September Updates
Axento Safety provides you with health and safety expert witness and risk management solutions to enhance your business success.
In addition to incident investigations and expert witness services, Axento Safety’s focus is to help create safe, healthy, innovative AND PRODUCTIVE workplaces. Axento Safety partner with you to take the pain out of health and safety, provide safety management systems, reduce the paperwork, achieve certifications, enable increased compliance, enable productivity improvement and achieve this cost effectively.
Contact Jon Temby to improve risk management, grow your business and make your life easier.
Yes, the August Update is missing, I walked the Kokoda Track instead. I loved it and look forward to my next adventure.
October is National Work Safe Month
National Safe Work Month is a time to commit to building a safe and healthy workplace for you and your colleagues. This year’s theme is Sharing safety knowledge and experience benefits everyone. Throughout October, share the things you do, both big and small, that make your workplace safer and healthier
Visit safeworkmonth.swa.gov.au, access the campaign kit, and run a safety initiative in your workplace
- Share your photos or videos, or tag SWA and use #safeworkmonth on social
- Enter the Workplace Reward to win $5000 for your organisation.
In Victoria there are more than 60 free seminars discussing emerging trends such as
- Occupational violence and aggression
- Building positive mental health in the workplace
- Return to work processes
- Understanding and supporting young workers
- Don’t Explanation of the new Vic OHS regulations……and many more
Jons Comments: Don’t miss out on this excellent program of events. Head to the Victorian WorkSafe Month website to find an event near you. This is a great opportunity to get some traction for health and safety initiatives in your business. Imagine how good the publicity and staff motivation would be if you got the national Workplace Reward plus the $5000 that comes with it! Make the most of your state regulators free programs, I am happy to discuss options with you if that might assist.
Builder convicted and fined $880.000 over death of apprentice
A Moorabbin (Vic) building company and its director were recently convicted and fined a total of $880,000 over the death of a 21-year-old apprentice at a Caulfield South construction site. Read More…
Jons comments: As with many fatalities, this tragedy is the result of little or no forethought and inadequate systems for safe operations. It is not difficult to change the mindset and behaviours of your workers so that they are far more conscious of their surroundings and think through the next step, not only for safety issues but also for efficiency, quality and improved productivity.
Questions:
Do your workers need a refresher about the work that they do every day and the potential for serious injuries or fatalities if they get it wrong?
Are you confident, as a manager, that your workers are following your safety expectations: thinking ahead about emerging job risks and taking appropriate steps to avoid them?
If yes – how can you demonstrate this? If no -what are you going to do about it?
Don’t risk your Most Important Assets
Many businesses describe their staff as their biggest assets, they are right: many organisations wont function if key staff are missing. The importance of looking after your people assets is most obvious in areas of specialist skills. Trades based businesses are obvious here, if you lose an employee, even for a few days, you have lost that part of the business and clients may look elsewhere for support. This change can be permanent.
According to Safe Work Australia (SWA) “Trades make up almost one-third (30%) of Australia’s workforce but represent over half (58%) of serious claims for workers’ compensation (Between 2010-15, around 190 serious claims were made each day). The most common cause of injury (18%) involves muscular stress while lifting, carrying or putting down objects and the most common type of serious claim (44%) involves traumatic joint injuries.”
SWA have developed a useful infographic to demonstrate the significance of this risk Download the infographic (PDF). A great starting point may be to discuss the infographic with your staff to help raise awareness and to seek their assistance to improve risk management.
Ignore the Regulator at your peril
A Moorabbin furniture maker who chose to ignore a WorkSafe inspector’s notices is now paying the price with fines and a conviction Read more…
Jons comments In this case, the WorkSafe inspectors Notices would have been simple to fix and at minimal expense. By choosing to ignore the Notices, the management of this company have not only been given a criminal record and fined but its public profile is in tatters, it still has to fix the problems identified and management have demonstrated to their workforce that their workers welfare doesn’t matter to them: That looks like a recipe for bankruptcy.
High winds and your work site
Strong winds can occur at any time of year, however they are often more prevalent and destructive during spring in Victoria. These winds can cause the collapse of structures or blow construction materials and rubbish off buildings or from sites, resulting in death or injury to site workers and members of the public.
Read more…
Jons comments: High winds can increase risks in many workplaces where the weather can have an impact on operations, such as in construction, warehousing, agribusiness, transport, mining etc. Now would be a good time to review your site(s) for safety during the wild weather that can occur, especially in Spring in Southern Australia. A good starting point would be to clean up and dispose of unwanted items and tie down or weigh down lightweight materials. Double check to see whether your buildings need repairs or maintenance: better to do it now than after a storm has created a much bigger problem.
Refuelling fire
Refuelling hot combustion engines can be a risky task and have caused many serious injuries and occasional fatalities: check this example where serious burns resulted from refuelling a diesel engine: Read more…
There are risks associated with refuelling all combustion engines, especially when they are hot. Whether it is the lawn mower at home, the generator or heavy equipment, the manufacturers refuelling instructions should always be followed. If the instructions have been lost, please contact me for assistance. I can help you to reduce refuelling risks.
Cleaner air for precast concrete workers
WorkSafe NZ has undertaken a campaign of awareness-raising visits to precast concrete manufacturers to assist them manage health risks associated with airborne hazards for their workers; as part of WorkSafe’s clean air programme launch last year. Read more…
Jons comments: The risks identified here are the same as in our own Precast concrete industry. With the current construction boom, there will be significantly increasing demand for precast products so now is the time to review and potentially upgrade controls to prevent the inhalation of silica based dusts.
WorkSafe prosecutions update
WorkSafe has updated its summaries of prosecution outcomes up to 25 August 2017. Read more…
Jons comments. Again, check out the types of common breaches and then check that you have systems, training and supervision in place to reduce the likelihood of injuries, illnesses and associated downtime and to prevent your business from getting this sort of unwanted publicity. My regular assistance to lawyers as an OHS/WHS expert witness reinforces just how avoidable and how damaging these prosecutions can be.