Report on Occupational Health and Safety in Australian Employment Law

This report provides a detailed analysis of occupational health and safety within the context of Australian employment law. It covers various aspects, including the definition of a healthy workplace, the roles and powers of health and safety representatives, the importance of workplace consultations, and key considerations for conducting safety visits. The report also addresses psychosocial workplace hazards, using a retail environment as an example, and explains the significance of the Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LITFR) as a measure of OHS performance. The document emphasizes the legal requirements and duties of employers and employees in maintaining a safe and healthy working environment, aiming to provide a comprehensive overview of the topic for academic purposes. Desklib offers this and other solved assignments to aid students in their studies.

Running Head: Australian Employment Law
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OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY
10/16/2018
Student’s Name

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY
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Contents
Question 1...................................................................................................................................................2
Question 2...................................................................................................................................................3
Question 3...................................................................................................................................................4
Question 4...................................................................................................................................................5
Question 5...................................................................................................................................................5
Question 6...................................................................................................................................................7
Question 7...................................................................................................................................................8
Question 8...................................................................................................................................................9
References.................................................................................................................................................10

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Question 1
The World Health Organisation has provided one of the best definitions of a healthy workplace.
According to the same, a healthy workplace is that where employer and employees have mutual
coordination and the focus of such coordination remains on the promotion of health, safety and
well-being of the employees/workers of the workplace (. As the name states, a healthy workplace
is that which provides a safe and healthy working environment for the workers. Several reasons
and benefits are there cause of which it is recommended to have a healthy employee in an
organization. Some of the benefits of a healthy employee are listed below:-
1. Economic Performance of the company: - A healthy worker gives many benefits to the
workplace. One of the most significant benefits of having a healthy worker is a positive
economic performance of the company. It has been reviewed from many of the studies
that a healthy worker stays very long in an organization comparison to other employees.
It reduced the cost of recruitment of the organization. In addition to this, the organization
needs not to invest much in the training of new employees (Diaz, 2016). Such savings in
various costs lead positive result to the net income of an organization.
2. Betterment of relationship: - In an organization where the healthy worker works, the
relation of employer and employee remain strong. A healthy worker denotes a good and
healthy workplace, where the employer is concern about the health and safety of the
employees. In such a scenario, employees be happy with the employer and it creates a
goodwill of the organization.
Wellness Initiative at Work: Fitness programs can prove good health and wellness initiate at
work. Such a program includes many activities such as stress management seminars, yoga
classes and so on. These activities bring any positive results to the health of employees and make
them more cheerful, happy and healthy (Forbes Coaches Council, 2017) If an organization is
thinking to work for the health and wellness of employees, then such fitness programs is a good
option.

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Question 2
Work Health and Safety Act 2012, powers and functions of a health and safety representative are
mentioned. The motive behind the appointment of a representative is to make the issue address
process easy. Section 68 (1) of the act says that a health and safety representative has power to :-
A. Make representation of worker of the work group in relation to health and work matters.
B. Check the efficiency of safety measure taking by the person who is conducting relevant
business or his/her representative.
C. Check and investigate the complaint related to health and safety issue submitted by the
workers of the group.
D. Check and make inquiry into anything that seems to be dangerous for the health and
safety of the worker of the groups (legislation.sa.gov.au, 2018).
Powers defined under section 68 (1) are the defined one. Subsection 2 of section 68 states the
additional powers that a health and safety representative can use in order to perform the defined
powers and functions. According to these powers, such representative may:-
A. Held the inspection of the workplace with the service of the prior notice.
B. Accompany an inspector while inspecting a workplace or a part of the same.
C. Attend the interview held between worker and employer or worker and inspector on the
matters of health and safety. However, prior consent of the worker would be required to
do the same.
D. Attend the interview held between workgroup and inspector or else between workgroup
and employer on the matters of health and safety with the prior consent of one or more
workers of the related workgroup.
E. Place a request to establish a health and safety committee.
F. Get the information from the workers of the workgroup on the matters related to health
and safety
G. Make a request for the assistance of a person, whenever required (Austlii, 2018).
By looking after the powers mentioned in section 68 (1) and 68 (2), this can be stated that a
health and safety representative is given immense powers under the act.

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Question 3
Work health and safety consultation is a mutual discussion of a worker and a person who
underrating the business activities. Many of the situations are there in the law, where such
consultation is required. According to section 49 of the workplace health and safety act, in
following circumstances, a consultation is required at a workplace.
During identification of hazards and assessment of risk to health and safety of the
workers arising out of the work carried out.
While making a decision about the ways in which risk can be minimized/eliminated.
While making a decision regarding the adequacy of facilities for the betterment of
workers.
While deciding the process in which communication and consultation should be made.
While proposing changes at the workplace that can affect the health and safety of the
workers (Federal Register of Legislation, 2018).
In addition to the above circumstance, a consultation can be made any time whenever the same
seems to be required.
A consultation is treated effectively when the same brings out the expected result. The agenda
behind a consultation is to make a worker and the person undertaking the business aware of each
other’s requirements and concerns. In an effective consultation, both of the parties have granted a
certain level of opportunities to make their point and arguments clear to another one (Safe work
Australia (a), 2018). In addition to this, an effective consultation exists where the view of
workers are taken into account by the managers or the person who undertakes the business.
There are many ways in which a consultation can be made. For instance appointment of health
and safety, a representative is a good option where a representative makes the representation of
the arguments and concerns of the employee. This is not a way to directly consult with workers.
In addition to this, by conducting regular meetings, a consultation can occur in an organization.
An organization can held Regular meetings, where the issues of workers would be expected to
hear and resolve. Many other ways such as Toolbox talks, the establishment of work and health
committee and so on are also there, with the help of which a consultation can occur.

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Question 4
While conducting a safety visit of a workplace, the responsible manager/visitor must be aware of
with some factors. It is not mandatory for every work health and safety visit to be effective
always. In order to make a safety visit successful, one should need to keep some elements in
mind.
First of all, planning is an essential element of every task. Similarly, it is a learning for the
managers who conduct safety visit to plan a visit first before going on a site. In such planning,
they should review the agenda of the visit, issues and another task that they want to do while
being at a work site. In addition to this, they also need to review the circumstances of work sites.
By doing so, such managers can come to know that what problems they can face while
conducting a safety visit.
Secondly, the area of the visit is also an important thing to consider. Managers who conduct
safety visits should know that what is the scope of a visit and which factors of a workplace they
are going to consider. At the time of conducting a health and safety visit, the responsible
manager should note down the behavioral response of other managers and workers (Hopkins,
2011). They must review and compare the actual situation of a workplace with the planned and
decide one. What measures a workplace is taking in order to ensure the health and safety of the
workers is also an important factor. It is advisable for the safety visit managers to communicate
with the workers. Many of the times, a workplace denotes nothing wrong but workers do. In such
a scenario, communication with workers helps a lot to understand the actual condition of a
workplace (Government of Canada, 2018).
A manager who conducts safety visit of any workplace should take proper steps to know that
what was happening before his/her arrival. Whether the situation was the same or the presented
situation is just a dummy with the motive to present a healthy workplace.
Question 5

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A Psychosocial workplace hazard is a kind of occupational hazard that puts an adverse impact of
psychological well-being of one or more workers of a workplace. Such kind of hazards has a
wider scope and the same is not limited to mental stress (Australian Government, 2018). Such
kind of risk arises out of the issues such as poor work conditions, management, and design of an
organization (European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, 2018). Many reasons can be
there behind psychosocial workplace hazards. There are different kinds of psychosocial
workplace hazards. Taking a retail environment as an example, a matrix chart has been prepared
here. In the presented chart, the title of involved risk, category, and justification of category
determination is mentioned.
Involved Risk Customer
Aggression
Isolated Work Work-Related
Mental Stress
Bullying
Likelihood Likely Unlikely Likely Unlikely
Impact Major Moderate Major Major
Category High Low High Medium
Justification In a retail
environment,
workers have to
deal with
customers in one
to one
communication.
Such dealing
continuous on
daily basis and
hence there are
likely chances of
such incidents.
These incidents
put major adverse
impacts the
mental health of a
There are very
fewer chances
that a worker is
provided an
isolated work,
however, when
such condition
come across, it
puts a moderate
impact on the
employee and
hence the
category of risk
In the retail
business,
sometimes cause
of demands of
the market, the
sale goes very
high. Such
incidents happen
at least 4 times
in a single year.
In such a
situation,
workers have to
face heavy work
pressure that
brings major
impact on their
The issue of
workplace
bullying is very
less common in
the retail
industry. The
reason behind at
every level,
managers present
to control such
issues. But this
would not be
wrong to state
that such issues
if present can be
held very
dangerous for a

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY
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worker. mental health. worker and as
worker remain
no longer able to
continue to
employment
cause of such
issues.
Question 6
LITFR stands for Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (Cole, 2018). This rate indicates the number
of lost time injuries at a workplace during the period of an accounting period in respect to a total
number of hours worked in that particular period (e compliance.com, 2017). The rate is far
significant to study. It is a measurement by a person can check the safety performance of an
organization. A well-defined formula is thereby using the same LITFR can be calculated. The
same is as follow:
( Number of lost time injuries in accounting period )
------------------------------------------------------- × 1,000,000
( Total hours worked in accounting period )
(Safe work Australia (b), 2018)
In order to explain the aforesaid formula, this is to say that by dividing the number of lost
injuries in an accounting period with total hours worked in that period, LITFR can be calculated.
In order to make the calculation easy to understand, the same is advisable to be multiplied with
million. OHS performance stands for Occupational health and safety performance (Machado,
2013). By reviewing the LITFR, one can get to know that how safe a workplace is. Study of this
proves helpful in benchmarking of the OHS performance of an organization. In terms of LITFR,
the best industries are those where numbers of lost injuries are very few. Examples of such

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industries are IT industries or Advisory services industries. These are the industries where the
nature of work is not risky. People do the work with the help of their computer systems and due
to the same, there are very fewer chances of lost time injuries. On the other side industries
related to mining, production and infrastructure involve a great level of risk. Workers of such
industries work on heavy machinery and more of the times they do not use any safety measures,
hence possibilities of lost time injuries remain very high. In conclusion, this is to state those in
terms of LITFR the services industries are best and manufacturing and infrastructure industries
are worst.
Question 7
Rehabilitation and Return to Work Coordinators have their huge significance. They have their
unique roles and responsibilities. These are the person who responsible to bring an employee to
the workplace again after his/her injury. They need to ensure coordination among injured
employee, employer and case managers. In order to perform their roles efficiently, they need to
fulfill some responsibilities that are as follow:-
Review of the health status of an injured employee and to check out his/her possibility to
return to work.
Dealing with medical and professionals.
Dealing with a return to work professionals.
Providing assistance in the development and implementation of return to work plan.
Developing the steps to stop injuries in coming future.
In conjunction to aforesaid, Rehabilitation and Return to Work Coordinators also have some
other responsibilities depending on the nature of a matter.
Many trainings are defined there for such Rehabilitation and Return to Work Coordinators. The
basic training is titled as certificate training. This training provides a very basic understanding of
role and responsibilities of such coordinators. Further, the same informed to the coordinators that
what they need to do when an accident happens, how to make effective communication and other
things. This certificate is not applicable to all coordinators. Webinars are also there that is a kind

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of training for the coordinators. ReturnToWorkSA conducts these webinars. These webinars are
focused on different aspects and lead focus of such webinars remains to polish the skills of return
to work coordinators. Skill development sessions are also a type of training. (ReturnToWorkSA,
2018) As the name implies, these sessions are planned and developed to improve the skills of
subjective coordinators. This session teaches a coordinator that how to reduce the cost and
impacts of an injury. These are some training that a return to work coordinator needs to complete
in order to be more effective in his/her job.
Question 8
A safe design approach focus on the concept of taking a safety at the very first stage of every
development. According to this approach, one should be concern about the safety from the very
first stage of planning of a development. There are some principles of this approach that are
commonly known as principles of safe design. The example taken hereunder is related to
maintenance of the lighting system of a workplace. At the time of development of the system, the
issue could be left there. There is a possibility that while developing the workplace, the designers
might not consider the safe design model. Their focus was on the installation of the lighting
system and therefore they forgot to think about regular maintenance of the same.
By applying the safe design model, the risk could be eliminated. In order to do the same, firstly
the person responsible needed to make a proper plan. At the second stage, he/she was required to
identify the risk that could be involved there. After that, the required thing to do was to evaluate
the risk. The person responsible needed to search for the options and then after by applying the
best suitable option for the issue, the risk might have been eliminated from the process.
In case of this issue, the developer was required to check that whether it would be possible to
maintain the light system of the workplace at the various times during a defined interval. He/she
could use the sliding track system as the best option available to him/her.
References

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Austlii. (2018) Work Health And Safety Act 2012 - Sect 68. [online] Available from:
http://www8.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/sa/consol_act/whasa2012218/s68.html
[Accessed on 16/10/18]
Australian Government. (2018) Psychosocial hazards. [online] Available from:
https://www.comcare.gov.au/preventing/hazards/psychosocial_hazards [Accessed on 16/10/18]
Cole, K. (2018) Leadership and Management: Theory and Practice (7th ed.) Austrlia: Cengage
AU.
Diaz, A. (2016) 10 Benefits of Healthy Employee .[online] Available from:
https://www.gohealthhero.com/blog/10-benefits-of-healthy-employees/ [Accessed on 16/10/18]
e compliance.com. (2017) Lost time Injury Frequency Rate: How to calculate it. [online]
Available from: https://www.ecompliance.com/blog/lost-time-injury-frequency-rate/ [Accessed
on 16/10/18]
European Agency for Safety and Health at Work. (2018). Psychosocial risks and stress at work.
[online] Available from: https://osha.europa.eu/en/themes/psychosocial-risks-and-stress
[Accessed on 16/10/18]
Federal Register of Legislation. (2018) Work Health and Safety Act 2011. [online] Available
from: https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2017C00305 [Accessed on 16/10/18]
Forbes Coaches Council. (2017) 14 Employee Well-Being Initiatives That Will Boost
Engagement And Productivity. [online] Available from:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2017/07/05/14-employee-well-being-
initiatives-that-will-boost-engagement-and-productivity/#565a6eda67bc [Accessed on 16/10/18]
Government of Canada. (2018) Effective Workplace Inspections. [online] Available from:
https://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/prevention/effectiv.html [Accessed on 16/10/18]
Hopkins, A., 2011. Management walk-arounds: Lessons from the Gulf of Mexico oil well
blowout. Safety Science, 49(10), pp.1421-1425.

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legislation.sa.gov.au. (2018) Work Health and Safety Act 2012. [online] Available from:
https://www.legislation.sa.gov.au/LZ/V/A/2012/WORK%20HEALTH%20AND%20SAFETY
%20ACT%202012_40/2012.40.UN.PDF [Accessed on 16/10/18]
Machado, C. ed., 2013. Effective Human Resources Management in Small and Medium
Enterprises: Global Perspectives: Global Perspectives. IGI Global.
ReturnToWorkSA. (2018) Training. [online] Available from:
http://www.rtwsa.com/insurance/return-to-work-coordinators/training [Accessed on 16/10/18]
Safe Work Australia (a). (2018) 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]
Safe work Australia (b). (2018) Lost time Injury frequency rates (LTIFR). [online] Available
from: https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/statistics-and-research/lost-time-injury-frequency-
rates-ltifr [Accessed on 16/10/18]
Work Health and Safety Act 2012