Occupational Health and Safety in Australian Retail Industry

Running head: OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY
Occupational Health and Safety
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1OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY
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

2OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY
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