WHS assessment 1

What is WHS

WHS or Work health and safety are an act which is used to help businesses to creating and maintaining a safe and looked-after environment for any person who deals with the area. WHS is a list of codes and requirements that businesses have to follow. Not following these codes can cause serious harm to employees and also fines may apply to the company.

Good Practices

Health and safety is a part of all aspects of work and includes:

hazards such as chemicals, moving and lifting and dangerous machinery. These are referred to as physical hazards

hazards such as abusive customers, bullying and stress. These are referred to as psychological hazards

the way jobs are organised such as the length of shifts, whether workers are supervised or work alone and whether they work in one location or move from place to place to work

the facilities and provisions to keep workers safe and healthy such as buildings, first aid, protective clothing and lighting.

Protecting workers from injury, illness or death at work is considered important in Australia and there are laws about keeping workers safe in all workplaces.

WHS laws apply to all of these workplaces, and many more. The laws also make clear the importance of communicating and consulting with workers to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to contribute to making workplaces safe.

Strengths and Weaknesses of WHS

There are many benefits of implementing WHS strategies such as:

Improving compliance

With work safety and health management, you will realize considerable financial benefits. For instance, WHS systems can help to ensure the workers and company complies with all WHS policies and procedures. This can save a lot of money if a business is constantly paying fines for incompliance.

Promoting healthy Behaviour

WHS management provide many benefits such as encouraging healthy behavior in the workplace. However, it is essential to incorporate other safety solutions at the workplace to ensure the environment is accident-free.

Reducing Injuries

The major benefit is that WHS management provide employees with safety regulation procedures required to do their properly and safely. For instance, WHS trains staff how to properly handle heavy objects and teaches employees how to minimise risk.

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h safety regulation procedures required to do their properly and safely. For instance, WHS trains staff how to properly handle heavy objects and teaches employees how to minimise risk.

Critical Success Factors

The use of Critical Success Factors can be used in Work health and safety, the same way it is used in business analysis. The WHS policies can be analysed and see where WHS needs more enforcing. Factors such as:

Number of Injuries – Monitoring the amount of injuries can be used to find out whether the WHS policies and reduced injuries and therefore reduced risks and hazards or not.

Level of Compliance

Employee Satisfaction/Wellbeing

Recommendations for Improvement

Improvement record keeping. Records management is defined as, “ the field of management responsible for the efficient and systematic control of the creation, receipt, maintenance, use and disposition of records, including the processes for capturing and maintaining evidence of and information about business activities and transactions in the form of records”

The relevant standard sets out the general high level framework for the process of recordkeeping as well as providing practical recommendations and detailed guidance on the implementation of the framework. Based on this framework, either alternative must have extensive knowledge and understanding of the standards in order to ensure compliance.

Training new and current staff is a standard procedure which gives them more experience and provides them with information which can make them work more efficiently and safely. The management team must firstly be trained in keeping a workplace safe and secure for employees to work in. Employees that do not feel safe in a workplace will not perform as well as they should.

Employees will need special training in most safety practices. OH&S is a very important training program which teaches workers all types of policies and procedures which will give them a much larger benefit to the company. They will be instructed by professional specialists that are experienced in teach employees all the safety policies and procedures that they need to know.

Everything that is needed to know in a general day-to-day activity should be included in the training program. For an employee to go beyond what is required is even better and information can be received from experienced employees, books and the internet.

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