OHS Administration

Occupational health and safety is an ongoing process that requires continual review and adjustment to ensure relevance and currency with legislation, workplaces and processes. This process involves a number of administrative activities that include:

examining the effectiveness of the stores OHS policies and procedures
refining OHS procedures to achieve a safer workplace
identifying workplace changes that affect the stores OHS policies and procedures
monitoring legislation to ensure that the stores OHS policies reflect any legislative changes

Develop Information & Feedback Systems

Information relating to OHS issues needs to be disseminated to all staff to be of any value. The method of dissemination must be simple and easily understood. The message conveyed must be clear, concise and unambiguous.

As with any communication process, OHS issues should not be a one way process. Feedback systems need to give staff access to decision making on OHS issues. Many problems and solutions regarding OHS are raised by staff members. It would be poor management to ignore, intentionally or otherwise, such a wealth of knowledge.

OHS information can be disseminated to staff through a number of methods. Depending on the size of your organisation you could :

use a newsletter / memo or notice
run a regular staff briefing
deliver regular "refresher" training
speak informally to each staff member

Whichever method you choose ensure that it is appropriate to your target audience. The rules of open, two way communication apply. If your message is misunderstood or distorted in any way, someone could be seriously injured.

Feedback systems are an essential element of an effective OHS strategy. The people doing the job often have an insight into the issues that impact on the job. To ensure that you tap into this knowledge you should consider using some form of system that enables your team to comment and offer suggestions to improve your OHS strategy. Feedback systems inlcude :

employee surveys
a suggestion box
inviting them to make a presentation at the safety committee meeting

Again, depending on the size of your company, some methods work better than others.

Establish & Monitor OHS Records

There is a legislative requirement for managers to have adequate records and to use these records to improve the OHS in the workplace.

Your OHS strategy can be improved if you have an efficient incident reporting system. Analysing accident reports helps you to identify problem areas by looking at a lengthy illness, and injury types plus the rate that they occur in your store.

It is important that near misses are also reported. In these cases it is usually luck that an injury did not happen. If the same incident happens several times, it's only a matter of time before injury results. Investigation of near misses can help to prevent injuries in the future.

If hazards are to be controlled any records of injury or illness and what caused them must be kept. To assist with this, employees should be encouraged to report any incident or injury, no matter how small, to their supervisor. This also protects employees if an injury recurs or worsens.

All incidents that occur in the workplace should be recorded. Analysing these reports can identify problem areas or processes, which will ultimately help to reduce work related injuries and illnesses.

Monitor Effectiveness of Control Measures

Control measures need to be regularly assessed to determine their effectiveness and suitability in controlling the identified hazard. This process enables you to establish an ongoing monitoring and modification system.

One of the ways of accomplishing this is by assessing staff performance in relation to OHS matters.
Again, depending on the size of your store, and the OHS policies and procedures in place the methods you use to evaluate OHS control measures will vary.

Methods to choose from include :

anlaysing incident reports before and after any control measures have been implemented
observing staff performance
re-auditing the workplace or specific area
asking the employees affected by the control measure

Regardless of the method you select to monitor the hazard control measure you have initiated, it's important to identify how :

effectively it has reduced or eliminated the risk
cost effective the measure is
widely accepted it is by staff
the performance of the staff has improved

Providing Safety Information

While injury and illness can be caused by the design, construction and composition of plant and/or substances, a major cause of injury and illness is the lack of adequate information. This particularly applies to chemicals that are supplied and used incorrectly or unsafely.
The key consideration for supplying OHS information is to ensure that it is:

from a credible source
current information
accurate
relevant to the workplace
appropriate to the employees level of understanding

When you have identified and located the OHS information that meets your requirements, you must then consider how you will ensure that all employees are provided with it.
OHS legislation requires the employer to supply employees with the information necessary to ensure their safety.

This information can be obtained from a number of current and reliable sources including:

Analyse Workplace Change

Your workplace environment will change over time. New work practices, equipment and technological changes trigger OHS program or policy modifications.

Major changes will suggest their own modifications. However, small changes may affect the workplace gradually over time, without you being aware of them. These small changes often cause OHS programs to become less relevant.

To address this you must have a policy of ongoing monitoring to identify changes and then devise and implement policy changes or modifications to your existing OHS strategy.

This process should be incorporated into your ongoing monitoring and evaluation of the OHS policy and associated procedures. That way you are able to identify issues and address them before they become major hazards.

Another consideration is your team's acceptance of change. Even though OHS requirements change it does not necessarily follow that your staff will readily accept and implement these changes. As a manager, you have an obligation under OHS legislation to ensure that employees :

are aware of the changes
understand the need for change
have the skills to implement the changes
fully support the changes

Implementing change and developing team support for these changes is a true test of leadership.

For tips on leadership see the unit 'Lead and Manage People'.