July 2022

Despite Australian workplaces becoming safer over the past decade, workplace fatalities are sadly still occurring. In 2020, SafeWork Australia reported that 194 workers died, which means 194 people did not arrive home safely after work one day. The ramifications filter right through communities at all levels. From our experience working in Work, Health and Safety (WHS) over many years, we can see that employers and workers are largely trying to do the right thing and want to provide a safe place to work. However, work pressures and out-of-date safety policies and procedures cause complacency. We often hear of workers saying, ‘It is not going to happen to me’ or ‘I will just quickly do this job’ without taking appropriate precautions and these are inhibiting factors to safety.
 

When business owners and workers become complacent with respect to their WHS standards and practices, injuries occur more often and the injuries suffered are of greater severity. Engaging a WHS safety consultant ensures that your safety polices and procedures will make your workplaces as safe as possible. This will avoid workers thinking, for example, ‘I do not need a harness, the roof is dry today’ or ‘no-one is around today, so no need for safety barriers’. Safety consultants can provide professional advice on how to make your business a safer place to work by, for example:

 

• Undertaking workplace risk assessments.

• Identifying where potential hazards are.

• Developing a Safe Work Method Statement (SWMS) for high risk activities.

• Developing a Job Safety Analysis (JSA) for non-high risk tasks.

• Planning tool box meetings.

• Designing mature and effective incident reporting and safety investigation systems.

• Developing a systematic, well planned WHS audit plan and safety plan.

 

Taking the leap to ensure precautions of this kind are implemented is necessary for businesses of any size, from small to large. A safety consultant can tailor their services to be proportionate to the size of your business and be very effective. If you have not already done so, talk with a safety consultant and play your part in making workplaces more positive and safer for everyone.