Author name: cgeyy

Recently, one of clients was asking our advice about “RSI”. A number of their employees have raised issues over the past few years about pain in their wrists, arms and necks, most suggesting it was due to extensive computer use. Our client was worried about the ongoing issues related to this – both from a productivity point of view but also because they wanted to look out for their people. So, they asked us what they could do about it.

We should start by saying this is a very common question for us. Probably because ‘Repetition Strain Injury’ (RSI) or ‘Occupational Overuse Syndrome’ (OOS) as it is known to us in the health and safety biz, is very common. In fact, it has been found that upwards of 77% of workers across a variety of occupations reported having experienced mild to severe RSI (Australian Government, Comcare, 1997). With an increased reliance on computers, tablets and smartphones – it is safe to assume that this may have increased in more recent years?!

So, what is it? RSI is a term that covers many different kinds of discomfort or pain in the muscles and tendons caused by repetitive or forced movements, or sustained or constrained postures. Examples of RSI you may have heard of are things like Tendonitis, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and Writer’s Cramp.

Though there are so many different renditions of RSI, there are some things that you can do to decrease the likelihood of your people suffering from it in any form it comes in. SafeWork Australia have some, quite lengthy, guidance notes specifically created for computer users. But we thought we’d break it down for you a bit.

So, three major things to think about:

1. Your work systems – Think about how you can reduce the amount of repetitive or prolonged work that is required within the daily work life of your people. Can you encourage more frequent work breaks or more task variation? Are you making sure you allow appropriate time for your people to get used to new technology or processes, or are you demanding the same speed? Talk to you people and gauge how they feel.

1. The workplace itself – Think about creating the most well-designed workplace you can. Are your workstations suitable for all the shapes and sizes of your people? Is the workplace environment appropriate? And do your people have access to the equipment they need to perform their tasks as best they can, with minimal risk? Implementing some positive changes to account for these things will increase comfort, improve efficiency and minimise the risk of RSI claims.

1. Training and education – Think about offering some information sessions or talking openly to your people about RSI. Do your people know anything about RSI? Do they know what they can change in their personal working style to avoid it? Training your people can be great strategy to prevent instances of RSI. And this way everyone can play a part in prevention.

As an employer or manager, you have a duty to protect the health and safety of your people whilst they are at work. So, RSI is an important thing for you to consider – especially given its prevalence! So, may take a few hours this week to consider the above 3 points, talk to your people and get their opinion… and of course if you are still stuck – call in the experts (like us)!

We write a lot about how to set and achieve your health and safety goals and targets on this blog. But we know that for many small businesses all of that can be a little overwhelming when you are first starting to get your health and safety practices in place. So, here’s a different way of looking at it.

Start out with just one thing first.

Really, health and safety is simpler than you think. It’s all about identifying potential hazards and risks and then addressing those hazards and risks so that you keep your people healthy and safe while they are at work.

But while a major barrier against businesses actually doing this is “Where do I start?” there are a stack of great tools out there to help. We think one of the best ones is WorkSafe’s Injury Hotspots site. Simply type in your industry and this site will tell you all the major injuries and hazards associated with your industry.

Then print the poster, and stick it somewhere where you can see it. This is an easy way to keeping health and safety top of mind, and a visual way to show your workers your organisations focus on safe work behaviours. Of course, you can’t address everything today… so highlight the controls that you would like to implement, but start with one.

Start with the biggest risk to the health and safety of your people, you know, the one that keeps you up at night, the one that happens daily or the one where if it did occur, someone would be injured badly.

Starting with the highest risk is already an awesome start – this will have the greatest impact possible for your people and your business. So feel good about it. Celebrate it. Seek input from your workers how the hazard can be managed. Then over time you can work your way down that list. Gradually your business and your people will become safer, healthier and ultimately happier.

You gotta start somewhere, right?

1. Access your files anywhere, anytime

You wouldn’t be the first business in the world to struggle with keeping your OHS or WHS files in any order, let alone perfect order. Taming your documents is a hassle…even for us health and safety professionals in our own workplace!

However, implementing a cloud-based software system has helped us solve that. Not only can you see and download the documents, registers or records you need, when you need it – but all of your files, even if you are working across multiple workplace locations will be in one place, yep, up there in the sky.

Shifting to a paperless way of working definitively makes accessing data easy, making reporting and decisions based on your data and trends so much easier!

2. Demonstrate your compliance

Our clients always talk about how good it is to be able to “prove” their compliance regarding health and safety legislation – simply and effectively. This is not only good for dealing with the health and safety inspector, but also to prospective clients and building confidence with staff members.

Nowadays it is vital to be able to demonstrate your businesses professionalism and commitment to supporting the health and wellbeing of your people – software is a very effective and highly visible way to demonstrate this commitment!

3. Make things easier for your people

You’ve probably seen and read all the talk these days about ‘employee engagement’ and ‘employee wellbeing’. There’s a clear trend that people really scrutinise businesses before they jump on board, to make sure it’s the kind of place they want to work.

And what is the kind of place where people want to work? Well, an efficient workplace with easy, streamlined processes that actually make their day-to-day work easier! They expect businesses that embrace technology and know that the ones that do have built these efficiencies. So, help them out – toss away the paper and use OHS software!

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4. Look after your bottom line

It’s not just the cost of paper, ink and machine maintenance you are saving by going paperless. But think about the cost of time. If you have people running around trying to find lost paperwork, put messy files in order, chase up staff by phone or email to submit their reports… this is money, I repeat this is money! Read more about the cost to your business here.

So, take some relief, know that if you put the right OHS software in place you will reduce administration and resourcing, as the OHS software will send automated emails to remind people to complete health and safety tasks and automatically save all that data in the appropriate registers ready for you to use, when you want it!

Time is money. This software saves time. Do the math.

5. Make your workplace safer!

Ok so this is the best benefit yet. Shifting to an easy-to-use, cloud-based software means that implementing your health and safety practices in the workplace will actually happen!

And what this means, is that your people will become safer and healthier and happier for it. And, after all, that’s what health and safety is all about… looking after your people.

Word of warning! This being said, not all software systems are made the same – so keep your eyes open. Before you start to look, clearly define what you need. Don’t be caught out by the cheeky salesperson and/or cheapest product. If you go down that path, you may be kissing efficiency and simplicity goodbye.

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Five benefits of going paperless with your health and safety practices!Read More »

If you are on the market for software to help you to keep your people safe and healthy at work, you’re probably finding there are quite a few systems out there to choose from. And while there will be one that suits your business, we just thought we’d throw out three things that our clients love about Safety Champion – just to see if it might influence your decision! Cheeky? Yes, a little 😉

1. It comes with a ready-to-go Safety Manual

This really is awesome. It is something that could cost a small business anywhere upwards of $5K if you were to engage a consultant to create one for you. This alone makes the system worthwhile! It allows you to be up and running with strong health and safety procedures as soon as you sign up. Whilst procedures aren’t everything, they do provide clear direction on how you can protect your workers from harm and injury. And, you know what else, they can be great for business development too. Well-documented health and safety procedures can lift the credibility of your business, it will also allow you apply and win tenders, which you previously could not attempt – because you didn’t have the documents you needed.

2. It has been designed by health and safety professionals who know what they are doing

Unlike other software, Safety Champion has been designed by safety professionals, in collaboration with our awesome developers, to ensure it does everything you need it to, and nothing that it doesn’t. We’ve seen many systems, and many of these have been designed by people who are either unfamiliar with safety, or people who have worked in safety within large organisations. And you know what? If they are not built for the SME audience, they can be cumbersome and confusing for non-safety people, and therefore more time consuming. While they might do a lot of ‘stuff’, often it’s not the stuff you need to comply with health and safety laws. Often these systems suit big businesses that have safety teams and lots of resources. We know what you need, and we’ve made it for you.

3. It is incredibly easy to use – for all users

Look, all the others will say they have this, but try us, ours is possibly the simplest interface out there. As safety people we have heard the frustrations of clients when using the existing software they have in place. So, we’ve carefully built Safety Champion to be as simple as possible. Why is this important? Because we know that safety is not always managed by someone with a safety background, and our goal has always been to keep people in Australian businesses safe and healthy. So yeah, we created a simple system that everyone can use – quickly and easily.

Really a lot of what it comes down to is the fact that we understand your challenges. We know how safety works, we know how people work, and we know how great software works. So, what we’ve created is a solution that takes all of this into account. After all, OHS or WHS is actually just about people. So, we’re here to help you keep your people safe and healthy.

There you have it. That’s our plug done. So, if you are interesting in having a free trial to our system or just chatting more, please contact us today!

Certainly, when managing business, we take into account the impact of paid staff leave from both a financial and productivity point of view. We know the cost to the bottom line, how to manage the workload as our workers take their owed annual leave, how to pick up the slack quickly if someone is unexpectedly off sick, and we have the tools in place to properly track and monitor leave days. But have you thought about the impact of presenteeism? And, more, how to best manage it when it starts to happen?

While researching this blog, we actually found a lot of evidence (data mainly from USA) to suggest that presenteeism can have a larger impact on the operational and financial health of a business in comparison to sick leave – which is largely already taken in consideration by most businesses. Ok, so what are these two?

Absenteeism is when your workers are not actually in the workplace due to illness, planned leave, family emergencies, or other unplanned events like jury duty. It can become an issue to a business when the number of absent days exceeds what a business has allowed for as reasonable.

Presenteeism is when your workers still come to the workplace – only they are not actually working but are rather there in ‘presence’ only. In this case, workers could be ill, lacking motivation, overworked, etc.

So, what can you do about presenteeism to avoid this huge and, well, unaccounted for, impact to your business? Here are a few of suggestions – and no surprise – they are all related to ensuring you support the maintenance of a safe, happy and healthy workplace!

1. Encourage your workers to maintain their health!

Suggest flu shots in winter, promote good hand hygiene (put some posters up in those bathrooms), send your workers home when they are showing signs of cold or flu, get a fruit box and support healthy eating, etc. Essentially, the healthier your staff, the better for everyone!

2. Check in with your workers about their workload often.

Don’t expect your staff to always come forward when they are overworked and stressed. Also, don’t expect them to come forward if they feel underworked or believe they have more capacity. Try to actively start that conversation and encourage your managers and team leads to do the same. Motivate your workers. Help them to understand what the right balance is. After all, it is useless to overload a worker when this will actually have the opposite effect, demotivating them to do anything at all.

3. Look out for the signs of poor mental or physical health.

This is tricky, but presenteeism can be common for people with health issues that are not overly visible to an employer, such as depression, anxiety or chronic pain issues and disease. So, this is about maintaining good and open communication with your workers, and trying to determine a way that will better support your staff if these kinds of health issues are present. Things like allowing your workers to work from home might assist or guiding them towards getting proper help.

So, there are just a few ideas from us. But really, the best way to manage presenteeism, and absenteeism for that matter, is good communication with your workers and maintaining a happy, healthy and safe workplace for all.

Ignorantia legis neminem excusat.

What on earth does that mean, you ask? Well, this is the legal principle holding that a person who is unaware of a law may not escape liability for violating that law merely because they were unaware of its content.

So, this is the interesting thing about occupational health and safety. From a legal perspective, business owners and senior managers really do need to know about safety and that there’s really no excuse not to know.

What we know from experience working with countless businesses is that if safety is not your area of expertise, the whole concept often seems an incredible hassle. It’s so hard to figure out what to do about health and safety – especially for many small and medium sized businesses where you don’t have the luxury of hiring a specific person to fulfill this role.

But the fact remains that if you are a senior manager within any business, you really do need to know what your role is – in other words you must make sure that the people in your workplace are safe and healthy, and that the operations of your workplace do not impact the health and safety of people.

One case that is well known amongst safety professionals is one involving Owens Group. The CEO – who was based in New Zealand – oversaw 30 companies including Owens Container Services. Following an incident in Australia, the CEO was prosecuted for not appropriately managing workplace hazards that resulted in a fatality. His claim that he was working remotely, and that he had a team to manage safety meaning that he was not able to ‘influence the conduct of the business’ was simply not suitable. The CEO was found guilty. Read more about the case here.

From this example, it can clearly be seen that simply because a senior manager doesn’t have a hands-on role in operations does not mean they are absolved of the health and safety obligations. Senior management have the authority to seek the implementation of health and safety policies, and therefore should do so.

So, if anything unfortunate was to go wrong in your workplace, in the eyes of the law, you must be found to have taken all reasonable steps to best manage and mitigate the health and safety risks on behalf of your workers. The legislation has been in place for years, and supporting information every business owner needs to know is readily available. So, this means that the excuse of “I didn’t realise” doesn’t quite cut it. You’ll discover quite quickly that you ought to have known.

To help you out, here are three easy ways to learn more about your health and safety responsibilities, right now:

1. Visit the Safe Work Australia website – it has a simple layout, search fields to help you find what you are looking for, and all the information you could possibly need is available there.
2. Contact your state regulator. If you are not sure who this is follow this link. Visit their websites or call to find out more. Some of them even have industry-specific advice to give straight off the bat.
3. Engage a consulting firm. Sometimes there can be a lot of jargon and complexity around what you need to do. So, cut straight to it and bring some professionals on board to guide you.

And like we always say – it’s not all doom and gloom! Safety doesn’t have to be hard to manage! Read up on our 3 C’s of effective health and safety management or our 5 easy things every workplace can do to manage foreseeable safety hazards blogs to make some quick and easy changes right now! Most importantly, try to ‘stack’ safety habits into already existing practices. For tips on how to do this, read our blog Try ‘stacking’ your habits… to prevent safety from falling over.

Otherwise, contact us to learn more about how Safety Champion can help. Safety Champion isn’t just software to manage an already established safety plan (like all of the others). Safety Champion gives you all the tools, manuals and professional health and safety advice you need, to suit the specific needs of your business.

As health and safety professionals, we are often met with common frustrations from our clients.

People simply find safety confusing and complicated. They don’t want to decode the safety legislation. They just want to know what to do and what not to do so that they comply with the rules and protect their staff from injury and harm. They want peace of mind.

So, as a team – and over Friday pizza – we were chatting about how we can support businesses address this frustration. Bloated, we came up with a neat and concise set of 3 Cs – what we like to call The 3 C’s of Effective Health and Safety Management.

Even if you’re a novice and have never previously implemented a health and safety procedure, you’ll find that if you follow these simple 3 C’s you will be well on your way to success:

1. Communication

Unquestionably the key to making safety work in the workplace is to keep talking about it with your team and within your teams.

While the legislation documentation is long and complex, it actually really only stresses one point – that you talk or ‘work together to continuously improve safety’.

For legal purposes, this can be as simple as starting to ask your colleagues and staff “How are you doing in your job today?” The answer to this question may be the key to finding those hazards in the workplace getting in the way of your staff being healthy, safe and productive.

2. Common sense

Actually, safety often isn’t as hard or complicated as many businesses think. It just seems that way sometimes.

But when it comes down to it, it’s just about you and your staff asking yourselves “Do I feel safe doing this?” or “Would I do this myself?” If the answer is ‘no’ then that’s a pretty good indication that you need to mitigate the risk around that hazard and put some safer practices in place.

And yes, we know that common sense is not always that common; but sometimes all it takes is the opportunity to bring common sense to mind. Try asking your workers on a weekly basis if they saw anything they didn’t feel too good about and go from there.

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3. Connection

And finally, we come to connection. It can be a good idea for all businesses – big or small – to connect with others from time to time.

This maybe your peers, the health and safety regulator or OHS consultants. Connect with others to get general advice, or connect with others simply to sense check that what you are doing is on the right track.

So try connecting with your regulator via their news feeds – see this list of the state regulators and their contact details. Or join one of the many free webinars and seminars on safety relevant to your industry.

And for Victorian small businesses – try WorkSafe Victoria’s OHS Essentials program for a free OHS health check!

So, there you have it – our 3 C’s of effective health and safety management. And we might even be a little cheeky and add a 4^th one to the list – which is of course ‘the Champion’!

For a product tour to see how our software can help you implement your health and safety management system, contact us today!

To see practical advice for getting safety moving in your organisation, check out our Keen to get safety sorted in 2019? blog.