Workplace Health and Safety in BHP Billiton: Practices and Compliance

This report examines the critical issue of workplace health and safety, emphasizing its importance in modern organizations, particularly in high-risk industries like coal mining. It justifies the implementation of Workplace Health Safety (WHS) or Occupational Health Safety (OHS) activities, focusing on BHP Billiton as a case study. The report assesses BHP Billiton's existing WHS practices, identifies areas needing improvement, and highlights the relationship between WHS activities and employee satisfaction. Recommendations are made for restructuring business models and recruitment policies to align with safety requirements, addressing both technological and human factors, including issues like harassment and bias. The analysis concludes that prioritizing workplace health and safety is essential for employee well-being and organizational success.

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Workplace Safety
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Executive Summary:
The paper highlights the major issue of the workplace health safety. It specifies the reason
behind the introduction of the WHS activities in the business operation of the organization. It
portrays the link between the WHS activities and he employee satisfaction. The paper
considers an organization in the form of BHP Billiton and evaluates the WHS activity of the
organization and along with that it is able recommend the necessary restructuring in the
activities.

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Table of Contents
Introduction:...............................................................................................................................2
Discussion:.................................................................................................................................2
Organizational Overview and importance of WHS in BHP Billiton:....................................2
Area in where WHS practice and compliance need up grading:...........................................2
Relationship between WHS and Employee satisfaction:.......................................................4
Conclusion:................................................................................................................................5
References:.................................................................................................................................6

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Introduction:
The workplace safety is a significantly important component for the modern day
organizations which operates in the coal industry. The organizations are significantly
concerned with the health of the employees and their safety in the business conduction as
coal industry business operation relates to significant amount of risk (Carayon et al. 2015).
The paper is focused in justifying the reason behind the application of the Workplace Health
Safety or Occupational Health Safety and the elaboration regarding the improvement in the
WHS/OHS activities for a chosen organization BHP Billiton.
Discussion:
Organizational Overview and importance of WHS in BHP Billiton:
BHP Billiton is one of the renowned names in the metals, mining and petroleum
industry of the country, Australia. The organization is currently having the excellent
leadership of Ken MacKenzie in the post of the chairman and Andrew MacKenzie in the post
of the CEO. The excellence of the mentioned leaders are evident as the organization is able to
generate 43.638 billion US dollar as revenue till the second quarter of the financial year 2018
along with an operating income of 17.561 billion dollar. The organization is observed to
focus significantly on the safety and health of the employees and they implemented various
measures and activities in order to make sure that the threats of mine dust, Diesel Particulate
Matter (DPM), musculoskeletal stressors and silica do not impact significantly in the health
of the employees operating in the organization.
Area in where WHS practice and compliance need up grading:
As BHP Billion is a mining, metal and petroleum related company, the risk of
workplace hazard is also high. Thus, it is imperative for the HR department of the firm to
raise awareness among the staffs at the time of recruiting them. It is the prime responsibility

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of the employers to take care of the health and well-being of the staffs by ensuring workplace
safety (Yazdani et al. 2015). It is recommended for the HR department of BHP Billion to give
proper training among the staffs before assigning tasks to them. Work health and safety
induction is one of the greatest ways of making the staffs aware during the initial phase. The
induction session must cover the list of hazards that are more likely to happen at work health
and safety induction. This can help the staffs to perceive the potential risks that can arise at
any point of time. As the new staffs are more vulnerable towards risk due to lack of
knowledge among them, knowledge regarding the risks is to be integrated among them. The
induction session must also cover the significance of using personal protective equipment
such as safety hat. The risk of infection due to coal dust is very common in the mining
industry (Shea et al. 2016). Therefore, in the induction session, the employees must the
enabled to use the safety mask.
Strong practices in an organisation plays a significant role in mitigating workplace
hazards. Thus, it is suggested for the HR department of BHP Billion to cover the safe
working practices that have already implemented at workplace. This is the key of lowering
any kind of fear among the new staffs regarding hazardous situation. At the induction session,
the employees must be introduced with emergency exit, assemble point and fire alarm. This is
the key of generating awareness among them at the initial phase. In the induction, the new
employees must be provided with all the contacts that are needed to be followed at the time
of hazardous situation (Kelloway et al. 2017). Detailed training about workplace health and
safety to the new employees is one of the most significant ways, through which the induction
session can be improved.
The example of such activity will be the repetitive health check-up of the employees,
specification of the food consumption for the employees, the quality assessment and
monitoring of the food delivered by the canteen of the organization for the employees. Apart

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from that the organization provides quality equipment to the operating employees as that
makes sure that the employees are not subjected to any sort of critical risk elements.
Relationship between WHS and Employee satisfaction:
The organizations are observed to use the WHS or OHS as it will make sure that the
organization be able to protect their employees and the contractor’s health (Hale et al. 2015).
It will also be significantly helpful for the organization in order to prevent the occupational
illness of the employees along with the injuries that the employees face during their duty
hours. The WHS activities are notably helpful for the employees as it will enable the
organization to assess the risk factors and manage the impact of them so that those factors do
not harm the employees.
The organization is in need to restructure their business model and the recruitment
policy in accordance to the safety requirements. Howard (2014) commented that the
organization needs to make sure that their methods of analysis and control policies in
different aspects like aerosol sampling, Heat Stress, Ionising Radiation, UV radiation, Noise,
Chemical analysis of sample along with vibration is perfectly gets proper reorganization
according to the requirements of the employees. Apart from that the organization is in need to
regroup the control methodology in the cases of Asbestos, Diesel particulate, Infectious
disease and fatigue management. These are the adjustments that the organization must
conduct in order to provide a better environment for the employees to operate.
Apart from the industrial technology, the humans are also a major reason behind the
decrement of the quality of the workplaces due to several misconducts in the form of sexual
harassment, sexual biasedness or misinterpretation of the information (Sinelnikov et al.
2015). The organization is in need of significant improvement in this section as the employee
unrest generating out of these issues will be immense and will have the capability to cause

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notable barriers for the smooth conduction of the business operation of that particular
organization (Amponsah-Tawiah and Mensah 2016). Suitable strategies in effective reduction
of these issues will definitely make the employees satisfied and that will be significant from
the part of the organization in acquiring the loyalty of the employees towards the
organization.
Conclusion:
Based on the discussion, it can be concluded by saying that, ensuring health and
safety at workplace plays a pivotal role in generating satisfaction among the staffs. Being a
mining and petroleum organisation, it is the prime responsibility of the HR department of
BHP Billion to integrate the knowledge regarding workplace hazard at the initial phase.
Safety training is to be provided to them at the initial phase to enable them to handle any kind
of challenging situation. In addition, the new staffs must also be enabled to use personal
protecting equipment at the time of working.

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References:
Amponsah-Tawiah, K. and Mensah, J., 2016. Occupational health and safety and
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Carayon, P., Hancock, P., Leveson, N., Noy, I., Sznelwar, L. and Van Hootegem, G., 2015.
Advancing a sociotechnical systems approach to workplace safety–developing the conceptual
framework. Ergonomics, 58(4), pp.548-564.
Hale, A., Borys, D. and Adams, M., 2015. Safety regulation: the lessons of workplace safety
rule management for managing the regulatory burden. Safety science, 71, pp.112-122.
Howard, P.M., 2014. Occupational health and safety. The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of
Health, Illness, Behavior, and Society, pp.1708-1712.
Kelloway, E.K., Francis, L.D. and Gatien, B., 2017. Management of occupational health and
safety. Nelson.
Shea, T., De Cieri, H., Donohue, R., Cooper, B. and Sheehan, C., 2016. Leading indicators of
occupational health and safety: An employee and workplace level validation study. Safety
science, 85, pp.293-304.
Sinelnikov, S., Inouye, J. and Kerper, S., 2015. Using leading indicators to measure
occupational health and safety performance. Safety science, 72, pp.240-248.
Yazdani, A., Neumann, W.P., Imbeau, D., Bigelow, P., Pagell, M., Theberge, N., Hilbrecht,
M. and Wells, R., 2015. How compatible are participatory ergonomics programs with
occupational health and safety management systems? Scandinavian journal of work,
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