There also will be greater emphasis on: proactively identifying risks and hazards; defining everyone's health and safety responsibilities; and making sure that the health and safety system is understood - and correctly applied - by all managers, supervisors, frontline workers and contractors.
Many businesses will need to change their health and safety practices and how they engage employees in working safely. Knowing what to do and where to begin can be a daunting task for those without a dedicated health and safety role.
The following tips will help businesses develop effective health and safety systems, and to put practices in place that meet the Act's requirements:
Understand the business' health and safety obligations, and identify its strengths and gaps. Information about the new obligations can be gained by way of independent advice or by talking with industry or business associations.
Identify all of the business' risks and hazards, including those associated with completing job roles and tasks. It is important to understand the difference between risks and hazards. Risk describes the chance, probability or likelihood that something could be harmful. A hazard is any source of potential damage to something, or potential mental or physical harm to someone. For example: When operating power tools (the risk) there is a chance of electrocution and cuts (the hazards).
Involve employees by getting them to participate in identifying all the risks and hazards associated with their job roles and day-to-day tasks. Inform and support these discussions with information from credible government and industry websites.
Develop a health and safety improvement plan. Make the changes more manageable by starting with the most frequently experienced risks whose associated hazards are most likely to occur, and will have the most severe consequences if they do happen.
Using the risk of lifting as an example, conduct a review by picking a single significant related hazard - for example, back injuries - and then engage with employees whose jobs involve lifting by providing practical information about safe lifting and asking them what they think can be done to prevent back injuries.
Most employees and contractors will need to learn new health and safety language, knowledge and skills if they are to become more involved in risk and hazard identification and management, so take time to discuss and explain any important or new language in health and safety documents. Managers and supervisors also will need to know how to give clear instructions, accurately describe desired safety behaviours, and to check that people understand what they have been asked to do (or not do).
Provide training to assist employees and contractors but keep it relevant and simple (no more than three pieces of new information in any one session). Check that people have understood what they have learned by asking open-ended questions. For example, get employees to describe the new process that they need to follow so that any knowledge or understanding gaps can be identified and rectified.
Keep health and safety communication simple and short because little will be gained by bombarding people with more information. Remember that most employees probably will not understand (or even read) complex, bureaucratic or long health and safety documents.
When investigating incidents, take time to identify all contributing factors because root causes are not always immediately obvious. Analysing contributing factors over time will help to identify what are the real causes of incidents. It will also help to identify gaps between the current health and safety system and procedures, and employees' understanding and behaviour.
Achieving good health and safety is an ongoing process, so when there is a change in the organisation's activities (for example new job roles, processes or equipment) be sure to update the known risks and hazards, and the associated safety procedures.
Taking the above steps will do more than help the business to comply with the new health and safety law. It can also have positive flow-on effects such as: improved operating efficiencies, greater innovation, better employee understanding and participation, lower staff turnover and increased productivity.
Katherine Percy is chief executive of Workbase.
