Home page

Fire and Rescue NSW (FRNSW), FRNSW engaged Action OHS Consulting to develop a safe wok procedure (SWP) for workers exposed to non-ionising radiation when performing routine testing/maintenance on the vehicle antenna and accessories. This SWP establishes the safe operating areas and limits for workers. It was great to see the collaborative approach and engagement that came from FRNSW during the consultation process.

Waste Recyclers of Victoria (WrOV), Our Action OHS Consulting team have been supporting Waste Recyclers of Victoria to review and update their OHS and Environmental Management Systems. With a focus on practical safety management practices and using Safety Champion software, we have been able to support WrOV to develop and implement streamlined, effective and compliance OHSE systems into day-today operations.

Textor Converting We have been working with the Textor Converting team in Braeside, to review and update their Traffic Management Plan. The goal was to improve the segregation of pedestrians from materials handling equipment and vehicles in their manufacturing, warehouse and receiving/despatch areas. The Textor team has been really proactive in forming a traffic management plan subcommittee and has made some excellent headway; establishing exclusion zones for plant; line-marking; signage; eliminated container destuffing; installed some protective fencing between pallets and machine operators; put in fenced pedestrian walkways and driver safety zones with pedestrian gates.

Sandhurst Club The Action OHS Consulting team have been supporting the review and build out of health and safety documentation for Melbourne’s premier golf and residential estate. It’s has been great to see the commitment from senior leaders at Sandhurst Club to create and improve health, safety and wellbeing for employees, contractors, members and the local community. We are looking forward to providing the team ongoing support in their safety journey.

Hi! I’m Megan Drysdale, Head of People at Action OHS Consulting and Safety Champion Software. As we continue our journey, I felt this was a well-timed opportunity for me to introduce myself and provide you, our clients and friends, with an overview of what makes us who we are.

Our newsletter and website provide such great forums for me to share why we are, who we are, along with our Employee Value Proposition (EVP). I hope that in transparently sharing our initiatives, it will promote conversation with your teams, and elevate the other side of ‘HR’ that can often be overlooked.  If you or your people wish to learn more about us or our initiatives – I am more than happy to share insights, and would welcome hearing from you.

Instead of winding back to December 2011 (the inception of Action OHS Consulting), the intention of this first update is to provide an overview of the impact that the people function has made since becoming a certified B Corporation. A link to why we became a B Corp can be found: Safety Champion Software Certified as a B Corp.

Care over Compliance

The mandate for our People Program has always been and will continue to be care over compliance. As a service-based business, we recognise that our people are our business, and the transition from start-up to scale-up will be a reflection of our people who take us on the journey. To support this, it was important for us to document our People Strategy. Not only does this provide clarity for our people and those who will join us in the future – it provides structure and a pathway forward.

Our People Strategy consists of the following quadrants:

1. 1. Retain our Talent
   2. Attract Top Performers
   3. Build our Learning Culture
   4. Nurture our Values

The care over compliance sentiment has been a tenant of our vision, mission, and values. Our vision, mission and values define us. They are what the business reflects on continuously.

Our People-first Initiatives

Over the past 12 months, the following People-first Initiatives have been delivered to our teams:

• • ‘We Share’ Program – this is a profit share program that all employees are part of. This program is recognition of our employees being key to our success – so it only made sense to us to have them share in any profits made. The We Share Program has an additional element, where donations are made to charities.
  • ‘We Care’ Program – this program is an initiative designed to support workers should they not be able to work due to illness or family circumstances. We don’t want workers to exhaust annual leave, which is designed to help them refresh – battling circumstances that are out of their control, and far from a holiday.
  • ‘Better Together’ Referral Program – this program acknowledges that our workforce can be our best advocates when it comes to building out our team. If they help us, we want to show our appreciation to them and a charity of their choice.
  • Rollout of HRIS that integrates with Safety Champion Software – this has allowed us to bring HR into the cloud and establish a number of online processes.
  • Rollout of our Employee Assistance Program (EAP).
  • Rollout of Employee Engagement platform – we’re chuffed to share that our engagement score sits at 8.7/10, and we thrive in areas of pride, relationships, and purpose.
  • Establishment of a social club, that allows our team to meet out of the workplace, to build comradery – and realise that lawn bowls is a skill that takes more than two hours to master!
  • Establishment of a series of Lunch ‘n’ Learns covering a range of topics from mental health, ergonomics and our BCorp journey, to conversations that create growth and Safe Work Month.
  • Coordination of our All Staff Town Halls in May and November – this provides an opportunity for our Australian-based workforce to meet, work on business problems and build relationships face-to-face as opposed to over a screen.
  • Piloting our Mentoring Program – the program has been designed to provide guidance, support and advice to our people who are seeking to develop their skills and knowledge in a particular area, regardless of their career level or expertise.
  • Rollout of our ‘Feedback Loop’ – bi-annual check ins and 1:1’s encouraging staff to reflect, recognise and celebrate their achievements, whilst looking ahead for the next six months.

The coming months will see us finalise a selection of policies: (i) parental leave, (ii) remote work, and (iii) public holiday swap; whilst initiating the build of a leadership and graduate program. The graduate program will sit across both Action OHS Consulting and Safety Champion. If you have had experience in any of these, or would like to share your thoughts, I would be more than happy for you to reach out and collaborate.

In addition to documenting structure, we have also delivered on the following:

• • International Women’s Day – where we showcased four amazing women who have been part of our journey.
  • Harmony Day – where we virtually toured Iran, Philippines, China, India, Colombia, Vietnam and Australia to learn about the foods that have meaning to our team.

Who we are

Our people metrics as at the time of this newsletter being published:

• • 41 employees
  • 59% males vs 41% females
  • 45% management roles are filled by females
  • 41% Australian-born, 59% overseas
  • 1/3 of our staff are under 30, 28% 30-40 years and nearly 40% are over 40
  • Almost 1/3 of our employees work part time
  • 100% of our people work flexibly!

Whilst always focused on finding the right candidates, as we develop products and solutions that cater to a diverse range of clients and users, we want to ensure that our workforce also represents a diverse range of perspectives and experiences. We will continue to reflect on these metrics, to allow us to be explicit in, and play a leading role on how we build our teams.

If you’re interested to learn more about any of the above, or find out about what a career at Action OHS Consulting or Safety Champion Software could look like – please feel free to reach out to me: people@actionohs.com.au.

Megan Drysdale

Head of People

Connect with me via LinkedIn

In Australia, the influenza virus is estimated to cost businesses in excess of $100 million a year due to workforce illness alone. On average, it affects 10-20% of the population every year. Influenza, or as it’s commonly known, ‘the flu’, is a highly contagious virus that can affect the entire body. It’s easily spreadable and is contagious even before symptoms appear.

A person can be infected with influenza at any time of the year, but in Australia most flu infections typically occur between June and September, a period often referred to as ‘flu season’.

As a business owner, your employees’ health and safety should be a top priority, especially during flu season. One effective strategy to minimise the risk of flu infections in the workplace is to implement a workplace flu vaccination program.

Fortunately, many employers are already offering onsite flu vaccinations to their staff, but did you know that you can also include COVID-19 vaccinations in your program? COVID-19 and the flu are highly contagious, and getting vaccinated is one of the best ways to prevent their spread.

A workplace vaccination program has many benefits for both employers and employees, particularly when the flu and COVID-19 are still highly prevalent within the community.

The best way to prevent the spread of either infection is to get vaccinated. As with influenza vaccinations, having a COVID-19 vaccination provides an extra level of protection against being infected and also helps slow the spread of infection to others who may be more vulnerable to severe complications.

Being vaccinated is the most effective way to help the body strengthen its immunity against infection and prevent contracting the influenza virus and passing it on to others in the workplace, at home, or on the daily commute.

By offering flu vaccinations to your employees, you will:

• Reduce absenteeism due to influenza, and associated cost to businesses, by 25-35%
• Promote a healthy workforce
• Demonstrate your organisation’s interest in workforce health and wellbeing
• Increase the ‘Herd Immunity’ at work, to reduce the spread of the virus
• Limit employee disruption and increased workloads for employees that are not infected.
• Boosts morale

For further information or advice on how to implement a vaccination programme in your workplace please contact us. 

Safe Work Australia

Latest news and updates from Safe Work Australia:

Summary of workers’ compensation arrangements in Australia and New Zealand 2022 report

The Summary of workers’ compensation arrangements in Australia and New Zealand 2022 report has been published and is available to download from the Safe Work Australia website.

This report is produced every two years and outlines recent developments in workers’ compensation schemes in Australia and New Zealand. It highlights significant changes to workers’ compensation schemes in 2022 including:

• administration and scheme delivery changes
• policy developments
• legislative amendments.

Guide to managing the risks of tree work

Tree work can pose work health and safety (WHS) risks. Safe Work Australia has published a revised version of a guide previously titled ‘Guide to managing the risks of tree trimming and removal work’.

The updated ‘Guide to managing the risks of tree work’ is aimed at ensuring you understand your WHS duties when planning and performing tree trimming and removal work.

The most significant changes to the guide relate to duties around managing the risk of falls when accessing trees and when to consider providing an additional backup safety line for single-rope access systems.

The changes ensure consistency across other Safe Work Australia guidance on falls and rope systems.

Analysis of ABS work-related injuries survey data 2021-22

Safe Work Australia has published a new report, Analysis of ABS work-related injuries survey data 2021-22.

Key findings from the report include:

• In 2021-22, 497,300 (3.5%) of the working population experienced a work-related injury or illness, down from 4.2% in 2017-18.
• The overall work-related injury rate was 35.3 injuries per 1000 people who worked in the past 12 months.
• For workers who experienced a work-related injury or illness in 2021-22, 31% received workers compensation for the injury or illness, an increase from 27% in 2017-18.
• Safe Work Australia data shows that serious workers’ compensation claims in 2020-21 resulted in a total loss of 1.9 million weeks of work.

ACT

OHS Codes of Practice: https://www.worksafe.act.gov.au/laws-and-compliance/codes-of-practice

NSW

OHS Codes of Practice: https://www.safework.nsw.gov.au/resource-library/list-of-all-codes-of-practice

NT

Code of Practice: Managing psychosocial hazards at work

Effective 1 July 2023, the Northern Territory will implement new work health and safety regulations to address workplace psychosocial hazards.

The model Code of Practice: Managing psychosocial hazards at work (the Code) will guide duty holders through the psychosocial risk management process, giving practical steps on how to comply with their respective legal duties.

The Code will be approved in the Northern Territory in time for the commencement of the amended WHS Regulations on 1 July 2023.

QLD

Managing the risk of psychosocial hazards at work Code of Practice 2022

The new ‘Managing the risk of psychosocial hazards at work Code of Practice 2022’ commenced in Queensland on 1 April 2023. The Code is an approved code of practice under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (WHS Act). It provides information for persons conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) on how psychosocial hazards and risks can be controlled or managed and can be used to help decide what’s reasonably practicable to reduce risk.

Managing respirable crystalline silica dust exposure in construction and manufacturing of construction elements Code of Practice 2022

The new Code ‘Managing respirable crystalline silica dust exposure in construction and manufacturing of construction elements Code of Practice 2022’ is Australia’s first silica dust code of practice for the construction industry and will commence in Queensland on 1 May 2023. It applies to all construction work as well as the manufacturing of materials such as bricks, blocks, tiles, mortar and concrete.

The Code outlines how duty holders can meet the requirements of Queensland’s work health and safety legislation, including eliminating or minimising exposure to respirable crystalline silica (RCS) at work.

SA

OHS Codes of Practice:https://www.safework.sa.gov.au/resources/codes-of-practice

VIC

OHS Codes of Practice:https://www.worksafe.vic.gov.au/laws-and-regulations

WA

OHS Codes of Practice: https://www.commerce.wa.gov.au/worksafe/approved-codes-practice

Safe Work Australia

Latest news and updates from Safe Work Australia:

Transition to GHS 7 

Australia has transitioned to the 7th Revised Edition of the GHS (GHS 7), which includes some changes to hazardous chemical classifications and precautionary statements. From 1 January 2023, GHS 7 must be used to classify chemicals and prepare labels and safety data sheets (SDS) for newly manufactured and imported hazardous chemicals in Australia (unless otherwise advised by your work health and safety regulator). Each state and territory and the Commonwealth is adopting GHS 7 in their OHS / WHS laws. If you have questions or want to know more about changes under the GHS 7 you can contact your OHS / WHS regulator, or read more here.

Report: Key work health and safety statistics Australia 2022

Safe Work Australia’s latest publication provides an overview of national work-related fatality and workers’ compensation claims data for 2022. The report provides an overview of the latest national data on work-related fatalities and workers’ compensation claims. This includes trends, gender and age comparisons, and industry and occupation breakdowns. Read the report here.

ACT

Work Health and Safety (Tower Crane Code of Practice) Approval 2022

The new code became effective in the ACT on 22 September 2022. This code provides practical guidance to persons conducting a business or undertaking on how to comply with their health and safety duties when carrying out work with tower cranes. Read more about the code here.

NSW

There have been several amendments and changes to NSW legislation.

Amendments to the Work Health and Safety Regulation 2017 (WHS Regulation) are due to come into effect on 1 March 2023. The Work Health and Safety Amendment (Demolition Licensing) Regulation 2022 makes some amendments to the WHS Regulation 2017, to transition the existing demolition licensing regime from the repealed Occupational Health and Safety Regulation 2001 to the WHS Regulation. Read more about the change here.

The Work Health and Safety Amendment Regulation 2022 makes several amendments to the Work Health and Safety Regulation 2017 (WHS Regulation) to give effect to changes made to the national model WHS Regulations.

The amendments will commence as follows:

• psychosocial hazards and risks commenced on 1 October 2022.
• amusement devices commenced on 1 December 2022.
• all other provisions will commence on the day the Amendment Regulation is published on the NSW legislation website

Read more about the changes here.

NT

OHS Codes of Practice: https://worksafe.nt.gov.au/forms-and-resources/codes-of-practice 

QLD

From 1 January 2023, codes of practice that deal with hazardous chemicals will include updated content for GHS 7. They include:

• How to manage and control asbestos in the workplace code of practice 2021
• How to safely remove asbestos code of practice 2021
• Labelling of workplace hazardous chemicals code of practice 202
• Managing noise and preventing hearing loss code of practice 2021

More information about the affected codes is available from WorkSafe QLD.

SA

OHS Codes of Practice: https://www.safework.sa.gov.au/resources/codes-of-practice

VIC

Code of practice: The storage and handling of dangerous goods

There have been several amendments to this code since June 2022 due to changes in regulations. However, the information in this compliance code has not yet been updated to reference or reflect any changes introduced by the Explosive Regulations or the Storage and Handling Regulation or the subsequent Dangerous Goods (Storage and Handling) Regulations 2022 (Storage and Handling Regulations) (effective 26 November 2022). Therefore, compliance with these codes may not mean compliance with a specific duty under these codes. A full list of amendments incorporated into the regulations can be sourced from WorkSafe Victoria.

Code of practice: Managing exposure to crystalline silica: Engineered stone

The code builds on the 2020 code, but has been updated to include:

• Specific controls that must be used by employers and self-employed persons when undertaking a process involving engineered stone at a workplace that generates crystalline silica dust, including cutting, grinding or abrasive polishing of engineered stone.
• Duties on manufacturers and suppliers to provide information to persons to whom crystalline silica substances are supplied.
• Who is required to obtain an engineered stone licence.
• Duties applying to engineered stone licence holders, and
• Duties on suppliers.

The code also contains revised information regarding risk controls where necessary. Read more here.

WA

OHS Codes of Practice: https://www.commerce.wa.gov.au/worksafe/approved-codes-practice

Business leaders have a legislative duty to acquire and maintain up-to-date knowledge of work health and safety matters relevant to the nature of their operations.

But without any visibility of the health and safety prosecutions that have occurred, it can be hard to grasp what could go wrong within your operations.

With a little context, you have an opportunity to reflect on current practices. This can help to ensure that reasonably practicable controls have been established, and to ensure ‘like’ or ‘now foreseeable’ incidents are less likely to occur within the workplace.

‘Reasonably practicable’ means that you should consider the likelihood and degree of harm of a hazard or risk. Whilst there may not have previously been an incident at your workplace, if a significant incident has occurred across your industry, you should be aware of it.

Each year, Action OHS Consulting collates and reviews the data available from both WorkSafe Victoria and SafeWork NSW. Used effectively, this information should support you to influence key stakeholders within your organisation, and assist your business to make informed decisions with respect to their health and safety program.

The prosecution data has been collated from:

• WorkSafe Victoria Prosecution Data
• SafeWork NSW Prosecution Data (at the time of writing, data was provided by SafeWork NSW up until May 2022)

This article provides an overview of the prosecutions from 2015 through to the 2022 calendar years.

Prosecutions: Numbers and related legislation

The 2022 calendar year saw a total of 115 prosecutions against the Victorian health and safety legislation, whilst in NSW at May 2022** the number of prosecutions was 17.

***Note at the time when this report was produced, SafeWork NSW website provided an overview of prosecutions up to May 2022 – once this changes, this report will be updated accordingly***

When compared to the previous year, there has been a 20% increase in Victoria. This is compared to a 54% increase in Victoria the CY2021 when compared to CY2020. The CY2020 reduction may be attributed to resourcing during COVID along with lockdown restrictions.

Within Victoria:

• 96 prosecutions were recorded against the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 only
• 18 prosecutions involved both the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 and the Occupational Health and Safety Regulations 2017
• 1 prosecution involved the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004; Occupational Health and Safety Regulations 2017; Dangerous Goods Act 1985

Consistent with previous years, zero prosecutions were against the 2007 version of the Occupational Health and Safety Regulations which were updated in 2017.

Within NSW up to May 2022:

• 14 prosecutions were recorded against the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 only
• 1 prosecution was recorded against the Work Health and Safety Regulation 2017 only
• 1 prosecution involved both Work Health and Safety Act 2011 & Work Health and Safety Regulation 2017

Prosecution timeframes

The table below lists the timeframe for the prosecution’s outcomes from 2022 when measured against the date of the offence.

Table 1: Timeframe between date of offence and the prosecution outcome, for the 2022 prosecution outcomes reported by SafeWork NSW & WorkSafe Victoria. Bracketed numbers represent the increase / decrease from 2021.

Health and safety fines

Year on year, the average fine and median fine in Victoria and in NSW remained consistent with previous years. The average and median fines were greater in NSW, when compared to Victoria.

WorkSafe Victoria issued five Enforceable Undertakings in 2022 which equates to 4% of prosecutions. This aligns with the percentage of prosecutions that resulted in Enforceable Undertaking issued in 2021.

An ‘enforceable undertaking’  (EU) is a legally binding agreement between WorkSafe Victoria and the employer. The employer is obliged to carry out the specific activities outlined in the agreed undertaking. EUs will typically guide and direct the business being prosecuted to improve its health and safety program.

Health and safety fines: Maximum issued

With respect to fines, the maximum fines for Victoria was slightly above 2021, however, there was a significant decrease in NSW year on year. This number may increase once prosecutions from June to December 2022 are presented.

The maximum fines issued to a business were associated with the following events:

Victoria: The offender manufacture and supply liquid and dry bulk road tankers and employ approximately 40 – 50 workers on the factory floor. Australian Industry Group Training Services Pty Ltd (AIGTS) employed an engineering fabrication apprentice.

An external Safety Consultant completed an audit on a new workplace environment during August 2018, whilst production had commenced the setup of the new factory was still not complete. The audit identified several opportunities for improvement.

On 24 September 2018, the apprentice attended at the workplace for work for the first time. The apprentice was 20 years of age, a trainee welder and did not have a trade qualification.

On 4 October 2018, the apprentice was asked to perform a ‘cleaning out task’ inside a tanker. The previous day an employee of the offender had left a Welder and a Wire Feeder inside the tanker. It remained there overnight. The Wire Feeder had fallen into a state of disrepair. As a result of that defect, over which the offender had management and control, Argon gas was able to flow into the tanker overnight, reducing oxygen in it. The apprentice died from asphyxiation after entering the tanker to perform the cleaning out work.

Workers at the workplace extracted the apprentice from the tanker and performed CPR. Emergency Services arrived within about five minutes after the apprentice was extracted. The apprentice died at the scene.

The offender pleaded guilty and was with conviction sentenced to pay a fine of $600,000. The Court indicated that but for its guilty plea, the offender would have been convicted and fined $800,000.

NSW: On 12 April 2019, a worker was operating a John Heine Power Press when his chair slipped and his foot connected with the unguarded lever, activating the Press, which crushed his right-hand fingers.

After a SafeWork NSW investigation, the defendant, was charged with a breach of section 32/19(1) and 38(1) of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011.

On 22 February 2022, the defendant was convicted by the District Court and fined $135,000 for the breach of section 32/19(1) of the Act and $12,000 for the breach of section 38 of the Act.

It is not just businesses being prosecuted in relation to health and safety breaches

Health and safety prosecutions are not limited to corporations. In 2022, 10% and 13% of prosecutions were issued to workers in Victoria and NSW respectively – equating to 12 and 2 prosecutions respectively

The maximum fine issued to workers in Victoria and NSW in 2021 was $70,000 and $60,000 respectively. Whilst the average fine in Victoria and NSW was $15,875 and $48,750 respectively.

Prosecutions: What is the cause and where are the gaps?

With respect to the criteria/codes that lead to the prosecution – of the 48 criteria that was referenced, with 13 criteria associated with more than 10% of the prosecutions in 2022. As defined by WorkSafe Victoria, these are outlined below.

These criteria are relatively consistent since 2015.

‘Failure to provide a safe system of work”’ continues to places a clear duty on all workplaces to understand their operations, the hazards associated with their work, and ensure that the established controls are implemented.

Other noteworthy criteria includes:

1. 1. The re-introduction of “Failure to provide and maintain a passive fall protection device” to the list. Whilst “Falls/Work at height offences” have been consistent, this new addition explicitly calls out the expectation the regulator is placing on organisations who conduct work at heights.
2. Slight increase in prosecutions related to failure to conduct risk/hazard identification or risk assessment following a drop off in CY2019 to CY2021:

Health check

Action OHS Consulting, in collaboration with its sister-company Safety Champion Software, has developed a self-assessment tool: Safety Champion Impact Assessment. This tool has been designed to support businesses to understand potential points of failure, allowing them to proactively improve their health and safety program.

We plan to make this tool accessible up until 31 March 2023.

START SAFETY CHAMPION IMPACT ASSESSMENT

Free consulting support

As part of the WorkSafe Victoria OHS Essentials Program, businesses with operations in Victoria, may be eligible for three (3) OHS Consulting Support sessions delivered over 12 months by an Action OHS Consulting consultant. These sessions are designed to guide businesses on how to deliver on the legal OHS duties and obligations.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE OHS ESSENTIALS PROGRAM

Free webinar support

Action OHS Consulting developed and delivered a four-part webinar series providing direction on how businesses can best manage their legal obligations associated with health and safety.

The good news is that it is free for you to download.

DOWNLOAD THE WAR ON SAFETY WEBINAR SERIES

Key takeaways

To allow better and more informed decisions to be made, businesses must have established processes to understand how effectively their health and safety program has been implemented.

The Health and Safety Legislation adopts a self-regulated risk-based approach. This means businesses and their leaders are required to understand what could foreseeably go wrong within their operations, and then establish reasonably practicable controls to minimise the likelihood or severity of such events occurring. The intention; is to protect workers, contractors, customers and visitors from harm.

This require leaders to be real. It requires them to appreciate that safety as documented by your policy and procedure manual, may not reflect work as completed operationally.

Put simply, this leads to a requirement for workplaces to actively:

• Ensure that your safety program is easy to access and understand, and importantly relevant to your operations. Strongly consider implementing safety software such as Safety Champion, to help ensure that scheduled tasks are completed, and that workers can easily report incidents and/or hazards. Ensuring that you have visibility and read access to this information, will assist you to proactively prevent incidents from occurring in the future.
• List all the ways your workers could get hurt, and document what you have put in place to stop this from happening. Start by listing the “Top 5” hazards – focusing on those which could cause the most serious harm. Do this in consultation with a selection of workers who hold different roles within your business. If you identify things that you could improve and/or do better, this is not bad, in fact, it is the point of the exercise.
• Continue to consult. Have regular structured and unstructured conversations with your team regarding the controls you have established.
• Build competency. Ensure that you have an induction program that includes an overview of your safety program and the operational activities that the worker will undertake. Consider assigning a buddy to new and/or young workers.
• Ensure your safety program is sustainable. Don’t rely on just one person. Spreadsheets and folders can be effective if you are organised, however, are difficult to maintain visibility when tasks are due – or more importantly, when tasks are missed. Again, this is where software programs like Safety Champion Software will support your organisation, providing visibility of your health and safety program in real-time, remind you when deadlines and key milestones approach, and provide you with access to data to make data-based decisions.
• Consider safety as part of your procurement process. Before you buy anything, consider the safety implications. Don’t limit this to equipment, machinery, computers – extended this to services as well. Don’t make safety an afterthought.

We would be interested to hear your thoughts, questions or concerns.

If like us, you would like to interrogate data, we would be more than happy to share an unlocked copy of the data with you

We would be interested to hear your thoughts, questions or concerns.

If like us, you would like to interrogate data, we would be more than happy to share an unlocked copy of the data with you – simply Contact Us.

Authors: Craig Salter, Nicole Watkins.

Work as we knew it has changed in some capacity for all of us. You might have found yourself logging into work from your living room each day, finding a plastic barrier of some kind between you and your colleagues or customers, fervently disinfecting surfaces before and after each shift, or watching your feet to keep a safe 1.5m socially distant space in place.

Indeed, whatever you do and wherever you do it, you’ve likely experienced some level of adjustment in your working day.

This hasn’t been easy for everyone. Yes, some have picked up speed quickly, adjusted and got on with it. But for others, change of this magnitude can bring about feelings that might demotivate us from pursuing our work the way we used to. Everyone is different.

But with such pervasive and, oftentimes, unsettling changes in our ways of working – across each and every industry – comes the need for work health and safety professionals, like ourselves, to adapt and change too.

As such, we’ve made some very necessary changes to the way we interact with our clients. Moreover, we’ve modified and refined our service offering in response to the fluctuating needs of the market in this strange and challenging time.

Read on for more about our observations of needs in the health and safety sector, and the changes we’ve made to suit.

Advisory support services

March and April this year felt like a scramble. Whilst every organisation out there attempted to find a new way of working as quickly as possible, we clambered alongside them, aiming to assist as the rules and guidance around us all changed.

Yet since the middle of this year, we’ve noticed a general sense of everyone ‘finding their feet’, so to speak. And with this, many businesses found the space to assess their operations and business functions, and find new and improved ways of working.

During this time, we received a heightened request for OHS advisory support services. Organisations started to see value in retainer programs, in which we provided “ad hoc” OHS support. In this way, our clients received the exact level of health and safety support they needed. Nothing more, nothing less.

Whilst for some, this arrangement involved reviewing COVID Plans alongside changing regulations and rules, it quickly expanded for some into supporting the wider ‘working from home’ workforce with OHS. As businesses were hit with increasing challenges, queries and concerns from staff working from home, this service was one that was greatly needed. It lifted the pressure on administrative or operational staff to be available and responsive to each and every request or call.

We have no doubt that this arrangement will be a trend that will continue as businesses continue to mobilise and engage a remote workforce for some time to come.

Virtual service delivery

Needless to say, and like many others, we took our services online. Whilst traditionally the consulting gig is a happy face-to-face, always-on-the-road, kind of arrangement, we’re now comfortably supporting our clients virtually via Zoom, Teams, FaceTime, or any other preferred platform.

We’ve been surprised by some of the unique ways that we can work around problems and still deliver in accordance with the needs of our clients. Some of the ways we’ve changed;

• Audits, reviews and health checks have moved online. As part of this program of work, we have started requesting that clients provide a ‘video walk through’ of their working environment.
• Workstation assessments have moved online. Following a dramatic increase the number of ergonomic assessment requests, as thousands of people started working from home overnight, our workstation assessments can be undertaken 100% virtually and contact free. This is something we hadn’t considered before, but has been one of the most popular and important services we’ve delivered in recent months.
• Training has moved online. We’ve delivered training in OHS due diligence and introductory courses for managers and supervisors via Zoom. This has involved allowing groups to interact with one another as though they are in the same room.

No doubt, continuing to deliver our services online has also allowed us to work with organisations based in regional parts of Australia. Given the benefits of reaching these parts to assist with better work health and safety practices, we’ll be sure to continue this way of working well into the future.

Safety secondments or short term contracts

One of the by-products of the pandemic has been an increase in attention on work health and safety. In some organisations, this is the first time that many have seen their leadership teams make a concerted effort to understand work health and safety practices, challenges, and goals.

We believe that this may have contributed to another trend in health and safety. We’ve found that secondment programs or short term contracts are becoming increasingly common. As organisations see the value of proactively managing safety, they are also regarding such arrangements as a good entry point to kick start ongoing improved management or to further investigate opportunities for improvement.

This is why we’ve prepared our safety consulting team to support short and long term secondment needs from our clients. This allows our clients access to the immediate and highly value help they need in safety, whilst also allowing our consultants a chance to get ‘stuck in’ so to speak.

It is in this kind of work that we feel we can add great value. Our extensive experience can be harnessed to address the challenges of our clients, whilst also allowing us to get a good sense of satisfaction from embedding more established, sustainable, and meaningful health and safety initiatives.

Solutions in safety software

Finally, we turn to technology. The shifts and changes in workplaces has seen many organisations turning to technology to address new needs. This might have been video conferencing software, health and safety management software, or virtual Friday night trivia and gaming solutions.

But certainly, conversations about taking health and safety management online and into our OHS software, Safety Champion, have increased.

For many of us, we are no longer congregating together in a workplace, a central point. For some, access to intranets has become a challenge depending on IT security arrangements. Yet, there has remained a very real need to provide remote access to safety programs and to allow management teams visibility of how effectively that safety program is being implemented.

As such, our focus and development roadmap with respect to Safety Champion Software has slightly adjusted. We’re now focusing on supporting businesses to document communication with their “at-home” workforce; manage attendance at site, and, of course, appropriately manage the reporting of any suspected or actual cases of COVID-19 amongst the workforce.

Safety Champion is becoming one of the important pieces of tech for many organisations in our new world. Not just for those with a workforce at home, but also for those implementing strong practices around COVID safety with a workforce that continues to come together in a workplace.

. . .

When COVID-19 hit – like everyone else we’re sure – we worked hard to pivot and adjust our business to fit the changing needs of our clientele. This has shifted over time, as needs and rules have moved, and we’ve continued to review how we work regularly, so that we can best serve our clients.

We believe our refined mix of services are the ones our clients need most right now. And we’re prepared and ready to go. So, whether its health and safety advisory services, short and long term secondment offerings, virtual audits and health checks, virtual workstation assessments, or great COVID-ready safety management software, reach out to us today and let’s see how we can assist.