January Updates
Axento Safety: Providing you with expert health and safety management solutions to enhance your business success.
Axento Safety’s focus
Axento Safety’s focus is to help create safe, healthy, innovative AND PRODUCTIVE workplaces.
By working with Axento Safety, you can refocus on your productive activities, achieve them more safely and with greater peace of mind.
Best wishes for a safe and productive 2015, may your positive outcomes exceed expectations.
Early Notification –Victorian OHS Regs update
The Victorian Occupational Health and Safety Regulations 2007 (OHS Regulations) expire in June 2017. The VWA is reviewing and must remake the regulations by this date. For more information, click here.
Work practices have changed considerably over the last 10 years, so there is a significant opportunity for modernising the regulations. VWA is interested in any initial comments you may have about the operation of the OHS Regulations. Comments can be emailed to: ohsregsreform@vwa.vic.gov.au. Your views on the OHS Regulations, any challenges and / or benefits to your industry or workplace and any suggestions to improve them will be welcomed.
Where Companies go wrong with Safety and Culture
Many companies don’t recognise that positivity and the presence of wellbeing, rather than absence of harm, is the key component of a healthy effective culture, according to experts in safety innovation. Read more…
Jons Comment: In order to perform well, organisations need to thoroughly embed positive and consistent health and safety messages and generate a safety culture which is logical and just i.e. not ‘no blame’ or ‘zero harm’, a learning culture, where we encourage learning and innovation, and most importantly, a risk-informed culture where we understand and work safely within our risk profile and risk appetite.
Board Members Need Better OHS Focus
There is an increasing focus by boards on health and safety issues generally, however, board members have varying levels of sophistication and impact in focusing on OHS, according to an international law firm. Read more…
Jons Comment: Boards don’t just need a better focus on OHS, they need better skills to understand their current status and to ensure that their decisions will assist the organisation to meet its objectives
Tyre Repairs and Inflation
The NSW Video Alert: Split Rims provides simple tips regarding split rims or multi-piece wheels which can explode under pressure.
Meeting WHS challenges in defence
Meeting the moral and legal requirements for workplace health and safety poses many challenges for the Australian Defence Force, particularly when operating in difficult environments and/or a war zone, according to Commander of the 1st Joint Movements Group, Colonel Simon Tuckerman. Read more..
Jons comment: One of the things that most organisations can learn from the ADF approach is to understand that the working environment has many variables including risk, so our workers need to be situationally aware and be allowed to respond in various ways to that dynamic environment. The trick is to ensure our workers respond within a set of agreed boundaries, within their expertise and know at what stage they must refer the situation to their supervisor or manager.
Best leaders are insatiable learners
Leadership as a subject tends to overshadow everything else when raised. But can it be learnt or is it a trait only found within certain individuals? Read more…
Jons Comment: Are you and your employees learning about productive ways to manage your health and safety risks and are you encouraging innovation within your workforce? If not, why not?
Cootes transport fined over safety breaches
Cootes Transport was recently fined $525,000 for defect, mass and registration offences, in the wake of the tanker crash in Sydney last year which led to a crackdown on the Cootes tanker fleet by the NSW Roads and Maritime Services (RMS). Read more..
Jons Comment: Had Cootes done this work prior to the incident, their reputation, contracts and finances would probably still be in good shape and several people might not have died. Do you have your risks under control?
Government “grossly negligent” over insulation scheme
In the latter half of last year, the Australian Government was predictably accused of being “grossly negligent” in allowing inexperienced young people to work in an environment where there was a risk of defective electrical wiring and install conductive material as part of the home insulation program (HIP), according to the Royal Commission into the scheme. Read more..
Jons Comment: The previous government may well have erred but the operational problem sits squarely with the installation businesses who totally failed to meet their health and safety obligations in their hurry to make a quick buck and the advisers who did not notify the government of the potential problems. Why were the installation businesses not held to account? And where were the WorkCover/WorkSafe regulators once the problems emerged? It would have been the perfect target for a well publicised national OHS/WHS regulator blitz as occurred for the trucking industry.
Health and Community workers less safety minded
Workers in the health and community services sector, which has the highest number of serious workplace injury claims across the country, only have a relatively modest focus on safety, according to research from an organisational psychology firm. Read more..
Jons Comment: This information is relevant to all businesses and organisations.
How OHS can help improve DIDO safety
When it comes to road safety for drive-in drive-out (DIDO) workers in the resources sector, OHS professionals can play a key role via education and challenging the accepted norms among the DIDO workforce, according to Central Queensland University. Read more…
Jons comment: to some degree this also applies to workers who do a lot of work related driving.
Alert issued over electrical safety
Queensland’s Department of Natural Resources and Mines recently issued a safety alert following an incident in which an electrician suffered serious burns as a result of an arc flash and blast Read more..
Jons comment: Pass this on to all your electricians
Dangers of Silica Dust Exposure
VWA’s Construction Manager, Allan Beacom reminds employers and workers of the risks posed by exposure to silica dust.
In managing site safety, it is natural to firstly address the typical risks associated with the construction industry. These include work at heights, electrical safety, traffic management and structural stability issues among others. A failure to properly control these risks may lead to serious injury or fatality.
Read more… (includes OHS/WHS information on other topics as well)
Lucky ‘tradie’ left hanging
A worker was lucky not to have died or been seriously injured after falling from a three-storey balcony in Melbourne’s north, while undertaking maintenance work. Fortunately, his foot wedged in the balustrade and he ended up hanging upside down for half an hour; before he could be rescued. For more information on working safely at heights see: www.vwa.vic.gov.au/forms-and-publications/forms-and-publications/prevention-of-falls-in-general-construction-compliance-code
How to manage mega infrastructure projects safely
A policy objective of safety as an “overriding priority” and commitment to OHS innovation in building the largest transport infrastructure project being undertaken in Australia has resulted in exceptional safety performance and benefits, according to its head of safety. Read more…
Jons Comment: There are some good management principles mentioned here and their LTIFR of <1 is realistic and achievable if you are serious about managing your business well. Rather than the policy objective of safety being an ‘overriding priority’, the message may be better understood as Everyone’s Health and Safety being a ‘core value’ which informs all priorities. Food for thought.
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P.S. Please dont keep the Axento Safety UPDATE a secret: pass it on to your colleagues, friends and business associates.
Note: This communication provides a brief Health and Safety update; it does not constitute legal advice.