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It is important to understand that there is a difference between health and safety procedure documents and health and safety procedure records. For many small businesses, documented health and safety procedures are not vital to be in compliance with the legislation. Read more about this here. But health and safety records are most certainly required as they provide evidence of the activities you have performed as part of your health and safety procedure. These records must be kept by your business, just as receipts are kept for the taxman.

Here’s a list of the typical workplace documentation and the associated records that must be kept.

You may be wondering what happens with all of these records you need to keep. Well, these records must be kept by your business as evidence that you have complied with the legislation and kept a safe working environment for your staff. Generally speaking, with the exception of incident and injury records (which your business should keep, practically forever), your health and safety records should be kept for a minimum of 7 years. Although we advise that you check the exact timeframes and requirements of record keeping with your regulator.

For many businesses documenting your Health and Safety Procedures is not vital to be in compliance with the legislation. Read more about this here. However, depending on the work that you do, there may be times that the legislation will require you to have your health and safety ‘ways of working’ documented.

For example, in Australia, there is a requirement across all jurisdictions to document the steps that your workers have establish to manage the risks associated with high risk construction work. The requirements of these documents, whether they are documented on paper or glass, are outlined within the health and safety regulations.

But there are also other reasons why your business should consider documenting your health and safety procedures. For example, if you run a company that is contracted by other organisations to undertake work on their behalf, it’s likely that you will one day be asked for a copy of your Health and Safety Procedures. Many businesses aim to manage the risks associated with the engagement of contractors, by only awarding contracts and/or tenders to contractors that have a documented Safety Management System. This ‘direction’ is designed to provide the business with assurances and greater confidence that the contractor they are engaging has considered their health and safety impacts.

For businesses that have not implemented a ‘documented’ Safety Management System this can often be a block on expanding their business. The requirements placed on contractors are here to stay and if anything, are likely to become more stringent. Why – because it makes things safer? No, not necessarily. It is more likely to be associated with us working in a litigious society, where there is a requirement for risk management needs to be explicit and demonstrable.

A final reason why documenting these procedures will be necessary is certification. And this is a different beast altogether. Should you proceed down this path, you should know that certification requires simple methods for the auditors to understand your established or official way of doing something.

There are advantages of certification, one key benefit is the ability to communicate to workers and customers that your Safety Management System is at a defined standard. It doesn’t mean your business is safer, it means that your business’ Safety Management System has achieved a defined standard.

An overview of the minimum Health and Safety Procedures required for certification against the Australian/New Zealand Standard and the National Audit Tool Version 3 (NAT3) are outlined in the table below.

You’ll be relieved to hear that for many businesses, particularly smaller ones, the short answer is ‘no’.

Adhering to the health and safety legislation does not actually require procedures to be documented. Rather, it simply requires that these procedures are established and implemented in the workplace.

• It requires your business to have a considered and consistent way of undertaking its operations.
• It requires your business to communicate this established or official way of undertaking its operations to the relevant parties, whether this be: workers, contractors or visitors.
• It requires your business to ensure that the identified relevant parties understand this established or official way of undertaking the operations.

It does not require formal documentation of this process. It certainly doesn’t require a folder of procedures doing nothing but collecting dust. But it does require some activity and doing on your part.

It is more important that your workplace has established a safe system of work, than have a safe system of work written down on a piece of paper that is unrealistic or not followed.

Part of this doing that is actually important is keeping accurate records. These are not to be confused with health and safety procedure documentation, that outline the processes you undertake. These records are evidence of the activities you have performed as part of your already established and implemented health and safety procedure. Read a detailed account of the typical workplace health and safety documentation and associated records here.

So, the good news is that if you have regular and working communication across all levels of your business you likely already have some health and safety procedures in place without you paying them much thought. You may not have an official document to prove it, but you could already be undertaking some of the fundamentals needed for a strong health and safety compliant workplace. Read more advice here about how to ensure you have a solid approach to health and safety in your workplace.

Having said all of this, there are some major benefits to having your health and safety procedure documented, even if you are a small business. Read more about what documenting your procedures can do for your business here. Documented procedures can;

• be an effective way to bring all your employees, managers and works alike, onto the same page when it comes to implementing health and safety procedures.
• remove confusion and ambiguity about Health and Safety.
• help ensure that important health and safety tasks are still undertaken even if roles change or staff come and go.
• open up opportunity for working with other businesses that require evidence of your documented health and safety procedure before engaging with you.

Whilst not a legislative requirement, documenting health and safety will encourage explicit consideration of how the business implements health and safety into their operations, the way that they work and with whom they work.

If you are unsure if your workplace has any health and safety procedures – documented or not – please contact us. We would love the opportunity to review how you are implementing health and safety across your business, and to help guide you towards getting it working well both for compliance with the legislative requirements and for your business.

We are often asked ‘What is a Safety Management System?’ and usually the common follow up question is ‘Why do I need one?’

These are good questions for small and large business owners alike to be asking. So, we thought we’d share a short synopsis of exactly what a Safety Management System is, how it works, and why you really should look at implementing one for the success and safety of your workplace.

Essentially, a Safety Management System is process that your business undertakes to manage and mitigate safety risks for the protection of your workers, contractors and visitors within the workplace. When implemented into business operations, this system helps you to continually improve the business’ safety performance and its compliance with health and safety legislation and standards, through sound, risk-based decision-making and practical action.

In doing so, the business establishes a safer working environment for workers, demonstrates strong corporate responsibility and, in turn, builds greater credibility as a mature organisation with whom your existing and prospective clients, employees and stakeholders will be happy to work.

How does a Safety Management System work exactly?

Well, it all starts with your business’ commitment to safety. Your businesses commitment is often demonstrated via a Health and Safety Policy – which is a general plan of intent which guides or influences future decisions around the health and safety of the people in your workplace. From there, comes the planning stage where you determine how you will achieve the intentions outlined by the Health and Safety Policy.

“A goal without a plan is just a wish”

Once your business has established its health and safety plan, implementation of the plan follows. Implementation is where the health and safety impacts are considered across all aspects of your operations.

To ensure optimal health and safety and operations performance (one should not be independent of the other), implementation is followed by ongoing monitoring and evaluation, and a subsequent review phase. This forms a continuous cycle to ensure ongoing improvement.

Sounds daunting, but it’s actually not difficult to run once you’ve established the health and safety plan itself. Read more detail about how it works here.

Join our upcoming webinar. Register Now.

What are the benefits for my business?

Much research has shown clear links between strong Safety Management Systems, safe workplaces and long-term business efficiency. But in the interest of keeping this short and to the point, here are the top five reasons why a Safety Management System will benefit your workplace, no matter how small (or large):

• A Safety Management System will create clarity and comfort for workers around roles, responsibilities and expectations from a safety point of view.
• It could help save possible loss of revenue caused by workers injuries that lead to medical expenses, replacement labour, insurance claim expenses, workers’ compensation insurance premiums… – this list could continue.
• It will improve your business’ opportunity to work with other organisations. As the business world becomes more sophisticated in terms of health and safety, it is becoming more and more common for those seeking partnerships and contracts to request evidence of strong health and safety practices, especially a Safety Management System, before they will do business.
• It will help to guide your business through the process of effectively meeting legal health and safety requirements.
• It will enhance your business’ reputation with your employees and customers. A business that looks after its people and customers is a business that people want to work for and with.

And, health and safety legislation and standards?

Yes, we did mention that and they do exist. The Australia and New Zealand standard (AS/NZS 4801:2001), in alignment with the International Standard (ISO 18001 / ISO 45001), provide guidance on what your workplace should consider when establishing a Safety Management System. It is encouraged that you are familiar with a standard if developing a Safety Management System and it makes good business sense to do so. Read more about The Safety Management System Standard here.

Need to know more about health and safety legislation in Australia? Read through; Health and safety legislation – the basic explanation

Looking for more detail on Safety Management System’s? Review our past blog: Safety Management Systems: A comprehensive overview.

All too often we see businesses go to great effort or expense to establish health and safety policies and procedures, then fail to implement them. A safety folder on a shelf, potentially collecting dust, is doing very little to actually improve health and safety of the people in your workplace. It’s the practical implementation of what’s in that folder that will protect your workers.

Whether your organisation is big or small, regional or city-based, or whether your business works in construction, mining, manufacturing, hospitality, retail, health or professional services; here’s some key advice to best ensure your Safety Management System works for you:

1. Get senior management involved

The business owner or executive team must play an active leadership role to encourage the involvement of workers in the Safety Management System. It must be a regular item on the senior management agenda. The health and safety of workers must be a priority. Management must walk the talk.

1. Motivate and educate workers

Make sure the expectations and responsibilities placed on your workers are clear to them and relevant to what they do. Talk often. Ensure workers understand the value of the Safety Management System to them and their colleagues through training, clear direction and delegation of practical tasks. Keep it a regular item on their agenda also.

1. Keep it updated

It just doesn’t work to create the Safety Management System and let it sit on the shelf. Business risks will shift as business activities change or new information comes to hand. Workers come and go. Your Safety Management System must be adjusted regularly over time to ensure it is in line with your business’ current condition. Learn more about a suggested continual improvement cycle here.

1. Integrate it into core business operations

Safety should be integral to the way you do business; it should not be an ‘add-on’. Its value to your business is indisputable; it keeps you and your workers, contractors and clients safe. It will open up opportunities for more business. It elevates the professionalism of your organisation, and so on.

So, where possible combine and align health and safety with your overall business practices and established operational processes to make sure it sticks.

If the doing is the hard part for you, please contact us. We would love to discuss options available for you to get your Safety Management System working as efficiently as possible for your business and your workers.

Still not sure what a Safety Management System is? Review our past blog: Safety Management Systems: A-“For-Dummies” Guide.

A web browser or just browser is what you and the other 3 billion internet users access the internet through. It’s that page where you search for something or type in the ‘www’’ to go to a website that you are familiar with. On the web, when you navigate through pages of information, this is commonly known as web browsing or web surfing.

By definition a web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web – the World Wide Web being the ‘www’ we referred to earlier. Whilst there are many browsers available, these are the four leading ones: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari.

Web browsers are intuitive for both basic and advanced internet users. Whilst each of these web browsers is easy to download and free, the majority of us use only one browser – so it is important that you choose correctly!

So, here’s run down of the big four:

Google Chrome

Google Chrome is known for its speed and simplicity. This browser is developed by Google and was first released for Microsoft Windows in 2008. Today, Chrome is known to be the most popular web browser.

From a configuration standpoint, Chrome is the only browser that supports both Windows and Mac operating software, along with both Android and iOS phones.

Chrome was the first to think of the ‘omnibar’. The ‘omnibar’ combines your regular address bar (the bit where you type in a full website address) with your search bar (the bit where you enter in search terms usually on www.google.com). This functionality allows you to type URLs and Google searches in the same place (the search bar).

Firefox

Firefox was developed by Mozilla. Its first version was released in back in 2004 and it was quite a popular browser on the Internet. However, its popularity has been slowly fading over the years. Surprising, because they come up with features with cool names like the ‘awesome bar’. The ‘awesome bar’ is like the ‘omnibar’ but also remembers where you’ve been and guesses where you might be going. Intuitive.

Firefox is well-known for its stability, but its start-up process is not as fast as Chrome’s.

Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer is the big one – traditionally the most commonly used browser in the world. Although it’s share of usage is gradually dropping as Chrome’s is increasing. It’s the default browser that comes installed on most, if not all, PCs. This browser was developed by Microsoft back in 1995, at the same time that Windows was first created. Internet Explorer is also known as Microsoft Internet Explorer or just IE.

Internet Explorer provides a stable application that does not crash very often. However, it typically takes longer to load web pages than other browsers, and only supports the Windows operating system. The variation in versions of Internet Explorer often means that some software does not support all versions making it occasionally frustrating to use. These bugs occur in Internet Explorer at different times and fixing them can be time consuming.

Safari

Like Internet Explorers is to PCs, Safari is to Macs. It’s the default web browser installed on all brand new Macs. This web browser was produced and developed by Apple Inc. and was released in 2003. Safari is known for its simple and non-flashy approach. By removing the unnecessary bells and whistles of other browsers, Safari loads pages very quickly and is perfect for users that do not ask a lot of their web browsers. However, it sacrifices a lot of the customisation that other browsers provide.

The Verdict

Imagine that you have in one room a person speaking Chinese, and four interpreters translating what is being said into English. You would not expect to get the same translation, word for word, from each, would you? But you would expect to get the same meaning. The same ideas would get brought across. The same can be said for the four browsers overviewed above.

Browsers can be all about personal preference. But they can also be about providing a better interpretation of the page you are trying to view. A little trick is to make sure you have at least a couple of web browsers available to use. If a page isn’t loading correctly for you using one, it may work better on another. So, explore them and find the browsers that suit you and provide a better Internet experience.

Since the 60-Minutes story ‘Stand Up Australia – Is sitting down killing us?’ aired in September 2014 the following question has been on every manager’s mind “Do I now have to provide ‘sit-stand’ workstations to my workers?“.

To us, the sit-stand workstation phenomena is an example of safety and OHS being used irresponsibly. The misconception that managers must purchase sit-stand workstations to provide a safe working environment is simply NOT true. Yes, managers absolutely do have a duty to provide a safe workplace. But no, this does not mean they need to purchase a bunch of sit-stand workstations.

Think back ten years, can you recall the saddle seat? Do you recall fit-balls replacing office chairs? If you can’t, consider taking a look in your storeroom. You may find them in there. Perhaps the sit-stand desk will end up in there with them one day. Who knows?

We are not saying that there are not benefits to standing throughout the working day. We would be crazy to. The well-reported health hazards associated with prolonged sitting include (but, of course, are not limited to):

• increased pressure on the spine,
• increased strain on muscles and ligaments,
• possible risks for some cancers, cardiovascular disease, diabetes,
• decreased calorie-burning rate (to just 1 cal/min),
• decreased enzymes that help break fat down (dropping by 90%).

A 38-hour working week means that work roughly contributes to 23% of a full week. If this is so, why has the focus only been on seated posture at work, not the other times we sit? Consider the amount we sit outside of work – in the car, on the bus, using the computer at home, watching TV, eating dinner, lunch, breakfast… the list could go on!

It is highly unlikely that a workplace would “force” their workers to stay seated all day. Why is this important? Because it means that sit-stand workstations are not your only reasonable method of control.

So, if sit-stand workstations have been under consideration in your workplace – try investigating some of the other methods that may be used to manage the hazard itself – static posture or prolonged sitting.

Many of the risks mentioned above can be minimised by simply moving out of a seated posture for two (2) minutes every hour. So, in consultation with your workers (including HSRs and Health and Safety Committee if they are in place), have a think about these ideas:

Standing meetings

• Remove chairs from some meeting rooms
• Provide benches at a raised height that workers can stand around

Walking meetings

• Map out a 1.5 to 2 km circuit for a 30-minute meeting
• Map out a 3 to 4 km circuit for a 60-minute meeting

Run an internal campaign to encourage a standing and moving culture. Fun ideas are:

• Stand every time you answer a phone call
• Stand every time you review or read documents
• Stand when a colleague comes to your desk or office
• Use to a kitchen, printer or amenity that is not the closest
• Use telephones, speakers or calendars to set a ‘change’ posture reminder
• Use the stairs instead of the lift

All of these options will support workers to move out of a static posture across the work day. They all support proactive management of the hazard, just like the sit-stand workstation. But what’s also great about these options are that they could all double as fantastic energising and team-building methods, ultimately leading to increased happiness and productivity in your workplace!

Why not give them a try?

Want to know more about what is actually involved for you to provide a safe workplace for your employees? Read our Safety Management Systems; A Comprehensive Overview post that covers the legislative requirements – you won’t see a sit-stand desk mentioned once.