Workplace Health and Safety Analysis

This assignment delves into the critical aspects of workplace health and safety (WHS) in Australia. It examines relevant legislation, regulatory approaches, and common risks faced by organizations. Students will analyze case studies to understand real-world implications and explore best practices for mitigating WHS risks. The assignment encourages a comprehensive understanding of legal obligations, industry standards, and the importance of proactive risk management in creating safe and healthy work environments.

Running head: ENSURE A SAFE WORKPLACE
Ensure a safe workplace
Name of Student-
Name of University-
Author note-

1ENSURE A SAFE WORKPLACE
Executive Summary
The report has intended to establish a work health and safety management system that is
consistent with the legislative requirements. The report seeks to highlight the current policies of
WHS and the procedures as well in order to meet the legislative requirements. The report deeply
emphasized on the procedure of keeping records which are in compliance with the WHS policies
in order to ensure safely and wellness of the individuals of the organization. In this regard, the
report has been entrusted with the task of indicating the various issues faced by the organization
regarding health and safety measures. The report is commissioned to examine the underlying
factors that are responsible for maintaining and evaluating the functions of WHSMS.

2ENSURE A SAFE WORKPLACE
Table of Contents
Context.............................................................................................................................................3
WHSMS in brief..............................................................................................................................4
Duty holders in Australian WHS.....................................................................................................5
WHS Resources...............................................................................................................................6
Communication/Consultation plan..................................................................................................7
Requirements of WHS in case of participation agreements............................................................8
Requirements, use and maintenance of records.............................................................................11
Importance of monitoring, measuring and assessing the WHSMS...............................................13
References:....................................................................................................................................16

3ENSURE A SAFE WORKPLACE
ASSESSMENT 1
Context
The report is regarding the relocation of the main office of The Naja Group of colleges to
the ground level. The idea behind the relocation is to provide a new floor space, which will serve
the needs of the office, better than the present location of the office. But before the
commencement of such construction work for shifting the office to the ground level, it is highly
important that a work health and safety management system (WHSMS) is established, meeting
the required legislative requirements.
It is very important to establish a WHSMS, not only for the construction work of the
office, but in case of all workplaces. It is so, because a WHSMS helps in meeting the
requirements as per the Work Health and Safety Act, 2011, which is mandatory for any
workplace (Gopang wt al., 2017). A WHSMS focuses on improving safety standards and
performance by way of a systematic approach through integrating WHS planning,
implementation and reviewing. A WHSMS is required as it provides content to the safety
documentation in a managed and ongoing manner, which reduces the risks and improves the
organizational safety. A WHSMS improves the existing health and safety processes, integrates
with other management systems, helps in making more informed decision making, strengthens
the corporate culture and increases due diligence (Mitsuzuka, Ling & Ohwada, 2017). Therefore,
it is imperative for establishing a WHSMS.
In Australia, there are two sources of WHS. They are:
 Work Health and Safety Act, 2001- This is one of the sources of WHS. This act
aims to secure the safety and health of the workers in workplaces by removing or

4ENSURE A SAFE WORKPLACE
minimizing risks, fair and effective representation, co-operation and issue
resolution, consultation and to encourage the employers, organizations and
unions to for playing an important an constructive role in providing advice,
education and training, information and in providing appropriate and effective
enforcement measures among other matters (Winter & Moffitt, 2017). The Act
provides workers and others with protection at the highest level from the hazards
and risks, in a way that is practicable.
 Work Health and Safety Regulations 2011- This is another source of the WHS.
These regulations describe and provide the easy in which workplace risks can be
handled, eliminated or minimized. These regulations act as rules, which are
mandatory to be followed on every workplaces and they must be used in such a
manner, which is as far as practicable (Young & Brawn, 2017). These
regulations, basically, paves the way for implementing the WHS Act, 2001.
WHSMS in brief
A work health and safety management (WHSMS) can said to be an organized system in
relation to the work health and safety management system in workplaces. Therefore, it is a
framework that permits the management to put a complete system of protection in place. The
size of an organization will determine how complex the system will be, along with the manner in
which it is organized and the nature of the business. A WHSMS requires various things, which
includes strategies of communication and consultation, review and control of documents, control
of purchasing, a review of work based health and safety systems and also an account of internal
and external auditing (Straker et al., 2016). In order to implement a WHSMS effectively, there

5ENSURE A SAFE WORKPLACE
must be full commitment on the management’s part along with the training of the employees in
the new policies and procedures.
Duty holders in Australian WHS
In Australian WHS, a duty holder can be said to be a person, who is like a sports
manager, who ensures that the all matters in sports are managed according to the constitution of
the club and who becomes answerable to the governing body of the club. Therefore, a duty
holder is a person who ensures that health and safety is maintained in a workplace (Fewster,
2015). According to the Work Health and Safety Act, 2001 and the Work Health and Safety
Regulations 2011, duty holders are those who have a duty to eliminate all health and safety
related risks or to minimize such risks in order to ensure health and safety in workplaces
(Claxton, 2017).
Under the Australian WHSMS, there are three types of duty holders. They are:
 PCBUS (Person undertaking a business or undertaking) - A PCBU may be
defined as an organization or an individual person, conducting an undertaking or
business (Martinov-Bennie et al., 2014). For example, public companies, private
companies, government departments and authorities, schools, partners in
partnership, sole traders and self-employed, individual trustee of trusts, etc
 Officers- Officers include senior executives who make or participate in decision
making, which affects the business or undertaking either partly or solely. AN
officer can be a person defined under section- 9 of the Corporations Act
(excluding a partner in partnership), an officer of the Crown and a public
authority officer.

6ENSURE A SAFE WORKPLACE
 Workers and other persons at the workplace- Includes all other people in the
workplace and also those who are present at the workplace.
It is to be mentioned that the WHS Act clearly states that an individual is not a PCBU in
cases where they are in an undertaking or a business only as an officer or worker. Individuals
include directors belonging to managerial positions and having specific and separate duties as
officers.
WHS Resources
There are certain resources, which are required to be allocated for ensuring that the WHS
obligations are met. These resources include financial, human and management support (Grasso,
2016). In cases of additional resources for managing WHS, the senior manager or the executive
manager must take necessary steps accordingly. Some of the resources that are required are:
 WHS toolbox talks- This includes a number of power point presentation, which
is used in the staff meetings, etc and acts as the basis of the toolbox talks in order
to provide opportunity for refresher training or reinforcement of key areas.
 Human resources for managing WHS- It must be ensured by the workers that
the workers have adequate training and resources for keeping themselves safe and
for understanding potential risks and ability to act in accordance with such risks,
when identified.
 Safe posters- These posters usually provide a safety guide in workplace for the
workers and include guidelines for safe work. Use of this is also helps in
implanting work health and safety in workplaces.

7ENSURE A SAFE WORKPLACE
 Other resources of providing healthy workplace- The various other measures
relating to health of the workers are also a source of WHS, which is highly
required.
Communication/Consultation plan
Consultation or communication on health and safety is a process that goes in two ways
and it is regarded as the opportunity to add value while making decisions. This process involves
talking about issues, listening and raising concerns, role understanding, seeking of information
and sharing of views, discussion on such issues, attending meetings and considering everything
before decision making. Such communication/ consultation plans are made by the WHS experts
(Gunningham & Sinclair, 2014). Consultation and communication along with collaboration is a
fundamental part of the WHSMS and also a part of each strategic objective with the health and
safety strategy. It is not possible to achieve communication, consultation and collaboration
effectively with a single strategic objective or project, which is carried out with in that particular
objective. It must be done in a way daily business is conducted. For proper implementation of a
WHSMS, it is important to communicate information effectively so that all the potential
stakeholders can understand it, which is imperative for the purpose. WHS experts are the duty
holders under the WHSMS. They play an important role in communication and consultation. The
health and safety measures in a workplace is comm8nicated by these duty holders and similarly
all problems must be communicated to them so that they can take necessary measures and
implement the WHS legislations and regulations in order to use maintain the work health and
safety standards in workplaces (Zhang et al., 2015). The OHS Act, 2004 makes it a legal
requirement that effective consultation must be done in regular intervals with the employees in a
workplace as engaging the employees will help in improving the health and safety in workplaces.

8ENSURE A SAFE WORKPLACE
The Workplace Manager, Management OHS Nominee and the HSR are the WHS experts and are
responsible for maintaining WHS standards. The Workplace Manager or the OHS Nominee must
make consultative arrangements with the Health and Safety Representative (HSR) and
employees while making or taking any decision regarding The OHS/WHS in workplace. In case
of information that is confidential, the management OHS Nominee or and the Workplace
manager must take legal help before making any decisions. The HSR, management OHS
nominee, workplace manager, all should, in accordance with the WHS/OHS Act, disclose all
such information to the employees and consult with them, which is required. They are also
required to implement OHS issue resolution process. For such resolution process, the OHS
resolution Flowchart is used, which is to be communicated to the employees and prominently
displayed in the workplaces (De Cieri et al., 2015). Thus, it is important and a mandate under the
WHS standards, to create a communication/consultation plan and use it accordingly, to
implement the WHS standards in the workplaces, with the help of the WHS experts.
Requirements of WHS in case of participation agreements
In order to provide issue resolution to the Naja Group of Colleges, the requirements can
be emphasized. It is noteworthy to mention here that in order to resolve issue arising out of
various sections, it is necessary that the parties to the issue must be present while resolving the
issue (Forsyth, 2014). The issue must be resolved in consultation with the workers who has been
affected and the Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking (PCBU).
In order to resolve issues, the management of the Naja Group of Colleges has taken
various steps in order to ensure health and safety in workplace. The PCBUs has been encouraged
by the Work Health and Safety Act 2012 (SA) (WHS Act) to involve procedures of issue

9ENSURE A SAFE WORKPLACE
resolution in order to solve disputes with the workers (Ghahramani, 2016). However, in the
absence of agreed procedures, the procedure of issue resolution which is depicted under the
Work Health and Safety Regulations 2012 (SA) (WHS Regulations) needs to be followed (İnan,
Gül & Yılmaz, 2017). In this regard, it is noteworthy to mention here that, the actual procedure
for resolving issues is depicted in Regulation 22.
In order to resolve issues, the Naja Group of Colleges acted according to the regulations
of WHS and followed the default procedure for the purpose of issue resolution in Regulation 22.
In this context, the Naja Group of Colleges in an attempt to resolve the issue arising out of health
and safety has undertaken the following matters-
 The degree of risk involved to the workers and other persons working for the
organization.
 The location and number of such workers including other persons who has been affected
by the issue.
 The permanent and temporary measures that needs to be implemented for the purpose of
resolving the issue.
 The person who will take the responsibility in implementing various measures of
resolution.
It is important that any individual conducting a business should interact with the
workers in order to keep track of the issues faced by them (Johnstone, 2014). Therefore, in
the present case the Naja Group of Colleges has acted according to the measures set up by
the WHS Act in order to identify various risks and hazards associated with the work carried
out by the workers. In this regard, the Naja Group of Colleges has been successful in making

10ENSURE A SAFE WORKPLACE
decisions for the purpose of eliminating the risks involved in workplace. The management of
the Naja Group of Colleges should consult with the present workers and propose various
changes so that it benefits the working environment and improves the health and safety
conditions of the organization. It is important to provide feedbacks on various outcomes.
However, it is important that such feedback must be positive and should be related to
workers health and safety.
Identifying the inadequacies
The legislation of WHS in Australia emphasized on the part that PCBUs must consult
with the workers in order to identify the hazardous risks or situations arising out of workplace
(Lingard, 2015). Therefore, in case of the Naja Group of Colleges, it is important that the
management of the organization should undertake various situations in which risks are likely to
be found. The management should identify the working environment of the organization
including the past accidents and make sure that such accidents do not occur again. The
management should focus on the risks involved while using age old equipments and materials
which can be hazardous at times. In this regard, the management should take into consideration
the Material Safety Data Sheets in order to determine various safety precautions.
In order to identify the inadequacies it is important to take into account the various risk
factors that are involved in a workplace (McDermott, Henne & Hayes, 2017). In an organization,
various risks factors are involved which needs to be identified. Therefore, in the present case
study, it is necessary that the management of the Naja Group of Colleges should review the
information related to health and safety and such information should be obtained from any
authoritative source so that it can be relied upon. However, it is necessary that such information

11ENSURE A SAFE WORKPLACE
should be relevant to the identified inadequacy. After the identification process, it is important
for the management to evaluate the nature of the hazard regarding its seriousness
(Mohammadfam et al., 2016). In this regard, the management of Naja Group of Colleges should
take into account the various kinds of injuries, damages and illness that could arise as a result of
the hazardous incident. It is necessary the that management should also evaluate the number of
workers exposed to such incident as well as the possible outcome that could result due to
exposure to this kind of hazard.
The management is at the duty to evaluate the factors that could actually cause harm and
affect the betterment of the workers to a large extent (O'Neill & Wolfe, 2014). In this regard, it is
noteworthy to mention here that the management should consider the related chain of events
which are consistent to the nature of the risk. However, the level of risk may increase the
likelihood of harm in the future. The concept of likelihood of harm is involved when there is a
situation that is concerned with consequential harm (Schofield, Reeve & McCallum, 2014). In
this regard, the management is at the authority to determine that in what way and in what
conditions the maximum number of workers will be exposed to a hazardous situation keeping in
track the duration.
Requirements, use and maintenance of records
For the purpose of record keeping, the requirements, use and the maintenance of records
should be considered. In this regard, it is noteworthy to mention here that the management of
Naja Group of Colleges should act in accordance with the details provided by the record keeping
requirements as depicted in the Model Work Health and Safety Regulation. The following areas
have been covered by the Model Work Health and Safety Regulation-

12ENSURE A SAFE WORKPLACE
 The contaminated levels of Air-borne.
 Work related to high risk.
 Confined spaces.
 Electrical installations and equipment.
 Presence of hazardous chemicals.
 Plant.
 Lead and Asbestos.
 Facilities involving major hazards.
According to the provisions of Section 50(2) of the WHS Act, it is important that the
management of an organization must record the results associated with air monitoring and such
records should be kept for thirty years from the date on which such record has been made
(Sutherland, 2015). The management should also keep records of risk management associated
with confined spaces according to Section 66(3). However, such record should be in writing. For
the purpose of electrical equipments and installations, the record shall be carried out b a
competent person with the help of electrical equipment which has been supplied with electricity
involving an electrical socket.
However, it is important that such testing procedure must be carried out in an
environment where the risk of damage is low and the persons carrying on the record is not
affected in any way. The management of the Naja Group of Colleges should hire an individual
who shall be concerned with the control of plant in order to keep records of inspections,
maintenance and other safety measures. The person concerned with the supply of prohibited and
hazardous chemical must keep the records which includes the name of the substance as well as
the quantity supplied. In this regard, it is noteworthy to mention here that the management of

13ENSURE A SAFE WORKPLACE
Naja Group of Colleges must hire a person who will be concerned with the task of maintain a
asbestos register. The asbestos registered must be prepared by the person of the concerned
management and should be kept at a safe place.
It is important that the management of every organization should maintain health
monitoring reports. Similarly, in case of Naja Group of Colleges, the management should
undertake health monitoring reports which are related to a worker carrying out the activities of
the business. However, such records should be kept confidential.
Importance of monitoring, measuring and assessing the WHSMS
For the purpose of monitoring, measuring and evaluating various risks and hazards
associated with the workplace, it is important that the management should work according to the
principles of OHSMS (Teague et al., 2014). However, two important purposes are associated
with the process of monitoring and measuring (Roberts, 2014). Firstly, it is important for the part
of the management to assess that whether the OHSMS is working accordingly or not. Secondly,
in order to make sure that the safety and health problems have been identified properly, the
identification is sent back to the OHSMS planning process with an aim of elimination. The
process of identifying and tracking leading indicators are also associated with the process of
monitoring, measuring and evaluating. In addition to this other important factors that are
associated with the process of monitoring and measuring are inspecting workplace, testing of
workplace, exposing assessments, obtaining suggestions regarding safety from employees and
evaluating health assessments related to occupation.

14ENSURE A SAFE WORKPLACE

15ENSURE A SAFE WORKPLACE
References:
De Cieri, H., Shea, T., Cooper, B., Sheehan, C., & Donohue, R. (2015). Early indicators of
workplace injuries and accidents: An analysis of leading indicators as predictors of
workplace OHS outcomes in Australian workplaces: Institute for Safety. Compensation,
and Recovery Research.
Fewster, A. (2015). Human Interaction within OHS Management Systems. his Editio, 23(1), 12.
Forsyth, A. (2014). A Thin Wall of Privacy Protection, with Gaps and Cracks: Regulation of
Employees’ Personal Information and Workplace Privacy in Australia.
Ghahramani, A. (2016). Factors that influence the maintenance and improvement of OHSAS
18001 in adopting companies: A qualitative study. Journal of Cleaner Production, 137,
283-290.
Gopang, M. A., Nebhwani, M., Khatri, A., & Marri, H. B. (2017). An assessment of
occupational health and safety measures and performance of SMEs: An empirical
investigation. Safety science, 93, 127-133.
Grasso, M. (2016). Work health and safety resources and advice.
Gunningham, N., & Sinclair, D. (2014). The Impact of Safety Culture on Systemic Risk
Management. European Journal of Risk Regulation, 5(4), 505-516.
İnan, U. H., Gül, S., & Yılmaz, H. (2017). A multiple attribute decision model to compare the
firms’ occupational health and safety management perspectives. Safety science, 91, 221-
231.

16ENSURE A SAFE WORKPLACE
Johnstone, R. (2014). Engaging expert contractors: The work health and safety obligations of the
business or undertaking. Australian Journal of Labour Law, 27(1), 57-85.
Lingard, H., Saunders, L., Pirzadeh, P., Blismas, N., Kleiner, B., & Wakefield, R. (2015). The
relationship between pre-construction decision-making and the effectiveness of risk
control: Testing the time-safety influence curve. Engineering, Construction and
Architectural Management, 22(1), 108-124.
Martinov-Bennie, N., O’Neill, S., Cheung, M. A., & Wolfe, M. K. (2014). Issues in the
assurance and verification of work health and safety information.
McDermott, V., Henne, K., & Hayes, J. (2017). Shifting risk to the frontline: case studies in
different contract working environments. Journal of Risk Research, 1-15.
Mitsuzuka, K., Ling, F., & Ohwada, H. (2017, February). Analysis of CSR activities Affecting
Corporate Value Using Machine Learning. In Proceedings of the 9th International
Conference on Machine Learning and Computing (pp. 11-14). ACM.
Mohammadfam, I., Kamalinia, M., Momeni, M., Golmohammadi, R., Hamidi, Y., & Soltanian,
A. (2016). Developing an integrated decision making approach to assess and promote the
effectiveness of occupational health and safety management systems. Journal of Cleaner
Production, 127, 119-133.
O'Neill, S., & Wolfe, K. (2014). Officers' Due Diligence: Is Work Health and Safety an
Accounting Problem. Journal of Health & Safety Research & Practice, 6(1), 15-21.
Roberts, D. (2014, February). Integrating OHSMS, risk management & electrical safety.
In Electrical Safety Workshop (ESW), 2014 IEEE IAS (pp. 1-8). IEEE.

17ENSURE A SAFE WORKPLACE
Schofield, T., Reeve, B., & McCallum, R. (2014). Australian workplace health and safety
regulatory approaches to prosecution: Hegemonising compliance. Journal of Industrial
Relations, 56(5), 709-729.
Straker, L., Dunstan, D., Gilson, N., & Healy, G. (2016). Sedentary work. Evidence on an
emergent work health and safety issue.
Sutherland, C. (2015). Industrial legislation in Australia in 2014. Journal of Industrial
Relations, 57(3), 333-347.
Teague, P., Conomos, J., Alexandrou, V., & Jennings, M. (2014, October). Development of an
occupational noise exposure reduction project for defence in Australia. In INTER-NOISE
and NOISE-CON Congress and Conference Proceedings (Vol. 249, No. 6, pp. 1604-
1613). Institute of Noise Control Engineering.
Winter, B., & Moffitt, M. (2017). Corporate law: Absence of adequate risk assessments result in
$1 million fine. Governance Directions, 69(3), 174.
Young, R., & Brawn, E. (2017). Employment law: Work health and safety duties and dealing
with bullying in the workplace by non-workers. Governance Directions, 69(7), 435.
Zhang, P. R., Lingard, H., Blismas, N., Wakefield, R., & Kleiner, B. (2015). An image-based
tool for work health and safety (WHS) risk perception communication. In CIB W099:
Safety and Health in Construction (pp. 133-141). CIB.