October is National Safe Work Month. Each week, Cooper Grace Ward’s workplace relations and safety team will ask you to think about the safety systems and practices in your business.
In this fourth and final instalment, special counsel Gemma Sharp looks at week four’s theme, ‘For all – action across all workplaces’. Every workplace has its own risks, and size and industry are no excuse – PCBUs, officers and workers all have a role to play. Review how your safety systems are working, consult your workers and other duty holders, and consider psychosocial hazards, including those that may arise as AI is introduced. Create a culture where workers feel safe to report issues without fear of blame.
Thank you for joining us throughout National Safe Work Month. Safety is not a month-long campaign, so we encourage you to keep the conversation going in your workplace every day.
Video transcript
October is nearly over and so is National Safe Work Month. And each week myself, William and Adam have been trying to bring to your attention some individual thoughts to be thinking about safety in your workplace. But safety is not just a month long campaign. It’s something that we should be thinking about in our workplaces each and every day.
And that brings us to the theme for week four of National Safe Work Month and that’s ‘Safety for all’. It’s really trying to get us to think about how safety impacts each and every business. So, what does ‘for all’ actually mean? Well, each and every workplace has its own distinct issues, whether it be professional services, whether it be a cafe, a restaurant, manufacturing industry or out in the mines. Each of those individual workplaces is going to have their own unique risks that we need to be thinking about to make sure that we’re keeping our workers and everybody else who is interacting with our business safe.
And every person has a role to play, whether that be from officers of an organisation, the management team, new starters or employees who have been performing a role for a long time. Obviously, the primary duty sits with the PCBU to ensure it’s taking all steps reasonably practical to ensure the health and safety of workers. But workers have their own obligation to ensure that they’re taking care of their own health and safety, and they’re also making sure that their actions aren’t impacting other people’s health and safety. And size and industry are not an excuse. Small businesses and those which might find themselves in lower risk industries are not exempt from the laws.
So, what should you be doing? Well, we hope that National Safe Work Month is giving you the moment to just step away and have a look at the safety systems within your own organisation. Now, for some of you, they might be more physical risks. But don’t forget we’ve got psychosocial hazards that we also have to be monitoring. And those can exist in all workplaces which can be impacted by high job demands, low job control, long hours or even your organisational justice systems. We hope that as a result of this series, we’ve given you a few things to think about so that you can ensure your safety systems are going to be strengthened in the future.
So, what’s three practical steps you can take away from today? First, consider how your safety systems are working. I mean, safety should be a living process within an organisation. But if it’s been some time since you’ve formally conducted a review of those controls that you have in place in your workplace, now’s a great time to be conducting refreshed risk assessments, to see if there are any other steps that can be taken to ensure worker safety. And when we’re doing this, it’s critical that we be consulting with workers, not just because you’ve got an obligation to do so under the law, but because workers are the people who are often going to provide you the best feedback about whether or not there might be a risk that they’re being exposed to.
Safety is all about collaboration and consultation. Now, if you’re a business where you’re working with other duty holders, perhaps you’re on a construction site and you’ve got to work with other businesses, you should be ensuring that you’re consulting with those businesses too. Again, it’s really important that we have a collective safety system to ensure worker safety.
So, how do you start? Well perhaps a good place to start is just to look at one particular aspect of work. Look at the controls that are in place. Maybe with advances in technology, you can provide some higher control mechanisms to reduce those hazards. We might even be able to work to eliminate particular risks that exist. And don’t forget, as we move towards further degrees of integration with AI, as William spoke about, this is going to create some new hazards in the workplace. It’s really important as businesses are working through that process to bring AI into their organisations, that they’re also stepping away to think how this could be impacting worker safety, particularly psychosocial hazards, and whether or not you need to be developing those systems at the same time.
And lastly, remember, support for your workers is critical. Make sure you’re creating a work culture where your workers can feel safe to come and report issues without fear of repercussions or blame. It’s only if you’re capturing that information from your workers that you can be aware there may be a possible risk that you need to be implementing some steps to control. And don’t forget, if we can help you at all in your safety journey, don’t hesitate to give myself or one of the other members of the Workplace Relations team a call.
