Work Health and Safety Report: Hazard Identification and Reporting

This report delves into the critical aspects of work health and safety, emphasizing the importance of protecting employees from workplace hazards. It highlights the key responsibilities of both employers and employees as primary stakeholders. Employers are tasked with implementing protective measures, such as providing personal protective equipment (PPE) and facilitating comprehensive employee training programs on hazard avoidance. They are also responsible for conducting risk assessments and safety inspections to identify and mitigate potential hazards. Employees, on the other hand, play a crucial role by recognizing, reporting, and highlighting hazards to the relevant authorities, adhering to established safety regulations, cooperating with employers on safety matters, and using protective equipment appropriately. The report uses the example of handling sharps to illustrate the practical application of these principles, demonstrating how employees can identify and report hazards to ensure a safe working environment. This ensures that risks are eliminated or minimized. The report draws on scholarly sources to support its arguments, emphasizing the need for a proactive and collaborative approach to workplace health and safety.

Every workplace needs to have procedures that ensure the health and safety of all
employees by protecting them against workplace hazards. In the workplace, the employees and
the employers are the key stakeholders and both of them have specific responsibilities
(Giovannone, 2016). In the workplace, the employer’s main responsibility is to ensure the health
and safety of all employees. Employers do this by first, putting down necessary measures that
protect employees against workplace hazards. For example, in a workplace that involves
handling sharps, an employer can provide employees with necessary personal protective
equipment such as disposal gloves and long nose pliers for handling and disposal of sharps
(Goetzel et al., 2014).
Also, employers are responsible for facilitating the training of the employees on matters
of health and safety procedures in the workplace. Employee training is important because it
educates employees on how to avoid workplace hazards when carrying out their duties. For
example, training employees handling sharps will enable them to understand the need to put on
personal protective equipment when handling sharps. In most cases, the employers facilitate
employee training by sending employees to seminars where they are taken through current
procedures of health and safety. In addition, employers are responsible for carrying out a risk
assessment in the workplace to identify the potential hazards for employees and find ways to
mitigate them. Employers employ different methods to identify hazard in the workplace. For
example, employers encourage workers to recognize and highlight hazards while they are
carrying out their duties. The hazard highlighted by the workers will then be taken into
consideration by employers. Also, employers carry out safety inspections of both workplace and
work procedures to identify potential hazards.

Employees are also the main stakeholders in ensuring health and safety in the workplace.
The employees have to recognize, highlight and report hazards to the relevant authorities in the
organization (Hollnagel, 2018). When carrying out their duties, for example, handling sharps in
the workplace, employees can recognize and highlight potential hazards that need to be reported
for action. Employees can report hazards in various ways. For example, employees can verbally
inform the workplace health and safety officer the type of hazards they are exposed to when
handling sharps. Employees can also report hazard by completing a hazard report where they
will indicate the hazards they want to be addressed by the management. Alternatively, employees
can raise the issue during the staff meeting.
Another responsibility of employees in ensuring health and safety in the organization is
to follow the rules and regulations provided to ensure health and safety in the organization. In
every organization, there are rules and regulations put in place by the employers in conjunction
with the health and safety department to protect employees against potential hazards. Following
the rules and regulations in the organization is the best way employees can participate in
minimizing workplace hazard. This is so because following health and safety rules minimizes the
exposure to hazards in the workplace (Schaufeli & Taris, 2014). Also, it’s the duty of employees
to ensure they cooperate with employers on matters related to health and safety in the
organization. For example, employees can show their cooperation by attending training programs
that the employers have organized for them aside from following the rules and regulations as
earlier mentioned. Lastly, employees should ensure that they do not misuse the equipment meant
to protect them against workplace hazard. For example, the employees should only use PPEs
when handling sharps in the workplace and not for any other purpose that does not protect them
against hazard in the workplace.

References
Giovannone, M. (2016). Vulnerable workers: health, safety and well-being. CRC Press.
Goetzel, R. Z., Henke, R. M., Tabrizi, M., Pelletier, K. R., Loeppke, R., Ballard, D. W., ... &
Serxner, S. (2014). Do workplace health promotion (wellness) programs work?. Journal
of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 56(9), 927-934.
Hollnagel, E. (2018). Safety-I and safety-II: the past and future of safety management. CRC
press.
Schaufeli, W. B., & Taris, T. W. (2014). A critical review of the job demands-resources model:
Implications for improving work and health. In Bridging occupational, organizational
and public health (pp. 43-68). Springer, Dordrecht.