Occupational Health and Safety in the Workplace

This article discusses the importance of occupational health and safety in the workplace, including the benefits of healthy workers, the role of health and safety representatives, effective consultation, psychosocial workplace hazards, LITFR, and the responsibilities of rehabilitation and return to work coordinators.

Occupational Health and Safety
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Contents
Contents
Contents...........................................................................................................................................1
Question 1........................................................................................................................................1
Question 2........................................................................................................................................2
Question 3........................................................................................................................................3
Question 4........................................................................................................................................4
Question 5........................................................................................................................................5
Question 6........................................................................................................................................7
Question 7........................................................................................................................................8
Question 8........................................................................................................................................9
References......................................................................................................................................11

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Question 1
According to the definition provided by The World Health Organisation, a healthy workplace is
that where employees, as well as employer, coordinate with each other to develop a continental
improvement process in order to promote and protect safety, health, and well-being of the
workers of the organization and to maintain the sustainability of the workplace. In different
words, a healthy workplace can be understood as a workplace that keeps the safety and health of
workers in consideration and ensures the fulfillment of the same. There are many benefits of
healthy workers, out of which the two important ones are as:-
1. Productivity: - A healthy worker is three times more productive in comparison to an
unhealthy employee. Productivity is something that is far significant for any organization. Apart
from the employer, productivity is always a concern for the individual workers too as the same
affect them economically as well as mentally. Therefore, this would not be wrong to state that a
healthy worker can focus on productivity and can better serve his/her employment (Queensland
Government, 2018).
2. A number of complaints: - Another benefit of having healthy employees is that the number
of safety claims reduces. A healthy employee remains satisfied with his/her employer. The
downfall in the number of compliant proves beneficial, for the organization. In addition to this, a
healthy worker takes fewer leaves in compare to the unsafe/unhealthy worker and is able to pay
full concentration to his/her work (healthyworkers.gov.au, 2018).
Health And Wellness Initiative At Work: - Creation and development of workplace wellness
policies are one of the best modes of health and wellness initiative. Such policies state the vision
of the company and inform the employees that what their organization thinks of safety and health
of employees (kareliahealth.com, 2018). Such policies define the duties of the employer, the
right of employees and the expectation of organization from the employees.

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Question 2
A health and safety representative is a person who represents a group of a worker in the matters
related to workplace health and safety. Work Health and Safety Act 2012 is the core legislation
that defines functions and powers of such representative. Sub-division 5 of the subjective act
identifies the powers of a Health and Safety Representative. According to section 68 of the act
such representative has power:-
 To monitor the steps taken by the person conducting the respective business, in relation
to the compliance of this act.
 To held an investigation of the complaints related to workplace health and safety received
from the members of the work group.
 To enquire the things and activities of an organization that can be held dangerous for the
workers of the relevant workgroup (Legislation.sa.gov.au, 2018)
In order to fulfill the powers and functions described above, a health and safety representative
also may use the following powers:-
 Such representative can access and inspect the whole workplace or part thereof where a
worker of the workgroup works, after giving a reasonable notice.
 Accompany an inspector while an inspection. Such accompanying can be done for the
whole workplace or a part thereof where the worker of workplace works.
 Can attend an interview conducting between the worker and an inspector or between a
worker and the person conducting business, with the consent of the worker representing
by such representative.
 Can request for the establishment of a health and safety committee
All the aforementioned powers are secondary that a health and safety representative can use
to give the effect to his/her primary powers and functions.
Question 3

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As the name implies, an employer-employee consultation is a two-way communication that
happens between employer and employee (Hughes and Ferrett, 2015). The purpose behind such
consultation is to listen to the concerns of each other and to resolve the same with the help of
mutual friendly discussion.
There are many circumstances when consultation is required in an organization. For person
conducting business activities, it is required to conduct a consultation while:-
 Identifying and assessing the risk and hazards to health and safety arising out of work
carried out or to be carried out at a workplace.
 Deciding the ways to minimize those risks and hazards.
 Introducing any changes that may affect the health and safety of the workers.
 Making decisions about the effectiveness of the facility for the wellness of workers (Safe
Work Australia, 2018b).
Aforesaid are some of the examples of the matters in relation to which consultation should take
place. However, if the person conducting business activities think fit and required then he/she
can also plan a consultation for other matters.
Conducting a consultation is not enough but the same also must be effective. An effective
consultation is that where the employer asks the expectation of employees, listen to their concern
and share the prospective plans with the same. An employer must provide an employee
reasonable opportunity to express his/her views and to contribute to the development of plan and
policies. By taking the views of employees in consideration, an effective consultation can take
place.
A consultation can occur in many ways. Regular meetings can prove an effective way of
consultation. In this mode, employer and employee meet at the specified gap of time and discuss
the concerns with each other. Toolbox Talks is another way of consultation. It is a kind of
informal meeting of 15-20 minutes that is focused on the safety aspects with respect to a specific
job (Copeland, 2018). Such kind of meeting includes the topics related to workplace hazard and
safety practices.

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Question 4
Safety visits are the activities that the manager does in order to check out the level of risk
involved at a workplace and to check that whether the safety measured decided by the
organization are properly working or not. In order to make a safety visit success, such manager
needs to keep some factors in consideration. These factors are also known as learning for the
managers who conduct safety visits.
Firstly they should plan their visits and motive of the visit must be clear to them. Before going
on a site, they must be sure about the topics that they are going to review. They should review
that what is going on at the workplace in order to plan some more auditing opportunities
(Hopkins, 2011). By doing so, they would be able to ask the people for an explanation about
their manner of working. Further, the behavior of employees and other managers is an important
thing to take into mind. Visitors must review the same because that can be helpful for them to
develop further question-answer session.
They must check out some controls that should be in place in order to prevent the dangerous
events. Before going on a safety visit, it is required at the end of a manager to review and study
the last occupational safety incidents so he/she may be able to check that whether the decided
safety lessons have been transferred to the employees or not (Do Research, 2018). The purpose
of such visit is to ensure that the health and safety measure and process are into place. The most
important lesson for the manager conducting a safety visit is to not let the same being a mud
monitoring. At least one of the visitors should be instructed to review the working process using
by the workers in order to audit mistakes and to guide the workers with the correct procedure.
In conclusion, this is to state that managers who are conducting a safety visit must be aware of
the purpose of such a visit and must ensure fulfillment of the same in every best possible manner.
Question 5
Psychosocial workplace hazards are those risks that have an impact on the mind of employees.
Such kinds of hazards are way much related to the mental health of employees. Psychosocial

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workplace hazards are of many types (OHS Body of Knowledge, 2012). What four psychosocial
workplace hazards can be there in a retail environment, what are their possibilities and the
justification behind such possibilities are mentioned in the following matrix.
Title of risk Likelihood Impact Category Reasoning
Work-Related
Mental Stress
Likely Moderate Medium In a retail business
organization, the workers have
to deal with customers directly.
At the time of extreme sale or
festivals, may customers visit
the stores that can make a
pressure on the mental health of
the workers? Stress can result
thereof.
Body Stressing Likely Moderate Medium In a retail environment,
sometimes workers need to do
more physical work for instance
placing and moving heavy
parcels. Although there are not
so many chances of this
happening yet if happen such
incident can lead an issue of
body stress. Back injuries,
chronic pain, and bone injuries
are some of the examples of
body stress issue.
Driver Fatigue Very Likely Major Extreme Driver fatigue is a situation
where a worker feels exhausted,
feel sleepy or feel physically
and mentally tired (Australian

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Government, 2018). This is a
risk for the workers that put an
adverse impact on their mental
health. In a retail organization,
the nature of work leads such
issue. There is always consumer
dealing and workers have to
deal with them for 8 hours per
days, therefore the risk always
remains there and has a very
dangerous impact.
Bullying Unlikely Major Medium A situation where one or more
employees treat the other
employee in a negative manner
on the basis of his/her gender,
marital status, race or any other
such ground, is known as
bullying (Fairwork
Ombudsman, 2018). However
in a retail organization, there is
always a floor manager and
cameras are also exist in a
place, yet some chances are that
this risk can exist. Impact of the
same can lead to a very high
negative result to the worker if
exist.

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Question 6
Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LITFR) refers to the total number of lost injuries during an
accounting period, in conjunction with the total number of hours worked in that specified period.
There is a particular formula to calculate LITFR, and the same is mentioned as hereunder:-
In the calculation of LITFR, the severity of the injury will not be considered. The definition of
lost tome injury does not include the pre-existing terms that were not sustained during the
subjective reporting period. To make the calculation easy, the number of injuries per hour is
required to be multiply by one million.
LITFR rate is very significant for the mangers to benchmarks the occupational health and safety
(OHS) performance. As the name implies, the subjective rate indicates the number of lost
injuries, the same let the manager knows that how safe their workplace is.
The Workplace Injury and Disease Recording Standard provide a guide to every organization
that how the same can create an easy to use the method to record the data and information related
to work disease and injury. Study of LITFR is one of them.
In terms of LITFR, the best industries are service industries and the worst ones are
manufacturing and processing industries. The reason behind is that in service industries such as
IT, educational and legal and advisory industries, workers work in a very safe environment. They
do not use any heavy plants and machinery and therefore risk of lost time injuries does not exist.
On the other side, in the industries of infrastructure, mining and manufacturing, workers have to
use high technological machinery that contain several risk and therefore there are more chances
of lost time injuries in such industries. Hence they prove as worst industries in terms of LITFR.

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Question 7
Rehabilitation and Returns to work co-ordinators are the people who help the employees to
remain at or return to work after a work injury. As the name suggests the lead role of such people
is to coordinate with the employees and help them to return to their workplaces. They are liable
to coordinate among the injured employer, employee, and case manager and to develop a return
to work situation for the employee.
Moving on to the roles and responsibility of such person, this is to state that following are the
same:-
 Monitoring the condition of the injured worker and to check his/her capacity to return to
the workplace.
 Dealing and coordination with a return to work and medical professionals.
 Preparation and implementation of return to work plan.
 Development of a measure to prevent the future possible risk and injuries.
 Identification of suitable duties (Return to work SA, 2018a)
The aforementioned roles are defined by the law. The coordinators are also responsible for the
other tasks that are supplementary to their primary functions.
Many trainings are there that the rehabilitation and return to work coordinators need to do in
order to be more effective in their roles. The lead training is named as certificate training. In this
training, coordinators are provided with necessary resources to assist with effective
communication, identifying return to work facilitators and barriers and so on. The other training
that is available for return to work coordinators is skill building session and webinars (Return to
work SA, 2018b). Skill building session provides additional skills and knowledge to coordinators
and makes them enable to maximize their role in the process of return to work. The webinars are
focused on different terms such as how the coordinators take actions, what are the different
medication effects, workplace consideration and so on.

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As any training do some positive addition in the skill of a person, similarly by taking these
training, return to workplace coordinator can be more effective in their job.
Question 8
Safework Australia provides guidance on the matter of safe design. The approach of safe design
focuses on to minimize or eliminate the risk involves throughout the life cycle of a structure,
building, vehicle or equipment.
Safe design principles is a 5 steps process to make a structure safe by integrating risk
identification and assessment methods at the very first stage of designing. According to the
subjective principles, designing is the most important part of every development. One needs to
identify the risk involved in a development, minimizing those risk at every stage of development,
applying the risk assessment methods and sharing information related to risk control with every
person involved in the phase of the lifecycle (Safe Work Australia, 2018a). Taking an example
of a building, this is to say that many of the risks can be involved there. For instance, the stairs of
the same can be dangerously designed. This risk might be introduced to the building while
constructions due to the lack of proper planning are care.
Applying the provisions of safe design, the risk could be prevented. A safe design model
provides a process by using the same one can deal with the involved risk. The following process
needs to be done to eliminate the risk of dangerously designed stairs:-
1. Identification of the exact issue
2. Defining the hazard and gather proper information about the same.
3. Evaluation of risk and generation of multiple solutions.
4. Select the correct solution
5. Application of the best possible solution.
By taking aforesaid steps, a person could know that what exact issue is with stairs of the building
and how dangerous the same could be. After that by looking after the solutions and by applying
the best solution, the risk could be dealt with and the same could be eliminated.

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References
Australian Government. (2018) Body Stressing. [online] Available from:
http://www.comcare.gov.au/preventing/hazards/physical_hazards/body_stressing [Accessed on
15/10/18]
Copeland, J. (2018) Toolbox Talks: Keys To Ensure Effectiveness. [online] Available from:
https://jade.io/j/?a=outline&id=276604 https://www.arbill.com/arbill-safety-blog/toolbox-
talks-keys-to-ensure-effectivenesss [Accessed on 15/10/18]
Do Research. (2018) Health and Safety: Principles, Responsibilities and Practices. [online]
Available from: https://doresearch.stanford.edu/policies/research-policy-handbook/
environmental-health-and-safety/health-and-safety-principles [Accessed on 15/10/18]
Fairwork Ombudsman. (2018) Bullying & harassment. [online] Available from:
https://www.fairwork.gov.au/employee-entitlements/bullying-and-harassment [Accessed on
15/10/18]
healthyworkers.gov.au. (2018) Why a Healthy Workplace?. [online] Available from:
http://www.healthyworkers.gov.au/internet/hwi/publishing.nsf/Content/why [Accessed on
15/10/18]
Hopkins, A., 2011. Management walk-arounds: Lessons from the Gulf of Mexico oil well
blowout. Safety Science, 49(10), pp.1421-1425.
Hughes, P., and Ferrett, Ed. (2015) Introduction to Health and Safety at Work: for the NEBOSH
National General Certificate in Occupational Health and Safety. Oxon: Routledge.
kareliahealth.com. (2018) 9 Great Wellness Initiatives in the Workplace. [online] Available
from: http://www.kareliahealth.com/wellness-initiatives-workplace/ [Accessed on 15/10/18]
Legislation.sa.gov.au. (2018) Work Health and Safety Act 2012. [online] Available from:
https://www.legislation.sa.gov.au/LZ/C/A/WORK%20HEALTH%20AND%20SAFETY
%20ACT%202012/CURRENT/2012.40.AUTH.PDF [Accessed on 15/10/18]

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Queensland Government. (2018) Benefits. [online] Available from:
https://www.worksafe.qld.gov.au/injury-prevention-safety/health-and-wellbeing-at-work/
benefits#what [Accessed on 15/10/18]
Return to work SA. (2018a) Return to work coordinators. [online] Available from:
https://www.rtwsa.com/insurance/return-to-work-coordinators [Accessed on 15/10/18]
Return to work SA. (2018b) Training. [online] Available from:
http://www.rtwsa.com/insurance/return-to-work-coordinators/training [Accessed on 15/10/18]
Safe Work Australia. (2018a) Safe Design. [online] Available from:
https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/safe-design#five-principles-of-safe-design [Accessed on
15/10/18]
Safe Work Australia. (2018b) Work health and safety consultation, cooperation and
coordination. [online] Available from:
https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/system/files/documents/1809/code_of_practice_-
_consultation_cooperation_coordination.pdf [Accessed on 15/10/18]
Work Health and Safety Act 2012