Action means developing, implementing and monitoring systems and practices. You should also collect evaluation data during this stage, so you’ll know when each activity has been successfully implemented, and be able to identify opportunities for improvement when the ACC WorkSafe Cycle proceeds to the review stage.
Hazard management
In order to manage hazards successfully you also need to identify and manage various factors that contribute to harm in the workplace.
Good management of hazards will significantly reduce the number and severity of workplace injuries.
A hazard management system includes the following features:
- Injury factors are identified and assessed
- Ensures workers are able to cope with new or updated processes, machinery or equipment
- Significant hazards are identified and controlled
- There is an action plan to manage or control hazards and injury factors
- The system includes remedial action identified in injury investigations
- Hazards and injury factors and their controls are recorded in a hazard register
- Workers know when and how to report hazards and injury factors
- The list of hazards and injury factors is regularly updated
How to manage hazards
Complete these steps to create an effective hazard management system that will help prevent injuries. As with all health and safety activity, the hazard management process will be far more effective when workers are involved, and managers are adequately trained to lead the process.
To manage hazards and injury factors, you need to:
- identify and prioritise them, and assess their impact on your business
- improve performance by developing and implementing actions to control hazards and injury factors
- measure effectiveness of the control actions
- record your hazard management in a register and update it regularly. Use an electronic spreadsheet or hard copies. Describe the hazard and its location, the action or control, and monitoring required. Note the date, required budget, and resources and staff allocated to the task.
- ensure all workers have information on the hazards they are exposed to, and the controls used to manage them
- make sure workers know and follow safety rules or safe working procedures.
Incident investigation
Investigating injuries, incidents and near misses enables the identification and control of hazards to prevent similar events in the future.
You must have an active system that ensures incidents and injuries are reported, recorded and investigated, and the appropriate corrective action is identified and taken.
All cases of serious harm must be reported to the Department of Labour (external link).
What you can do
Your incident and injury reporting, recording and investigation system should include the following features:
- There are incident and injury registers in all work areas
- Workers know when and how to report early reports, near-hits and injuries
- Injuries are fully investigated and improvement actions are implemented
- Legal obligations in terms of reporting to the Department of Labour are met:
- One person is assigned the function of reporting serious harm incidents
- All cases of serious harm are reported to the Department of Labour (external link)
- All cases of serious harm are investigated in-house
How to do it
An investigation process should include:
- collecting and analysing information – identify what factors contributed to the incident or injury under investigation
- taking corrective action to prevent similar incidents and injuries happening again
- reporting results to the relevant parties and managers (including senior managers)
- monitoring of the effectiveness of hazard control
- training key workers in incident and injury investigation.
Analysing data will provide valuable information for your hazard management process and for evaluation and review purposes.
- Collate data monthly or quarterly, and analyse at least six-monthly.
- Report the results of data analysis to managers – to track progress and enable decision-making.
Training and supervision
You must ensure that all workers are informed of their own – and their managers’ – responsibilities for health and safety in the workplace. You must also ensure that workers have specific knowledge of the hazards to which they are exposed through workplace procedures, environment, equipment and materials.
What you can do
Safety and health training must be an integral part of the training given to all workers, not something ‘extra’.
For all workers, provide relevant injury prevention information on a regular basis, including:
- identified hazards management
- safe work procedures
- emergency procedures.
Make sure safety information is available and displayed in work areas.
New workers should have injury prevention included in their induction.
Supervise workers receiving on-the-job training, to ensure that their inexperience does not put them or others in danger.
How to do it
Training on its own, without effective health and safety systems, will not bring about changes in health and safety practice. Use training to support other parts of your health and safety programme.
For example, train workers in:
- actions required by them to control hazards
- correct use of personal protective equipment (PPE)
- reporting a new injury or near-hit
- emergency procedures.
Health and safety training that is relevant and part of a well-planned health and safety programme will help move your health and safety initiative from words on paper to improvements in day-to-day practice.
Identify training needs
Workers need to be trained in health and safety systems and according to the work tasks that they undertake. The hazard register will help you identify health and safety training needs for workers in relation to their specific roles, tasks or areas of work.
Keep training up to date
It is important to provide refresher training for long-term workers. Some courses have licences or certificates – eg first aid training and forklift driving – which require renewal after a certain period of time. A ‘bring up’ reminder system for overdue training will help keep training up to date.
Keep individualised training records that are signed and dated.
Supervise on-the-job training
When workers are undergoing on-the-job training they need to be supervised by an appropriately qualified person to make sure they are working safely.
Information
Relevant health and safety information needs to be available to workers. This can include everything from standard emergency evacuation plans on the wall to information booklets in the break room about the claims and rehabilitation process.
Keep your documents up to date. Have a system for updating health and safety documents to ensure workers are not operating with out of date documents.
In a large, multi-site organisation, reviews and changes to the documentation are likely to occur at different rates even if the system is centralised. Holding workers accountable is easier if the responsibilities for documentation control are assigned to job roles.
Employee participation
The most successful safety management programmes invariably encourage active employee involvement.
What you can do
Workers encounter workplace hazards and problems every day and are able to contribute suggestions for improvement. Workers involved in identifying problems and participating in problem solving are usually committed to making the solution work.
- Have a forum – eg a health and safety committee that facilitates communication between managers and workers about health and safety matters. In small workplaces, health and safety should be regularly discussed in team meetings.
- Involve and consult workers on health and safety matters including hazard management, health and safety planning and emergency readiness.
The Department of Labour’s Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Act 2002 fact sheets (external link) explain what the law says about agreed employee participation systems and health and safety representatives.
How to do it
Active worker participation in health and safety is a clear indication of an organisation where health and safety is well integrated into the day-to-day practice of the business.
Employee involvement allows workers to raise health and safety concerns, helps with the development of effective solutions, and ensures there is good implementation of health and safety systems.
Ensure effective employee participation
- Establish a process for workers to be consulted on and actively participate in health and safety matters. This should include an agreed process for electing or endorsing union and other nominated worker representatives.
- Establish a forum (like a health and safety committee or team) that includes union and other nominated worker representatives and managers. This should provide an opportunity for two-way communication about health and safety.
- A forum is often the vehicle that enables joint reviewing, planning, implementing and monitoring of injury prevention and injury management initiatives.
- Larger companies may have a number of forums for different departments and geographical areas. Forums are usually held monthly or quarterly (or more often if required).
- Find out more about running effective health and safety forums.
- Train worker representatives to enable them to take a more proactive and effective role in developing, implementing and evaluating health and safety practices.
Manage contractors’ health and safety
Contractors working on site can often disrupt normal work patterns and bring in new hazards.
As the principal contractor of services, you must have a systematic approach to ensure that all contractors, subcontractors and their workers do not cause harm to themselves or anyone else while undertaking the work required by the contract. This includes:
- takin precautions to ensure both your workers and the contractors and subcontractors are protected
- havin an induction process for contractors coming into your workplace so they know about hazards and safe work procedures in your workplace
- asking contractors to tell you about the hazards they are bringing into your workplace
- making sure contractors have the right knowledge to undertake the job safely.
To find out more about your legal responsibilities and what you need to do, see the Department of Labour’s Guide to the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992 (external link) (section 18 of the Act).
Emergency preparation
You are legally required to have an effective general emergency plan to manage all types of emergency likely to occur within any part of your business operations. Emergencies could include fires, earthquakes, floods, bomb threats, chemical spills or explosions, aggressive colleagues or members of the public, and medical emergencies. A key part of emergency readiness is first aid.
What you can do
When confronted with an emergency, it is too late to decide who needs to do what, what assistance is available, and what emergency responses are desirable. These plans need to be developed before the emergency occurs.
- Have emergency plans for the specific emergencies likely to arise in your workplace.
- Establish and train emergency wardens.
- Communicate and train workers in your emergency procedures and keep records of the training.
- Practise evacuation procedures at least six-monthly and keep records of these evacuation drills.
How to do it
- Develop a written emergency procedure plan that identifies the types of emergencies that might occur at your workplace.
- Develop procedures in advance to deal with each kind of emergency, and identify an emergency management organisation to deal with an incident. Organisations like the Fire Service and Civil Defence have local information that could help with the development of your procedures and plans.
- The plans and procedures should be known and understood by all workers, contractors and site visitors.
- Copies should be kept in highly visible places around the worksite and ideally be a bright colour or easily distinguishable so they can be located quickly in an emergency.
- Evacuation plans, emergency equipment and other emergency signage should be highly visible and near each exit.
Appoint and train wardens or coordinators
- Make someone responsible for each work area and make sure all workers know the names or designations of the wardens or coordinators.
- Wardens or coordinators should be trained in their role and have refresher training that includes dealing with identified emergencies in the workplace.
Test your emergency evacuation procedures
- Run drills at least six-monthly, and remember to keep records.
- After the drill or actual emergency event, consult workers so that procedures may be reviewed and continuously improved.
- Record the results of these review meetings to demonstrate that procedures have been examined and updated if necessary.
Injury management
It’s good for business and good for your workers to make sure that injured workers are actively involved in a rehabilitation process that results in an early, safe and lasting return to work.
Why is this important?
Employers have a key role and responsibility to ensure that workers injured in their workplace are rehabilitated. Assisting workers to stay at work or to return as soon as they can helps the recovery process and reduces costs to your business.
You have a legal obligation to rehabilitate injured workers. The Accident Compensation Act 2001 puts an onus on employers to take all practical steps to assist injured workers in vocational rehabilitation, where the worker is able to return to the same job.
Good business reasons for having effective injury management systems include:
- holding on to workers
- reducing lost work time due to injury
- avoiding costs of recruitment and retraining
- reducing compensation costs associated with long-term disability
- reducing the risk of being prosecuted for a breach of the Human Rights Act.
If you want to work out the ‘real cost’ of having a worker off work, use our injury cost calculator to see how injuries affect your business.
What you can do
With good health and safety systems and injury prevention you will minimise the likelihood of injuries happening in your workplace. However, if injuries happen it is important that you support injured workers to return to work safely and quickly.
- Have an injury management system that includes the following features:
- Workers know how and when to report symptoms of discomfort and injuries
- Supervisors investigate early warning symptoms
- Trained first aid assistance is available
- Ensure managers support the early, safe and lasting return to work of injured workers. This includes:
- regularly contacting workers who are off work
- providing modified work tasks, or gradual return to work and worksite assessments if required.
How to do it
A good injury management system includes:
- demonstrating concern for workers by contacting them following their injury
- facilitating an early, safe and lasting return to work for injured workers. This includes having modified work tasks available and a gradual return to work plan – which helps them return to work as soon as possible
- ensuring that line managers understand their part in the process of maintaining early, safe and lasting returns to work for injured workers
- involving workers in any rehabilitation or injury management process, and ensuring that they understand the benefit of an early, safe and lasting return to work
- addressing health and safety and injury prevention issues identified in the injury management process.
Last updated: 20April2009