October is National Safe Work Month, and this year’s theme, Safe work is for life, is a reminder that workplace safety is about more than preventing an incident today.
The way work is designed and managed can affect a person’s health well beyond the end of their shift. Some consequences are immediate. Others develop over months or years.
For small businesses, October is a good opportunity to look at what is actually happening in the workplace and whether your existing WHS systems are doing their job.
At ProcessWorx, we work with businesses to identify WHS gaps, review risks and keep safety systems up to date as workplaces change. National Safe Work Month is a good opportunity to do exactly that.
Start with a simple question: what could we do better?
Start With What Has Changed
Businesses rarely stay exactly the same.
You may have hired new employees, introduced equipment, changed premises, started using different contractors or changed the way certain jobs are performed.
Sometimes the changes are less obvious. A team has gradually become busier. Someone has taken on additional responsibilities. A temporary workaround has quietly become the normal way of doing something.
Walk through the workplace with fresh eyes and look at the work people are actually doing. Compare that with your risk register, procedures and existing controls.
If the workplace has changed, your WHS systems may need to change with it.
Ask the People Doing the Work
You don’t need to identify every safety issue from behind a desk.
Workers are often well placed to spot problems because they deal with the work every day. A task might be awkward to perform. A procedure might no longer match how the job is done. A piece of equipment may regularly cause problems. A control that looked good on paper might not work particularly well in reality.
Talk to your team about what is working and what isn’t.
Consultation is an important part of managing WHS, but it can also give you information you simply wouldn’t have otherwise.
A ten-minute conversation can sometimes tell you much more than another hour spent reviewing a procedure.
Look Beyond the Obvious Hazards
When we think about workplace safety, physical hazards often come to mind first: machinery, manual handling, slips and falls, chemicals or electrical risks.
They’re important, but they’re not the whole picture.
Psychosocial hazards also need to be managed. High job demands, poor support, bullying, violence and aggression, remote or isolated work and poorly managed organisational change can all affect workers’ psychological health.
This fits closely with this year’s Safe work is for life theme. WHS is about preventing injuries that happen in a moment, but also illnesses and harm that can develop over time.
Think about both when reviewing the risks in your workplace.
Check That Training Has Stuck
A completed induction record tells you someone completed an induction. It doesn’t necessarily tell you they remember it six months later or can safely perform the job.
Think about the work your employees are doing now.
Have their responsibilities changed? Has new equipment been introduced? Are they using a different procedure? Has it been a long time since a particular task was performed?
Where the work has changed, information, training or supervision may need to change with it.
The aim isn’t training for the sake of having a record. Workers need to understand the risks involved in their work and know how to do it safely.
Have a Look at the Basics
Not every safety improvement needs to become a major project.
Use National Safe Work Month to check some of the things that can quietly slip when everyone is busy:
- Are first aid kits stocked and accessible?
- Are emergency contacts current?
- Are workplace inspections happening?
- Are equipment maintenance and safety checks up to date?
- Are hazards, incidents and near misses being reported?
- Are contractor records current?
- Do workers know what to do in an emergency?
- Are outstanding safety actions actually being closed out?
If something has been sitting on the list for six months, October might be a good time to finally deal with it.
Do Something With What You Find
This is probably the most important part.
There isn’t much value in identifying ten safety issues, putting them into a spreadsheet and looking at them again next National Safe Work Month.
Choose one or two areas that need attention. Work out what needs to happen, who is responsible and when it will be done. Then follow it through.
Safe Work Australia is taking a similar approach in this year’s campaign, encouraging workplaces to identify opportunities to make work safer or healthier and turn safety conversations into action.
Keep It Going After October
National Safe Work Month is a useful prompt to stop and look at how your business is managing safety. But good WHS management obviously doesn’t finish on 31 October.
Workplaces change, people change and risks change with them.
You don’t need to overhaul your entire WHS system this month. Talk to your workers. Fix something that’s been sitting on the list for too long. Review a risk that’s changed. Check that the systems you already have still make sense.
Then keep doing it.
Safe work is for life. What you do about safety today can make a difference well beyond October.
Could Your WHS Systems Use a Review?
Speak with a ProcessWorx Safety Advisor on (08) 9316 9896 or get in touch for guidance on reviewing your workplace risks and WHS systems.
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