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Are you looking for a list of Health and Safety procedures for your organisation? If yes, there are plenty out there! Today, we’ve put together a list of ten Health and Safety procedures that you may often find in workplaces or factories. By implementing these, your organisation can provide safety for your employees and ensure that the risk of accidents is reduced. If you do use these in your business, please keep us posted on how it worked out for you.
In a perfect world, facility managers and maintenance technicians would never forget to follow safety rules. However, we know this isn’t always the case and accidents are bound to happen. Sadly, it’s not unusual for maintenance technicians to push the envelope. They may overlook some of those preventive maintenance tasks, put in 20 hours over the weekend without completing that work request, or just plain say ‘forgot’ and start digging into that pile of broken concrete with a handsaw and a crowbar.
In this post, we will discuss 10 of the most common health and safety procedures organisations in Australia employ to mitigate workplace hazards, and prevent accidents.
But first; let’s define Health and Safety procedures.
Health and Safety procedures are a set of standardised actions that detail every step needed to conduct a job safely, with the aim of minimising health and safety risk to people and the workplace. Every organisation has some sort of Health and Safety procedure. Even if it's just telling people to wear their seatbelt or not to work on some equipment until the power has been cut out. These procedures are usually set in place to protect both employees and the general public from injury and harm.
Here's a list of 10 Health and Safety procedures you might find in a typical Australian organisation.
Hazard identification and risk assessment procedures are a crucial part of workplace health and safety measures. Without proper hazard identification, an organisation runs the risk of overlooking potential in-house risks, which place the workers and those around them at potential risk. The purpose of these procedures therefore is to familiarise personnel with duties involved in the identification of hazards in any hazardous environment, and the steps to be followed in the development of a risk assessment.
All of the employees should be aware of workplace hazards and understand the procedures for identifying and addressing these risks to help determine safe work areas, maintain hazard awareness, and assessments.
Safer worksites require hazard recognition and risk assessment, to be carried out by a competent person using the best available resources including Hazard Identification checklist. In addition, it is required to carry out regular risk assessments onsite using a risk matrix to prioritise risks and comply with regulations in most states. These procedures should be implemented at all work locations.
It is important to store and handle the hazardous materials properly at all times. There are numerous steps that can be taken in order to prevent workplace accidents. Knowing the procedures for the different types of hazardous materials can save employees from serious injury, should an emergency arise. Hazards like liquid hydrocarbons, lead, chlorine, asbestos and asbestos-containing materials etc. must be handled carefully, so that they are not released into the environment where they cause harm.
Workplace health and safety procedures for dealing with these types of substances include:
It is mandatory for workplaces to follow a set of emergency evacuation procedures. This assists in reducing the risk of injury to employees while they are in the workplace. Every workplace has a duty to follow these procedures preventing harm to employees during evacuations and/or fire breaks. The procedures are designed and implemented, so that they minimise and control the risks to people and property, in accordance with the Safe Work Australia Model Code of Practice 2011.
Ideally, evacuation procedures typically cover areas such as:
Electricity is one of the most dangerous sources of energy that we use in our day-to-day life. It is therefore important to know how to work with electrical equipment safely. Here is an overview of procedures employed when dealing with electricity in the workplace by organisations:
Fire safety procedures in the workplace are essential to protect the employees and anyone visiting the business. Building codes that are set forth by local governments maintain a minimum level of fire protection, and should be in place during the planning and development stages of any building. The fire safety procedures that are employed by organisations depend on the size, use, location, occupancy, and construction of a particular type of building. It should also take into consideration the type of business and how many people are working there.
Here is a generic outline for establishing fire safety procedures:
Housekeeping is the process of creating and maintaining a clean environment in a residential or public setting. It involves keeping work spaces orderly, hallways and floors clear of trip and slip hazards, and proper waste disposal. Good housekeeping also considers storage, and ensuring that tools are properly secured. The processes on how to achieve these and more are described and communicated to employees and specific persons of interest.
Workplace injuries can happen at any time; they are a constant source of worry and expense. If a serious accident or illness occurs at the workplace, it is the moral and legal responsibility of the employer to provide the proper first aid and medical care to those who are injured. There are strict federal and many state laws that govern how employers must treat victims of workplace accidents and illnesses. If employers fail to properly deal with emergencies at work, they could be held accountable before a court. Therefore, it is critical that there are first aid procedures in a particular workplace.
The procedure in many work environments is to have a trained first aid officer in charge of a first aid station. The officer is tasked with handling a wide range of medical care such as controlling bleeding, bandaging and dressing minor cuts, splinting fractures, conducting CPR etc. As part of the practice, the first aid station and/or kit is clearly marked - workers are shown where they are during induction. Additionally, all incidents are reported and contact information of emergency services are provided.
Workers getting injured on the job is a huge pressure point for any employer. We know training is no magic bullet, but it can help reduce the number of work-related injuries with a range of solutions. For example, not understanding how to use equipment in the workplace is an accident waiting to happen! Plus with lack of clarity, workers feel frustrated and powerless, thus unhappy and unmotivated at work. For these reasons, many businesses generally have a standard procedure for training their workers. It includes:
The method of training is outlined - this could be via e-modules, on-the-job demonstrations, class settings etc. Facilitators are identified whether it be in-house or outsourced.
Workplace Access and Egress procedures are there to protect workers and first responders when they respond to an emergency. These procedures facilitate the safe movement of employees, students, patients, customers, or members as they enter or leave their place of work. Typically these procedures would identify parking areas for emergency vehicles, specific emergency routes, access permits etc.
Accidents are preventable if proper accident investigation and reporting procedures are followed. When accidents happen, there are processes that businesses should follow for an effective investigation and report. Accident Investigation and Reporting procedures allow for the correct implementation of safety measures in the workplace, help resolve workplace safety and liability issues.
Investigation typically includes any incident that involves an injury, fatalities, loss of time, or substantial damage to company property, or equipment. Procedures for investigating and reporting incidents would include:
As mentioned earlier, organisations and their workers have a myriad of safety hazards to deal with which could prove costly in terms of life and economics. A WHS management system provides one of the best ways to curb the dangers of accidents occuring is to improve the effectiveness and enforcement of health and safety procedures while making compliance easy is through one seamless experience.
Kiri Align gathers all of the workplace health and safety related information in one place, streamlines WHS procedures - including incident investigation, reporting, risk assessment, maintenance etc. while eliminating the need for paper forms and checklists.
With KiriAlign it becomes easy to:
The result?
Benefits of using Kiri Align for health safety procedures include:
In today’s workplace, health and safety is more important than ever. Ensuring employees are aware of safety procedures and that they are carried out, is the duty of the employer in the long run. These 10 Health and Safety rules are not about complex legislation, but simple measures that can drastically improve employee safety. And with Kiri Align, everything about workplace health and safety becomes easier, because it focuses on safety and compliance.
