Occupational Health and Safety in Australian Retail Industry

This literature review discusses the occupational health and safety issues in the Australian retail industry, including physical hazards and musculoskeletal disorders. It also highlights the legal responsibilities of employers and the government's actions to minimize workplace risks.

Running head: OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY
Occupational Health and Safety
Name of the Student
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Literature review
Occupational health and safety can be defined as a multidisciplinary field which is
concerned with the security, physical condition and welfare of the employees in the workplace.
The chief aim of occupational health and safety as well as health programs includes fostering the
safe and healthy environment. According to Ackermann et al. 2014, In Australia, OHS is also
supposed to protect the co-workers, family members, consumers as well as other stakeholders of
a business along with employees in order to provide them with an appropriate and safe
professional experience. As per the regulations associated with Occupational health and safety, it
is legally the responsibility of the employers to look after of the health and safety of the
employees. When it comes to retail industry of Australia, it includes food retailing supermarkets,
motor vehicles and fuel retailing along with store based retailing. Currently, wesfarmers,
Woolworths and Coles are the major players in the Australian Retail market. According to
Donham and Thelin (2016), retail trade in Australia employs more than 11 percent of the
workforce. Each year, the mentioned industry accounts for about 10,5000 stern employee
compensation claims along with six traumatic work related injury fatalities. However, Survey
states that within the year 2015-2017, the number of serious claims in the nation has got declined
by 21 percent and per hour, the number of serious claims has got decreased by 36 percent.
Not only that, the recruitment rate in the retail industry of Australia has got increased by
20 percent and is thus the second highest employing industry in the Australian economy, first
being the healthcare industry. Xiang et al. (2014) stated that in spite of being one of the largest
recruiting industry, several issues associated with occupation health and safety can be detected in
Australia. Majority of the employee suffers from excessive work load especially during the
festive season. This in turn is not only imposing negative impact on their work life balance but is

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also causing serious physical as well as physiological issues like anxiety disorder and stress. Not
only that, Along with that several hazards associated with the health and safety of the Australian
retail industry includes manual handling, slips, tips or falls, risk from mishandling of
equipments, electrical risks and risk associated with cash handling. According to Landsbergis,
Grzywacz and LaMontagne (2014), in order to minimize the above mentioned risk as well as
high employee attrition in the mentioned industry, the government of Australia is taking strict
action to make the management of retail organizations implement Floyde et al. (2013) states that
the WHS laws requires employers as well as all the workplace parties to consult and corporate
the management in order avoid workplace risk and protect the health and safety of the employees
and other who are liable to risks at workplace.
Working in a supermarket industry and retail industry is a one of the major causes of
occupational health hazards in the workers of the supermarket and in a retail shop. In that
industry there can b various type of hazards due to prolonged standing, sitting, handling of heavy
goods and as well as repetitive movement or motion of the particular part of the body. Along
with this, awkward posture can also results in various type of musculo- skeletal disorders.
According to Sirge et al.(2014), prolonged sitting in the cash counter of the super market can
induce pain and discomfort in the musculo skeletal system of the body. Prolonged sitting in a
particular place will result in fatigue in the body as the body is at a static posture for a long
period of time. From this study, it is seen that, the cashiers complained about physical fatigue
after the end of their work timing and the percentage was about 89.6%. From this study it was
seen that the supermarket cashier had the highest occurrence rate of pain in lower back and neck.
Another major part of work in the supermarket is moving of the heavy products from one
place to another and that involves the whole part of the body. In a REBA analysis study it is seen

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that the order picker section of the market the workers worked in bad posture during collecting
the carton. They were at thehigh risk zone of developing Musculo skeletal disorder (MSD). The
prolonged holding of the upright position during the performance of the task increases the risk of
MSD. During the taping of the lifting of the packages the worker have to hold heavy materials
and this causes rapid changes I the body posture and also twisting and tilting of the torso to one
particular side. The greater distance of the body from the product and continuous repetitive
movement of the hand and shoulder joint can induce MSD in the workers. During the sorting
task the most risky condition of the body is trunk due to bending (more than 60 degree) and the
arms are continuously at the upright position. The repettative motion of the work during the
depositing and obtaining orders causes higher risk of MSD development (Lasota, 2014).Along
with this, a safer workplace should be maintained in order to reduce the work related accidents in
supermarket work floor(Institute of Leadership & Management, 2013). There are several
regulation in Australia and they have territory wise diversity in the laws. In NSW, the employers
will consult and give full cooperation in order to manage the workplace risk to protect the
workers. The PCBU like other employer will ensure the safety of the worker and should try to
minimize the risk of workplace. The workers should also take care about their own and other
workers safety((Workplaceohs.com.au, 2018).

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Reference List
Ackermann, B.J., Kenny, D.T., O'Brien, I. and Driscoll, T.R., 2014. Sound Practice—improving
occupational health and safety for professional orchestral musicians in Australia. Frontiers in
psychology, 5, p.973.
Donham, K.J. and Thelin, A., 2016. Agricultural medicine: Rural occupational and
environmental health, safety, and prevention. John Wiley & Sons.
Floyde, A., Lawson, G., Shalloe, S., Eastgate, R. and D’Cruz, M., 2013. The design and
implementation of knowledge management systems and e-learning for improved occupational
health and safety in small to medium sized enterprises. Safety science, 60, pp.69-76.
Institute of Leadership & Management, 2013. Managing Health and Safety at Work. Routledge.
Landsbergis, P.A., Grzywacz, J.G. and LaMontagne, A.D., 2014. Work organization, job
insecurity, and occupational health disparities. American journal of industrial medicine, 57(5),
pp.495-515.
Lasota, A.M., 2014. A REBA-based analysis of packers workload: a case
study. LogForum, 10(1).
Sirge, T., Ereline, J., Kums, T., Gapeyeva, H. and Pääsuke, M., 2014. Musculoskeletal
symptoms, and perceived fatigue and work characteristics in supermarket cashiers. Agronomy
Research, 12(3), pp.915-924.
Workplaceohs.com.au. (2018). Workplace OHS | New South Wales Legislation | OHS
Legislation. [online] Available at: http://workplaceohs.com.au/legislation/nsw-legislation
[Accessed 4 Oct. 2018].

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Xiang, J., Bi, P., Pisaniello, D. and Hansen, A., 2014. The impact of heatwaves on workers׳
health and safety in Adelaide, South Australia. Environmental research, 133, pp.90-95.