Workplace Health and Safety Policies in Australia

This report discusses the importance of workplace health and safety policies in Australia and the role of Safe Work Australia in governing these policies. It also explores the use of risk assessment matrix in evaluating workplace hazards and provides recommendations for promoting a healthy and safe working environment.

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Name of the student
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Introduction
WHS or Workplace Health and Safety is the discipline that aims the protection regarding
the safety and the health of all the employees who constitutes the stakeholders of the workplace.
This policy targets the protection of all the employee and the employers from the exposure to any
sort of risk of hazard from any of the workplace challenges rising from the employment
activities. According to Behroozy and Keegel (2014) risk can be defined as the possibility of
losing something or regarding the injury that is related to any of the physical harm or the damage
towards any individual. Injury is the physical trauma or the damage to the body that is generally
caused by external forces. There lies various types and categories of injuries. This is furthermore
characterized by the condition of being diseased often known as morbidity (McInnes et al.,
2017). The condition of the risk towards the damage or harm might furthermore lead to mortality
rates. The report targets to argue with the work health and safety polices that each and every
organization in Australia should follow for working towards the safety of the organization and its
employees.
The workplace
Encore Consultancy is a business organization situated in Brisbane in Queensland of
Australia. The employees of the organization includes the staff among the age from 18 to 50
years. The organization works towards the business perspectives for the maximization of the
profit and increase of the GDP of the country. The organization uses risk assessment matrix for
the effective evaluation of the probability of the risk in the organization targeting any of the
organizational hazards that might be challenging to the employees or the organization (Potter et
al., 2017). The business organization initiates to use the risk assessment matrix for making it

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easier for the organization to extract the essential data from the forms of the risk assessment.
With the five of the most effective steps, the organization does the risk assessment. This includes
the identification of hazard, the decision regarding who might get harmed and how, evaluation of
the risks and the decision regarding the precautions, the recording of findings d the
implementation of them and finally the review of the assessment and update in case of
requirement.
Encore Consultancy has its own identification and evaluation process for the calculation
of the risk assessment matrix. The company furthermore has the process of the staff induction for
proper assistance on an annual basis (Di Fabio, 2017). This helps the company to record the
hazards in the workplace and the rate of the harm that the hazard has effected the employees in
the organization. The risk assessment matrix furthermore helps the organization to improve the
work health and safety policies of the organization and factors causing harm to the employees so
that it can revised and improved for the benefit of the employees.
The WHS Standards
The occupational health and safety policies and standards includes the aim for the
development of the national policy for the improvement of the safety and the health regarding
the compensation of the work with the cost of the arrangements across the vast areas of
Australia. The standards of the work health and safety polices in Australia promote the
importance of the safe and healthy working through the organization highlighting the safe
working conditions inside the business organization (Haslam et al., 2016). The standards of the
WHS promoted the basic and the fundamental factors that might help for control of the

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workplace hazards like wet floor tripling, wire hazards and unethical and inappropriate behavior
at the workplace with the other co-workers and more.
Risk Assessment Matrix
Figure - The Risk Assessment Matrix
Source – (Sadgrove, 2016)
The above figure highlights the categories the organization takes in consideration
regarding the risk towards the consequences and the hazards within the organization faced by the
employees. This is being categorized in four of the major areas, including the fatality, the major
injuries, the major injuries and the negligible injuries. The degree of the evaluation ranges from
low, medium and high.
Key agency and institution

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The key agency or the institution governing the Workplace Health and Safety policy is
the organization namely, the Safe Work Australia. It is the national policy organization which is
responsible for the evaluation and the development of the WHS laws and are generally
comprised of the WHS Act and the Codes of the practices. Jointly funded by the
commonwealth , territory and the state governments through the government of the
intergovernmental approaches, this organization aims to perform their functions in the
accordance with the operational and the corporate plan agreed by the Work health and safety
regimes (Jilcha & Kitaw, 2016). Safe Work Australia with the partnership with the government,
the employees and the employers for driving the development of the national policy regarding
the compensation of the workers. The organization targets to develop and evaluate the national
strategies and the policies, undertake the research, develop and evaluate the legislative
framework of the WHS and collect and report the analysis of the data.
Findings
According to Loeppke et al. (2015) the business organization includes several categories
of workplace hazards and the employees are the main targets of these challenges. There lies
several types and rate of the injuries or the harms within the workplace that the targeted
organization recognize and evaluate with the risk assessment matrix. The findings from the
evaluation of the data from the organization indicated how the employees of the organization
have the high rate of tendency for suffering from the highest rate of injuries both physical and
mentally (Sadgrove, 2016). This can cause from the hazards like tripling, wire and electric
hazards and mental hazard from stress and inappropriate behavior of the co-employees of the
organization.

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The recommendations includes the practice of the co-operation with the healthy and the
safety practices within the organization. The promotion of the policies of the occupational health
a safety within the workplace together with the ensuring of the fact that the employees are not
exposed to the hazardous conditions that might lead to harm are some of the major
recommendations. It is important for all the employees to follow a healthy and safe environment
at the workplace.

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Reference
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Jilcha, K., & Kitaw, D. (2016). A LITERATURE REVIEW ON GLOBAL OCCUPATIONAL
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Sadgrove, K. (2016). The complete guide to business risk management. Routledge.