Comprehensive Report on Workplace Health and Safety at GAB Australia

This report provides a comprehensive overview of workplace health and safety practices at GAB Australia. It begins with an executive summary and introduction to the Work Health and Safety Act, emphasizing the importance of following established codes of practice. The report analyzes the impact of manual handling injuries, detailing legal responsibilities of the PCBU and data collection methods for identifying hazards and risks in the manufacturing department. It examines how GAB provides information to workers about hazards and risks, current processes in place to address them, and the tools and techniques used for risk assessment. The report also outlines control procedures based on the hierarchy of control and methods for monitoring the efficiency of these measures. Finally, the report discusses specific hazard types, such as repetitive movement and sustained awkward posture, and proposes risk controls and monitoring processes. The conclusion stresses the importance of collaborative practices and corrective actions to improve workplace health and safety outcomes at GAB.

Occupational Health and Safety at Work – Health and Safety at Workplace Australia
[Name]
[Institution’s Affiliation]
[Date]

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Table of Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY................................................................................................................3
PART 1.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................3
Introduction......................................................................................................................................................................................................................3
Manual Handling.............................................................................................................................................................................................................4
Legal Responsibilities of PCBU.......................................................................................................................................................................................4
Data Collection about Hazards and Risks in Manufacturing Department......................................................................................................................5
Offered Information to Workers about Hazards and Risks.............................................................................................................................................5
Current Processes at GAB addressing the Hazards........................................................................................................................................................6
Methods, tools, and techniques to assess risks at manufacturing department................................................................................................................6
Control procedures to eliminate or minimise risk according to hierarchy of control.....................................................................................................7
Ways to Monitor the efficiency of control measures........................................................................................................................................................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................................................................................................8
PART 2.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................8
CONCLUSION...................................................................................................................................9
References............................................................................................................................................9
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Executive Summary
Occupational Safety and Health Act is followed with work practices enacted under policies and procedures to assist the employers and employers
reducing job accidents, injuries, mental illness, and even death of workers due to inappropriate procedures at work setting. it is important for workers
in Australian setting to support their practices covered under Work Health and Safety Act to provide a healthy and safe environment to offer safe
system while creating a plan to improve health and safety and inspect the workplace while training their employees. The firm is required to set an open
dialogue-based system to investigate accidents and maintain record to improve health and safety as a part of business environment.
Part 1
Introduction
According to the code of practice defined by the Australian government is required to follow work health and safety risk followed approved
code of practice under the Section 274 of the Work Health and Safety Act (WHS Act). The code helps the organisations to follow the required
standards to achieve health, safety, and welfare applies to every stakeholder following duty of care to deal with different issues and hazards which
might consider against the regulations and code of practices.1 The assignment is focused on discussed underpinning work health and safety measures
under specific situations to form perspective. While working as a WHS coordinator, the team at GAB at the NSW branch is required to work on a
formal review process to report any incident, the measures are required to be planned considering the past six months incident progress at the
organisation resulting in serious injury or illness claimed to be a result of manual handling injuries, it has increased up to 41%, therefore, the business
report is focused on injury and illness claims using manual handling in the next few years. It is important for the organisation to support their policies
1 Shea, T., De Cieri, H., Donohue, R., Cooper, B., & Sheehan, C. (2016). Leading indicators of occupational health and safety: An employee and workplace level
validation study. Safety science,, 293-304.
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under work health and safety policy, manual, and lifting procedures to implement a hazard management process under defined standards to address the
regulatory measures with the associated risks.2
Manual Handling
Manual handling is followed under regulations and act under the Work Health and Safety Act and policies to support the workers at the
organisation supporting collaborative practices. For example, transporters and supporters working to handle load by hand or bodily forces including
lifting, putting down, pushing, or manoeuvring of resources. It set standards for the employees to follow manual handling techniques to prevent any
injury to employees and follow up with sustained or awkward postures with repetitive movements. Handling manual risk assessment, managers are
required to work with risk assessment and manual tasks audit to identify any environmental or physical hazards of sustaining musculoskeletal injury
with repeated, or high force to sustain awkward posters while performing their duties.3
Legal Responsibilities of PCBU
PCBU at workplace falls under WHS Act, the key purpose is to ensure reasonable health and safety practices to carry out organisational
processes, it is important for the workers to ensure that they comply with business team ensuring work health and safety compliance to adopt a
proactive approach considering work health and safety. The WHS code of practice include detailed information under defined standard under Work
Health and Safety Law referred as the code of practice to adopt improvement and prohibition notice avoiding any damage to the internal process or
employee work standards. As PCBU, employees are required to identify hazards involving the findings to handle situation causing potential hard to
2 Clarkson, L., Naweed, A. and Whale, J.J., 2017. The minority report: Hazard reporting in an Australian University. Work, 56(1), pp.91-97.
3 Xiang, J., Hansen, A., Pisaniello, D. and Bi, P., 2015. Extreme heat and occupational heat illnesses in South Australia, 2001–2010. Occup Environ Med, 72(8),
pp.580-586.
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people, it further includes, assessing risks and control risk measures to make sure that appropriate action has been taken. Meanwhile control measures
are taken into consideration to improve work conditions for the employees successfully.4
Data Collection about Hazards and Risks in Manufacturing Department
Data collection about hazards and risks at workplace in manufacturing department is considered by evaluating the performance of the
employees, considering incident and accident reporting, and seeking feedbacks from the employees by inspecting workplace and worker’s responses to
support the processes and activities in relationship to work standards at manufacturing department. The integrity of health safety and environment
department is required to be taken into consideration with supportive plans. The plan of action is to identify the hazards with workplace risk
assessment, risk evaluation, and recording the hazards in case anything changes causing potential harm to the organisation or its business. 5
Offered Information to Workers about Hazards and Risks
At the time of employment, employees and workers are give the opportunity to learn about the industry standards and manual handling process
at the organisation to prevent any accident. In addition, employees are able provided appropriate training and development to help them handle their
responsibilities based on risk assessment and matrix so that contingency action can be taken avoided adverse effects on the lives of employees or
organisation’s performance. The best risk assessment control to offer support to organisation is to eliminate the risks with offered information, while
implementing a substation of strategies supporting engineering controls successfully.6
4 Cobb, E.P., 2017. Workplace bullying and harassment: New developments in international law. Routledge.
5 Kosny, A., Santos, I. and Reid, A., 2017. Employment in a “land of opportunity?” Immigrants’ experiences of racism and discrimination in the Australian workplace.
Journal of International Migration and Integration, 18(2), pp.483-497.
6 Nikathil, S., Olaussen, A., Symons, E., Gocentas, R., O'Reilly, G. and Mitra, B., 2018. Increasing workplace violence in an Australian adult emergency department.
Emergency Medicine Australasia, 30(2), pp.181-186.
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Current Processes at GAB addressing the Hazards
The risk management process at GAB is followed with a management practice to support good corporate governance to improve decision
making under the Australian Council making informed decisions in respect to activities undertaking both risks and opportunities. The risk management
practice within GAB is supported with Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act (PGPAA) 2013 supporting an appropriate system of
risk oversight and management, and internal control for the entity following Australian Council Act 2013, Public Governance, Performance, and
Accountability rules to prevent, detect, and deal with occupational hazards under Commonwealth Risk Management Framework. This is also promoted
under Protective Security Policy Framework and Work health and Safety Model Act to accomplish long term risk management targets.7
Methods, tools, and techniques to assess risks at manufacturing department
The tools, techniques, and methods adopted within GAB is followed with risk identification, quantitative and qualitative analysis, responses,
and feedbacks to monitor the risks influencing the processes within organisation. The data has been collected from the employees to seek
understanding about their knowledge and understanding of the process, it also required the project managers to make sure that they have considered the
employee’s suggestions while involving them in the mitigation plan with preventive control measures to accomplish their targets successfully. with
avoidance approach, the risks can be eliminated from their process, it will help the organisation to reduce and optimise their plan of action to adopt a
sharing and retention strategies.8
7 Si, S., Carey, R.N., Reid, A., Driscoll, T., Glass, D.C., Peters, S., Benke, G., Darcey, E. and Fritschi, L., 2016. The australian work exposures study: prevalence of
occupational exposure to respirable crystalline silica. Annals of Occupational Hygiene, 60(5), pp.631-637.
8 Stewart, J., McManus, F., Rodgers, N., Weedon, V. and Bronzaft, A., 2016. Noise in the Workplace. In Why Noise Matters (pp. 89-103). Routledge.
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Control procedures to eliminate or minimise risk according to hierarchy of control
The hierarchy of control is followed with five elements – elimination, substitution, engineering controls, administrative controls, and personal
protective equipment. The process is arranged with effective control and procedural elements to minimise and eliminate the hazard exposures. The
system is accepted within the organisation under safety measures to be taught by the industry management adopting standard practices in the
workplace. The control procedures are taken into consideration to prevent, eliminate, and reduce the hazard/risk occurrence in different situation and
reduce their likelihood.9
Ways to Monitor the efficiency of control measures
GAB is followed with scheduled monitoring on regular basis to review hazard trends to identify the problems under control measures monthly
with ongoing monitoring and control measure support regularly which is require to be identified under hazard reports. It will help the organisation to
adopt a Health and Safety Program assessment using worksheet to review the progress and activities while identifying new risks to investigate their
solutions. It also requires the organisation to conduct frequent inspection on its resources ensure corrective system in place.10
9 Anderson, S., Stuckey, R., Fortington, L.V. and Oakman, J., 2019. Workplace injuries in the Australian allied health workforce. Australian Health Review, 43(1),
pp.49-54.
10 Sheikh, M.A., Williams, W. and Connolly, R., 2016. Exposure to ototoxic agents and noise in workplace–a literature review. In Proceedings of ACOUSTICS.
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Conclusion
To conclude, it is important for GAB to support its processes using corrective actions under risk assessment strategies, it will help the
organisation and quality management officer to make sure that suitable action plans are taken into consideration to improve their strategies
appropriately.
Part 2
Hazard
Type Hazard Description Existing Risk Controls in
place
Risk Controls to be
Implemented
Monitor & Review
Process
Responsible
Person
Repetitive
Movement
It occurs when a worker is
involved in continuous action
while handling their
responsibility in a continuous
mode.
Duty Changes
Corrective actions to support
manual handling techniques
to avoid repetitive strain
injury at workplace.
The process is
conducted with
managers interviewing
with their employees
about their review
regarding the
procedures11
Human
Resource
Manager
Sustained
awkward
posture
It occurs when workers cause
muscular overload of ligament
required to be adopted by
employees while performing
their responsible tasks, the
position should be maintained
for short time, however, in
workplace workers are required
to work with same posters
affecting their health.
It should be compulsory
for workers to take break
during their duties to
prevent strain.
Awkward postures stress the
spine which cause muscle
fatigue and leg pain, few
minutes of walking or
stretching increases
circulation which help
individual feel better.
Individual performance
of employees is
required as it will help
the workers to become
more productive and
feel better in work
setting.12
Project
Manager
11 Varghese, B.M., Barnett, A.G., Hansen, A.L., Bi, P., Hanson-Easey, S., Heyworth, J.S., Sim, M.R. and Pisaniello, D.L., 2019. The effects of ambient temperatures
on the risk of work-related injuries and illnesses: Evidence from Adelaide, Australia 2003–2013. Environmental research, 170, pp.101-109.
12 Fang, Y. and McDonald, T., 2018. Management capacity to promote nurse workplace health and safety. Journal of nursing management, 26(3), pp.288-294.
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Conclusion
To conclude, it can be said that risk assessment and management is followed with collaborative practices taken into consideration by the
management to make sure that they have taken corrective measures to improve their approach to accomplish business targets. It is essential for the
management of GAB to adopt collaborative actions while taking corrective actions within their processes to reduce the gaps in its processes as given in
the discussion to improve their internal processes and procedures following long term practices.
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