BSBWHS308
BSBWHS308
BSBWHS308
Assessment 1
2) The Occupational Health and Safety Act sets out requirements for
employers to consult employees, ‘as far as reasonably practicable’ about
hazards and risks.
The four duties upon which the employer has to consult with employees when
dealing with workplace risks are:
Internal document to control hazards: The tools which can be used to control
the hazard at work could be Equipment and machinery operating manuals which
will provide a guideline regarding operation procedure so as malfunction can be
minimized, Safety Data Sheets (SDSs) provided by chemical manufacturers so
as preventive measures can be taken, self-inspection reports and inspection
reports from insurance carriers, government agencies, and consultants.
3) List four necessary records that share and exchange workplace health
and safety information relevant to hazard identification, risk assessment
and risk control.
The four necessary records that share and exchange workplace health and safety
information relevant to hazard identification, risk assessment and risk control
are:
The four informal processes where employers and employees can share and
exchange workplace health and safety information relevant to hazard
identification, risk assessment and risk control to authorized personnel.
b) Apart from the HSR in your DWG, who else can provide your work
group information about health and safety? List 5 individuals and/or
parties.
Other people who can provide the information regarding health and safety other
than HSR are:
Health and safety officers
Managers and supervisor
PCBUs and their officers
Other person nominated by the organizations
6) If there is an immediate threat to health and safety in the work place it
may be reasonable that:
b) A HSR consults with management and that unsafe work should cease.
7)
a) Briefly explain in your own words the tern ‘notifiable incident’,
according to WHS legislation
A notifiable incident is the one that involves any events that needs to be
informed/notified to others, generally to the people working in the area where
the incident happened. It involves notifying the incident to the immediate
supervisors, in charge and all the other employees. Notifiable incident involves
the events that needs quick attention such as demise of people, a serious injury
and serious illness and a dangerous event.
Death of a person
Immediate hospital treatment as an in patient
A person needing immediate medical treatment for:
Amputation (any body parts)
Serious eye injury
Serious head injury
Electric Shock
Loos of bodily Function
Serious laceration
Medical Treatment within hours of being exposed to harmful substance
Any other injury to person or other consequences prescribed by the
regulations.
8) List and define 6 main workplace hazards found in the workplace today.
a) Safety Hazards: Safety hazards are more focused on the employees who
work with machineries or work in construction sites. These are more
likely to affect machine and construction workers. This includes falls
from large buildings, slips while working, trips and falls while working
with heavy machinery which are also very dangerous. There are many
cases where workers lose their life by falling from buildings, working
with heavy machineries etc.
b) Biological hazards: These are very dangerous hazards and it includes the
exposure of extremely dangerous substances and diseases. These includes
the risks associated with being involved with animals, people, infectious
plants etc. Employees who work in bio labs, hospital, hospital
laboratories and unexplored and dangerous outdoor spaces are at high risk
of biological hazards.
c) Physical hazards: Physical hazards affect mostly those people who work
in extremely hard weather condition or harmful environments. This
involves workers who are exposed to long term or continuous loud noise
(eg. Workers in airports, heavy machineries etc), sun rays (farmers) and
dangerous ultra violet rays (workers in X-ray labs) are the ones at risks.
10) Locate relevant guidance material from the relevant WHS regulator.
(a) In your own words explain what a HSR is (100 words minimum).
HSR stands for Health and Safety Representative. HSR is a person who is
responsible for gathering the information about what the health and safety
issues exists for various workgroups in the organization. A HSR is a person
working in an organization who tries to solve the issues other employees are
dealing with, try to minimize the friction in the organization and try to ensure a
safe working environment for all the employees in the workplace. A HSR is a
person who knows almost all the other in the workplace and these employees
can reply on HSR to talk about the issues they are facing in the workplace. An
efficiently working HSR indirectly helps to build confidence of the employees
by providing safe and healthy working environment.
The functions and roles of Health and Safety Committee (HSC) are as
follows:
Cooperation: HSC Facilitates cooperation in developing and carrying
out various measures to enhance and improve the safety of workers
Develop standards: HSC helps develop health and safety standards,
rules and procedures that will be followed or abide with the
organizational policies and procedures
Other function: Other function agreed by the PCBU and members of
Health and safety Committee.
Formulation: HSC helps in formulating procedures, for the issue of
resolution of conflict or other problems.
Conducting Meeting: HSC also conducts meeting in order to discuss
ideas, problems to make the work environment better.
Assisting Function: Assisting in the development and execution of
safe working procedures
Analyzing Reports: HSC helps in analyzing various reports submitted
by employees or HSRs, reports of Hazards and risks, work-related
incidents and statistics to make reports to management
Recommending necessary control and corrective measures where the
discrepancies arises.
(c) In your own words explain what a DWG is, and factors that enable the
sharing information about hazards, risks and risk control (100 words
minimum).
First of all, DWG stands for Designated Work Group(s). They are an important
part of Health and Safety Representation in the workplace or organization.
DWG(s) is a group of employees that perform similar jobs or have similar
health and safety concerns. The factor that enables sharing the information
about hazards, risks and risk control is the proper and efficient participation of
employees. Without employee’s participation no risks or hazards can be
minimized. The hazard identification techniques that includes (HAZOPS,
Checklists, Historical incident reports, Task analysis, FMECA AND FMEA
model, brain Storming, Fault Tree), Risk Assessment Model that comprises of
various steps and procedures to be followed to carefully assess risks, Hazard
registers helps to generate knowledge and information about hazards, risks and
risk control techniques, When all the information are circulated to employees
via HSRs, DWGs it does helps in minimizing and risk controls.
Employers must consult with employees on workplace health and safety matters
when:
Assessing risk and identifying hazards from the works to be carried out.
Making decisions about eliminating or minimizing risks.
Making changes in facilities for the welfare of workers.
Initiating changes that may affect safety of workers.
Making decision about consulting procedure, solving safety issues,
monitoring health of workers and condition of workplace, providing
information and training for workers.
13) a. Define these 5 important concepts (100 to 150 words for each dot
point)
1) Hazard: Simply, Hazard can be defined as a danger or risk. Likewise, when
we talk about hazard in relation to occupational health and safety it means a
potential source of harm that may have adverse effect on health of a person
working in an organization. Hazard at workplace can also mean damage to
property and harm to workplace environment as well. Such as noise, loud noise
generating machinery, hazardous chemicals, heights, electricity, inappropriate
behaviour in the workplace etc. The effect of harzard can be acute or severe
depending on the level of carelessness and exposure. Thus, it is very importanat
in an organization to identify hazard and take appropriate remedial actions to
control or eliminate them such as methods like brainstorming, reporting and
recording hazards, and checklist analysis can be used.
2) Risk: Simply, risk means any sort of danger. Likewise, when we talk about
risk in relation to occupational health and safety, risk can be defined as the
likelihood that a person may be harmed or suffers adverse health effects if
exposed to a hazard. It has negative effect and also may also apply to situations
with property or equipment loss, or harmful effects on the environment.
Therefore, risks should be eliminated as soon as possible and if elimination is
not possible then necessary steps should be taken to minimize those risks. The
risk factor that may have effect on people’s health can be biological, chemical,
physical, personal, psychological etc.
4) Risk control: Risk control is also known as hazard control which is a step in
hazard management process which is way to reduce an identified risk. In other
words, risk control is the set of methods that are used by business to evaluate
potential loss, risk, and hazard and take action to reduce or eliminate such
threats. Risk control methods include five steps to solve the problem which are
elimination (highest level of control), substitution, Isolation and engineering
control, Administrative control and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) (final
level/least reliable). These are the hierarchy of controls. These control measure
helps reduce potential exposure to hazard or risk.
14) a. Identify and explain six methods used to access and control risk?
Risk assessment is done when there is uncertainty regarding how hazard and
injury/ illness could be. Various methods can be used to access risk like:
Shareholders
Unions and employes representative
Supervisors
OHS committee
Managers, clients and employees
(c) The workers actually doing the tasks are often the most knowledgeable
resources when it comes to hazard identification and control. Explain
how an organization can develop and implement policies and
procedures to involve these workers in the consultation process and
harness this knowledge encouraging greater participation from the
shop floor? (150words plus).
The workers actually doing the tasks are often the most knoeledgeable
resources when it comes to hazard identification and control. The workers
also have the duty for their own safety and safety of ptheros in the
workplace. Workers are the main source for identifying hazards as they are
the one getting affected when a hazard occurs. Therefore, workers should
also be motivated to involve in the consultation process. The organization
can develop and implement policies and procedures to involve these
workers in the consultation process and harness this knowledge
encouraging greater participation from the shop floor in the following
ways:
The organization should make available time, resources and training
necessary for consultation and participation.
The management should provide more relevant information about the
occupational health and safety management system in a timely manner.
Another measure that should be taken is to identify, remove or
minimize deterrents to paticipation such as language, literacy
difficulties and policies that discourage worker participation.
The hierarch of control is the series of steps that is taken to minimize and
control the risks occurrences in the workplace. The hierarchy of control is a step
by step process that aims to eliminate risks and ranks risks control from the
highest level of protection and reliability through lowest level reliable
protection. The Elements of Hierarchy of Control are:
Elimination
Substitution
Engineering Control
Administrative
Control
PPE
Cause 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Effect K O G P A C J S H I E
Cause 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
Effect T D R M Q F L U N B V
Assessment 2
Various policies has been implemented by XYZ Food Manufacturer like OHS
policy, consultation policy, training policy, and emergency policy. OHS policy
will help to assess the risk by measuring safety performance, delegation of
roles, duties, and responsibility to a workgroup so as risk can be managed
through risk control and reporting. Consultation policy will help to identify the
safety issue at workplace and proper analysis will be done by accomplishing
employee issues through meetings.
Employee will be trained time and often as per the workplace requirement
regarding chemical usage etc. or before joining the work area. Such adaption
will help in quick response and precaution measures by adapting to training
policy. Emergency policy has been taken into implementation so as emergency
protocol will be adapted with urgency to save life and promote solution.
Hazard Register
Hazard Identification
For the participation to identify hazard in any workplace, following measures
can be applied:
We can examine the past incidents and accidents that have occurred, and
check whether the incidents can occur again.
Employees can be asked about the safety issues in the workplace because
they are the one involved in day to day activities. Survey, short and
timely interviews, questionnaires can help employees better know about
the queries of management about hazards.
Work areas should be examined and inspected in timely basis, and
identified hazards should be documented.
Safety Precautions should be reviewed and updated timely, especially of
heavy equipment and machineries.
Give a floor to creative thinkers to discuss on “what could be hazardous
in this place?” and brainstorm.
Use of Hazard Matrix to identify the hazards
Making of Hazard Register.
Carelessness
Fault in Alarm
of Kitchen
Gas/Stove system
Staffs
Ethanol old/new
Untrained Slow alarm
Distraction Alcohol stove and
Staffs after the fire
Exposure Cylinders
Any hazards that occurs in the organization or might occur has to be consulted
with the respective stakeholders.
After Risk Assessment of the restaurant following information was revealed and
consulted with the stakeholders,
In the case of a restaurant, specifically in the food cooking area, i.e. kitchen was
exposed with ethanol alcohol that led to a fire accident. Ethanol Alcohol is a
highly flammable liquid, and its exposure in the kitchen area where the works
are related to fire every time, the chemical caught on fire. The kitchen area is to
be sanitized and kept clean, customers shouldn’t be served with the food cooked
in an unclean kitchen. This is why sanitization is required. This is when ethanol
mixed with alcohol comes into play. A sanitizer consists of 70% of alcohol and
also consists of ethanol as another chemical.
The PCBU has equipped with organization with PPE as well as the fire
extinguishers in case of similar incidents. The employees weren’t trained to use
the extinguishers properly and also found it difficult to find it in the first placed.
It revealed that the employees and staff members were in need of training
programs for incidents, the equipment’s should be replaced and easily
accessible in all the cases. The alarm system of the restaurant was also slow.
The system could also be worked upon. There must be regular check up in the
restaurant so that similar mishaps won’t again happen in the place.
The staff members were reluctant in wearing PPE in the kitchen, it can also lead
to hazardous situations like allergies, eye infection from the chemicals etc. They
must strictly abide by the standard rules, regulations and procedures. The
investors might be reluctant to invest the money again since the restaurant
caught in fire. New proposition and better than earlier one can be presented with
them so they think it is a good idea to invest again.
From the consultation, I think there must be meeting between PCBU, investors,
workers so that they can talk about the incident, talk about the issues that are
bothering all the parties, the rules, regulations aren’t abided properly so it can
be prepared by keeping the employees on board while preparing those rules.
A further risk assessment might be required because the ethanol alcohol used in
the sanitizer is not only the factor that can cause such incidents in the cooking
area. Various other factors like, gas stoves, ventilation, untrained staffs for
advanced equipment’s, understaffed restaurants and other different things can
cause fire incidents. These all other factors must be examined thoroughly with
the help of experts and ways to mitigate them should be found out.
Plus, an organization doesn’t always face chemical hazard, they may also face
with ergonomic, physical, workload and various other hazards. These should
also be studied and taken care of in order to minimize the risks in the future.
Risk Control Plan
Identified Proposed solution Agreed Action Due/ Person Status Date Revi
Issues Dates Respo / comp ew
nsible comm leted date
ents
Severe According to WHS Elimination 1/11/ Worker The 30/11 1/12/
injury was regulation section 44 Control:Chang 2021 s, prepar /2021 2021
caused as workers are e work Emplo ation
worker responsible to wear practices to yers for the
was not PPE, so the workers avoid skin and action
wearing should be provided contact HSR to be
PPE. with enough Administrative taken
information and Control: select are
training for the and use going
propoer use, storage appropriate on.
and maintenance of PPE to control
PPE. exposure.
Observeingworkers
after the task is
complete to ensure
that the PPE they
have used is stored
and maintained
correctly.
Eye Injury Plumbed eye wash PPE:Regular 1/12/ HSR The 30/12 1/1/2
due to stations and safety assessment of 2021 and rules /2021 022
exposure showers should be PPE to check HSC and
of ethanol installed. for any signs of meetin
sanitizer Training should be wear and tear gs are
in the eye provided to workers condu
so that they can take Administrative cted
necessary steps when Control:Superv with
an incident occurs. ision and consul
training of tation
personnel in with
the use of PPE memb
and other ers
controls
Chemical Specific type of PPE Administrative 1/11/ Manag The 15/11 20/1
hazards: should be use to be control: 2021 ement worke /2021 1/20
allergies save from exposure. Worker and rs 21
to staff keep the hazardous surveys to be HSR have
members chemicals within any undertaken to been
and health control temperature obtain inform
problems range where information ed
can occur necessary about matters about
due to such muscular the
high usage aches and pains incom
of ethanol that can signal ing
in kitchen potential trainin
surface hazards. g
cleaning Subtistution progra
control: mme
Substitute less to be
volatile and condu
hazardous cted.
solvents.
Consultation with the Stakeholders: Any hazards, risk that occurs in the
organization or might occur has to be consulted with the respective
stakeholders.Also to prevent such hazards, risk controls plan are made which is
very much necessary to be consulted with stakeholders for review and selection
of appropriate action. In the case of a restaurant, specifically in the food
cooking area, i.e. kitchen was exposed with ethanol alcohol that led to a fire
accident. Ethanol Alcohol is a highly flammable liquid, and its exposure in the
kitchen area where the works are related to fire every time, the chemical caught
on fire. The kitchen area is to be sanitized and kept clean, customers shouldn’t
be served with the food cooked in an unclean kitchen. This is why sanitization
is required. This is when ethanol mixed with alcohol comes into play. A
sanitizer consists of 70% of alcohol and also consists of ethanol as another
chemical. The staff members were reluctant in wearing PPE in the kitchen, it
can also lead to hazardous situations like allergies, eye infection from the
chemicals etc. All the issues were consulted with PCBU, officers, workers,
management,HSC,HSR and other people.From the consultation, it was very
much easy to decide which action is suitable so that all the issues can be
eliminated or reduced.
To,
The Chairman,
Health Safety Committee,
XYZ Food Manufaturer,
Victoria, Australia
Dear sir/mam,
This letter is to provide all the information that was known during the risk
assessment, hazard identification and risk control plan that was conducted to solve the issues that
our company was facing. The following mentioned information are the new learnt source of
information that was found useful in solving the issues.
I. Relevant Workplace records, policies and procedures we accessed
WHS Policies and Content relevant to identifying and assessing hazards and risks
Procedures
OHS Policy Policy sets out purpose of policy, relevant laws and consequences of not
implementing.
Committed to compliance with relevant laws, measures safety
performance, delegates roles, duties, responsibilities
Implements WHS risk management processes, through incident
investigation, risk control and reporting. Monitors and reviews safety
performance.
Consultation Policy This policy helps in establishing a line of communication where
employee are involved in consultation regarding issues affecting their
health and safety at work and take account their matter which helps in
identifying and accessing possible hazards and risk at work space.
Consultation is done with workers when changing process, equipment,
work method are introduced at workplace that my affect health and safety
at work
Training Policy This policy helps to set guideline to the employee by reflecting the
organization's value and culture, visions and a training procedures. It aims
for awareness for improving the capacity, capability, and performance of
staff, leading to safe and health oriented behavior. It is more of a
concerned with acquisition of knowledge, skills, and competency so as
risk can be access properly.
Emergency Policy Emergency related policy helps to aware about emergency protocols,
ensures consistency with recently updated guidance on emergency
preparedness and response and reflect on the approach. It helps to act with
urgency, speed, and agility during emergency. It involves saving life,
providing protection, delivering assistance and promote solution with
delivering emergency operations.
VI. Action plan and steps involved to monitor and review risk control plan
Action plan Steps to review and Reviewed by
monitor
Change work practices to avoid skin contact Accountability for health Empployee
Select and use appropriate PPE to control and safety
representative,
exposure. Up-to-date training and
Worker surveys to be undertaken to obtain competency HSR AND
information about matters such muscular Up-to-date hazard
HSC
aches and pains that can signal potential information
hazards. Regular review and committee
Substitute less volatile and hazardous consultation
solvents.
Regular assessment of PPE to check for any
signs of wear and tear
Supervision and training of personnel in the
use of PPE and other controls
Installation Plumbed eye wash stations and
safety showers.
Thank you,
Yours Sincerely,
Sarita Khatri
References
https://www.safework.nsw.gov.au
www.dmp.wa.gov.au
https://www.ohsrep.org.au/notifiable_incidents
https://staysafeapp.com/blog/2019/08/08/6-types-of-workplace-hazard/
https://www.worksafe.act.gov.au/health-and-safety-portal/managing-
safety/health-and-safety-committees
https://www.safework.sa.gov.au/workers/consultation-and-representation/
health-and-safety-committees
www.hsa.ie
https://www.investopedia.com
https://conserve.com.au/risk-control-measures-in-workplace
https://careinfoscotland.scot/topics/your-rights/adult-support-and-
protection/what-is-harm
https://www.safework.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/52737/form-
2-roles-and-responsibilities.pdf