Organisations, no matter what their size, simply can’t afford to ignore occupational health and Safety (OH&S) risks as an integral part of their business management. When it comes to complying with OH&S legislation, the biggest risk of all for an organisation is to do nothing.

By following these seven steps you will be on your way to creating a safer, injury free work place. Not only will you avoid compensation claims and potential fines but you will benefit from creating a happier, healthier and more productive workforce.

1. Understand your responsibilities
Every company is responsible for the safety of their workplace. It is important to understand the legal OH&S requirements that affect each business. These requirements need to be developed into a health and safety policy clearly outlining the business’ safety commitment. Keep the policy simple and make sure you include your intentions, set objectives, and allocate specific responsibilities to managers, supervisors, and workers in the organisation. Support this policy with an action plan aimed at continually improving health and safety in your workplace. Don’t forget to include the responsibilities involved in engaging contractors. Without clearly written documents it is difficult to hold people accountable for their safety duties and responsibilities.

2. Consult your workers
It is vital to involve workers in any decisions that may affect their health and safety. It is important to regularly consult all groups of employees on all safety matters and keep communication open to ensure effective safety systems can be established. It is a good idea to plan regular safety meetings and to keep a documented record of the agreed actions arising from them.

3. Identify, assess and control risks
It is important to have clear systems in place to help identify hazards and assess and control risks. Having employees report hazards, conducting regular workplace inspections, analysing incident data and even using an external auditor to inspect your workplace help you to identify hazards. Try to eliminate the most dangerous risk first. If it can’t be eliminated, substitute it with something safer. To reduce the level of risk you will need to either; isolate the hazard, use administering control measures or engineering controls, make personal protective equipment compulsory or a combination of all of these.

4. Inform, train and supervise
To achieve safety success, a workplace needs to enlist the cooperation and understanding of employees by keeping workers informed of all risks, changes and procedures. It is important to keep employees up to date on the latest safety requirements and procedures. Enrolling employees in training courses that focus on upskilling workers are a great idea. Adequate supervision must be provided at all times to further ensure workers safety. Evaluate the competency of all workers on a regular basis and decide the level of supervision required to ensure workers are always operating in a safe manner.

5. Manage incidents and injuries
Despite implementing an OH&S plan, sometimes accidents do happen. Managing work related incidents and injuries is a legislative requirement and is an important part of minimising loss and disruption in your business. Injuries need to be investigated and reported immediately. All precautions need to be taken to ensure the incident isn’t repeated.

6. Keep records
Document all health and safety activities and keep these records to ensure you are meeting all legal requirements, are providing information to workers and monitoring the health and safety performance of your business. These records need to be kept up to date to be of the greatest benefit.

7. Monitor, review and improve
Managing health and safety is an ongoing process that should form part of the way you do business. After you have established your OHS management system you need to regularly check and evaluate each step and make appropriate changes to ensure its continual success.

Nicole Albert is national manager, Konekt Containment, the largest private sector provider of workplace health solutions.