee’s productivity and minimizing injuries and ensuring obligations. Moreover, additional importance of safety culture in the organization is positive outcome of the financial performance, employee involvement and improved industrial relations. It is also found that if the considered company is failed to follow all the safety regulations them governing bodies can issue a non disturbance notice, a prohibition notice, an improvement notice, an undertaking, an enforceable undertaking, an injunction and a penalty notice.
Reference List
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