ASSESMENT 1

WHS (WORKPLACE HEALTH & SAFETY) MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

WHS (Workplace Health & Safety) management system may be defined as a systematic
implementation of policies/procedures in an organization in order to maintain health and safety
at the workplace. For getting good performance in business and productivity of staff, an effective
WHS management system is required. It is the core responsibility of every organization to
provide safe working environment to their workers, visitors etc. Reduction into uncertain
accidents/ injuries at workplace leads to cut-down on injury-related costs and keep maintenance
of organization’s reputation. So, an idle WHS management system is required to provide healthy
and safe working environment for the employees, worker, visitors etc. WHS goals identify with
the disposal or minimization of wellbeing and dangers to workers. Accomplishment here can
likewise lessen business costs; upgrade profitability and shield organizations and senior pioneers
from arraignment under wellbeing and security legislation. Regardless of whether association is
substantial or little, intricate or fundamental, WHSMS should have:

 An open and steady responsibility from senior pioneers.

 An arranged way to deal with wellbeing and security, including approaches and strategies
and other framework reports.
 A scope of modified exercises, for example, working environment investigations, preparing
interview, interior reviews… and some more!
 Execution markers and quantifiable targets, which are estimated and observed, and
 Administration survey of the framework, through information from numerous sources,
including; execution against targets meeting action risk, close miss and damage reports,
working environment investigations, different registers (e.g. plant; chemical etc.)

Key Skills and Knowledge to Establish and Maintain a WHS Management System:
To establish and maintain an idle WHS management system, key skills and knowledge that is
required are described as follows:
 Strong dedication towards the needs of all the employees to maintain reputation of the
organization and to boost the staff productivity; management leads to get the responsibility
for the development of a WHS policy to provide safety to all people those entered in the
workplace.
 A safety plan should be there with a defined budget that analyses risk factors for the
organization and demonstrate how to eliminate those risk factors in a dedicated period of
time to ensure the health and safety of the people at the workplace.
 An appropriate WHS management system always provide their employees, workers, a
policy/procedure set that describes all safety behavior, expectations, record-keeping of each
incident, and incident notification documentation.
 Everyone who is part of the organization must receive training on policies/ procedures of the
company. Depending upon the level of risk, the training content may vary.
 Continuous monitoring of workplace should be done in order to investigate uncertain
incidents to be occurring. If there is high level of risk, monitoring should be more frequent
and detailed the monitoring should be.
 The best way to guarantee your workers are doing their security commitments is to have
sufficient supervision. The level of supervision required in your working environment will
increment if the level of security control set up to lessen a hazard is low, i.e. the less
compelling the control measure utilized, the higher the level of supervision essential.
 Workers need to realize what wellbeing resembles – what's going right and what's turning out
badly. This can just happen when they get security criticism from organization, e.g. how
many number of perils were distinguished, the hazard levels related with those dangers and
what control measures were actualized.
 Regardless of whether association is substantial or little, intricate or fundamental, WHSMS
should: have top administration sense of duty regarding overseeing WHS chance – top
administration must exhibit WHS initiative and advance the association of staff in the
improvement and execution of the
 WHSMS be bolstered by the association's general administration framework – the
association must give corporate responsibility and adequate assets make the WHSMS's
structures and procedures obvious to workers and important to all business exercises
constantly guarantee that WHSMSs are frequently refreshed in light of the fact that WHS
dangers can increment at occupied circumstances, or when changes are happening (for
instance, amid rebuilds, changes of items and administrations or changes of providers). The
WHSMS needs to change in accordance with, and be suitable for all conditions.

Key principles and objective of WHS Management System:

In order to ensure a healthy and safe working environment, WHS Management System will:

 Establish a safe and healthy workplace.

 Ensure compliance with all relevant legislation.
 Provide written procedures and instructions for safe working practices and material safety
data sheets (MSDS) where required.
 Provide appropriate support, instruction, training, and supervision to employees to ensure
safe working practices
 Consult employees and affected persons on health and safety issues.
 Set and monitor clear performance goals for prevention and lessening of illnesses and
injuries in the workplace for the employees, contractors and visitors (including clients and
volunteers).
 Detect hazards leading to assessment and appropriate control activities for all risk in the
workplace.
 Commit to participation in workplace health and safety matters by all senior managers, the
managers, supervisors, and the staff (including the staff and representatives).
 Access and provide appropriate information relating to working safety and the training
required to organizational employees to carry out their duties in a safe manner.
 Establish and commit to a health and safety management system and continual improvement
including internal/external audits and systematic management review.

Features for an appropriate WHS Management System:

a) A Safety Plan (Policy & Procedure): A safety plan is a strategic action plan that forms part
of the business plan. It analyses the current and prospective risk for a company and charts
how the risks will be eradicated and controlled over a calendar period (the safety plan must
have a budget). This plan will ensure that there is a governance structure within your
company that ensures every worker clearly understands their safety obligations (and how to
comply) and is accountable to carry out those obligations.
b) Training and induction: The training content will depend on the level of risk the person is
exposed to. Depending on the nature of your workplace (whether it is low-risk or high-risk);
everyone who enters your workplace should receive training on:

 The rules of your company;

 The rules of the site; and
 The rules of the location they are visiting.

c) Monitoring: Your obligations to monitor your workplace depend on circumstances and

need. Always consider the level of risk. The higher the risk, the more frequent and detailed
the monitoring needs to be. Other times when monitoring will be necessary include:

 To ensure that all risk has been covered by a new risk assessment that has been carried
out due to a change in process, e.g. the installation of new workstations; and
 When an investigation takes place following an incident.

d) Supervision: The only way to ensure your workers are carrying out their safety obligations is
to have adequate supervision. The level of supervision required in your workplace will
increase if the level of safety control put in place to reduce a risk is low, i.e. the less effective
the control measure used, the higher the level of supervision necessary.
e) Reporting: The governance structure of your company needs safety reporting at all levels,
not just at board level. Your workers need to know what safety looks like – what’s going
right and what’s going wrong. This can only occur when they receive safety feedback from
you, e.g. how many hazards were identified, the risk levels associated with those hazards and
what control measures were implemented.

Policies and procedures for appropriate WHS management system: According to Work
Health & Safety Act 2011 (NSW) and AS/NZS 4804: 2001 Occupational Health & Safety
Management System- general guidelines on principles, systems & supporting techniques
following are the policies and procedures to be included for the proposed WHS management
system for Australian hardware store:

Australian Hardware WHS policy and procedures

Purpose: The purpose of this policy is to ensure that work is carried out safely in accordance
with Australian hardware’s ethical and legal obligations to provide and maintain a safe
workplace. Australian hardware recognizes its responsibility to provide a healthy and safe
working environment for employees, contractors, clients and visitors. Australian hardware is
committed to the continued wellbeing of its employees and to ensuring that all employees are
safe from injury and health risks while understanding work-related duties, including home-based
work.

Scope: The scope of this policy covers all employees and contractors of Australian hardware-
Wollongong store.

Responsibility: Responsibility for the implementation of this policy rests with employees and
management of Australian hardware with responsibility for providing a safe place of work.
Management at the Wollongong store is responsible for:

 Consultation with employees regarding health and safety and changes to legislation and/or
working practices which may affect the workplace.
 Proving and maintaining a safe and healthy environment for work.
 Providing support, training, and supervision to employees to ensure a safe and healthy
workplace.
 The provision of adequate resources for employees to meet health and safety management
system targets.

Individual employees are responsible for:

 Following all workplace health and safety policies and procedures.

 Ensuring that they reporting all potential and actual risks to manager/supervisors.
 Taking care to protect their own health and safety and that to their colleagues at work.
 Ensuring that their own and others health and safety is not adversely affected by the
consumption of drugs or alcohols.
 Encouraging others to follow healthy and safe working practices in the workplace.

Australian Hardware procurement policy

Purpose: procurement is also called ‘supply management’ or ‘purchasing’. The procurement

policy is concerned with processes that control incoming products and materials. The purpose of
this policy is to ensure the purchase of resources is carried out consistently, fairly and
transparently and in accordance with Australian hardware requirements.
Scope: The scope of this policy covers the purchasing and acquisition of resources by employees
and contractors of Australian hardware.

Responsibility: Responsibility for the implementation of this policy rests with employees and
management of Australian hardware with responsibility of purchasing resources.

Adaptation & amendments for WHS Policy and Procedures:

 Regularly review and evaluate health & safety management system through audits and
workplace inspections.
 Establish measurable objectives and targets to ensure continued improvement aimed at
elimination of work related injury & illness, & ensure that adequate reporting mechanisms
are maintained in order to facilitate this.
 Provide required training or instructions to employees for manually handling, lifting heavy
outdoor furniture, safe storage of harmful chemicals, petroleum etc.
 Maintain regular contact with injured/ill staff members to monitor their progress and to
ensure that they are receiving their entitlements and the appropriate medical assistance.

Adaptation & amendments for Australian hardware Procurement Policy:

 Agencies must carry out risk assessments prior to purchasing goods and equipment available
on government contract as well as when they have approval to purchase off contract items.
 Agencies must ensure that goods and equipment is fit for purpose, appropriate to the
environment and appropriate for the staff that will be using it.

Responsibilities:

Officers and Directors must ensure that:

 Management acquires and keeps up to date knowledge of work health and safety matters.
 Management gain an understanding of the operations of the business and the hazards and
risks involved.
 Appropriate resources and processes are provided to enable hazards to be identified and risks
to be eliminated or minimized
 Information regarding incidents, hazards and risks is received and the information is
responded to in a timely way
 The PCBU has, and implements, processes for complying with any legal duty or obligation
 Processes are verified, monitored and reviewed.
 An agency has in place, and utilizes, an appropriate process for identifying, eliminating or
minimizing risk and monitoring the effectiveness of these processes.
 They monitor compliance with WHS processes.
 An agency directs appropriate resources to ensure that risk is identified, eliminated or
minimized and monitored.
 Managers/supervisors have the skills to identify hazards and assess, manage and monitor
risks.
 Assessing WHS implications forms part of, and is documented for, procurement processes.
 Managers and supervisors have gone through an approval process that considers WHS
ramifications of variations to new buildings and refurbishments.
 Appropriate decision making arrangements are in place to allow managers to implement
controls or escalate decisions/approvals where the necessary controls fall outside the scope of
their decision making.

Managers/supervisors must ensure that they:

 Attend Agency training to develop an appropriate level of competence in risk assessment

and risk management.
 Consistently identify hazards and assess risks, in consultation with workers, including when
planning or undertaking development/refurbishment of the workplace, when procuring
goods and services, and when staff are delivering services in the community.
 Implement controls to eliminate or minimize identified risk.
 Monitor the effectiveness of risk controls.
 Apply delegations for approving WHS related purchases to ensure that WHS matters are
promptly addressed.
 Build WHS risk assessments into the delivery of treatment plans e.g. violence, manual
handling considerations.
 Seek advice from Risk Managers and WHS staff concerning any exposures requiring health
surveillance.

The term 'worker' includes any person who works for the Australian hardware as an:

 Employee
 Trainee
 Volunteer
 Outworker
 Apprentice work experience staff
 Contractor or sub-contractor
 Employees of a contractor or sub-contractor
 Employee of a labor hire company assigned to work for the Australian hardware

Workers must ensure that they:

 Take reasonable care for their own health and safety;

 Take reasonable care for the health and safety of others;
 Comply with any reasonable instruction from the Australian hardware;
 Co-operate with any reasonable policies and procedures of the Australian hardware.

Resources required for proposed WHSMS for Wollongong store:

Human resources Financial resources Physical resources

($ per hour)
Senior manager 100 Training room

Store manager 50 Resources for

prompt treatment
(if any injury occur)
Team leader (3- 30 Equipments for
4/store) handling heavy
materials
Worker (10/store) 25

WHS consultant 60

Audit team to keep 20

track of each
incident (3/store)
 ASSESSMENT 2

WHS Risk Management Policy and Procedure/s:

Purpose: This policy outlines the organization’s risk management process and sets out the
responsibilities of the Board, the Audit and Risk Committee, the Managing Director, senior
management and others within the organization in relation to risk management.

Responsibility:

Board must ensure that:

 Risk management framework actively reviewed by Audit and Risk Committee;

 All areas of potential risk are effectively identified;
 Adequate policies and processes have been designed and implemented to manage identified
risks;
 A regular program of audits is undertaken to test the adequacy of and compliance with
prescribed policies; and
 Proper remedial action is undertaken to redress areas of weakness.

Chief Financial Officer has responsibility to:

 Monitor compliance with this policy;

 Report to the Board on compliance with this policy;
 Develop, implement and monitor systems, management of policies and procedures relevant
to the business, including facilitating review by the executive on a regular basis; and
 Maintain the risk register.

Risk Owner:

The risk owner (as noted in the Risk Register) is responsible for ensuring on a daily basis that the
relevant operational procedures and controls implemented to treat each risk area are adequate
and effective. If a control or procedure is not adequate and effective in treating the risk, the risk
owner should report this, with a recommendation for an alternative risk treatment, to the Chief
Financial Officer for escalation to the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director and
ultimately approval by the Board.

General responsibilities:

Every staff member is responsible for effective management of risk including the identification
of potential risks. Management is responsible for the development of risk mitigation plans and
the implementation of risk reduction strategies. Risk management processes should be integrated
with other planning processes and management activities.
Record keeping Policy and Procedure/s:

Purpose: Purpose of this policy is to collect records, identify records, and indexed in a
systematic manner. Records are retained for specified periods, retrievable when required, and
properly stored to prevent deterioration or damage. This policy is used to ensure that all the
incidents are recorded and investigated in a systematic manner to comply with risks/injuries
occur at the workplace.

Responsibilities: Management is responsible to review records to identify incidents that cause

injury/illness to employees. Managers are responsible to keep track of each incident and
investigate it to take actions to eliminate injury/illness at workplace. All workers are responsible
to cooperate with the team and submit records in systematic manner to their managers.

Identify Hazards:

There are many types of workplace hazards, which tend to come under four main categories:

 Physical hazards – the most common workplace hazards, including vibration, noise and
slips, trips and falls;
 Ergonomic hazards – physical factors that harm the musculoskeletal system, such as
repetitive movement, manual handling and poor body positioning;
 Chemical hazards – any hazardous substance that can cause harm to your employees;
 Biological hazards – bacteria and viruses that can cause health effects, such as hepatitis,
HIV/AIDS and Legionnaire’s disease.

A hazard identification and risk assessment are processes used to identify and evaluate both
existing and potential hazards on a worksite and the methods used to control or eliminate the
hazards identified. Identify the hazard by:
 Carry out workplace risk assessment.
 Determining how employees might be at risk.
 Evaluating the risks.
 Record and review hazards at least annually, or earlier if something changes.

Assess the Risk by:

 Percentage of workforce exposed,

 Frequency of exposure,
 Degree of harm likely to result from the exposure,
 Probability of occurrence.
Develop Safe Practices:

The main ways to control a hazard include:

 Elimination (including substitution): remove the hazard from the workplace.
 Engineering Controls: includes designs or modifications to plants, equipment, ventilation
systems, and processes that reduce the source of exposure.
 Administrative Controls: controls that alter the way the work is done, including timing of
work, policies and other rules, and work practices such as standards and operating
procedures (including training, housekeeping, and equipment maintenance, and personal
hygiene practices).
 Personal Protective Equipment: equipment worn by individuals to reduce exposure such
as contact with chemicals or exposure to noise.
These methods are also known as the "hierarchy of control" because they should be considered in
the order presented (it is always best to try to eliminate the hazard first, etc.).

Controls are usually placed

 At the source (where the hazard "comes from")
 Along the path (where the hazard "travels")
 At the worker

Control at the source and control along the path are also known as engineering controls.
Administrative controls limit workers' exposure by implementing other "rules", such as training,
supervision, shorter shifts in high risk areas etc. These control measures have many limitations
because the hazard itself is not actually removed or reduced. Administrative controls are not
generally favored because they can be difficult to implement, maintain and are not a reliable way
to reduce exposure

Personal protective equipment (PPE) includes items such as respirators, protective clothing such
as gloves, face shields, eye protection, and footwear that serve to provide a barrier between the
wearer and the chemical or material. It is the final item on the list for a very good reason.
Personal protective equipment should never be the only method used to reduce exposure except
under very specific circumstances because PPE may "fail" (stop protecting the worker) with little
or no warning. For example: "breakthrough" can occur with gloves, clothing, and respirator
cartridges.

Once it has been decided what the best and most practical control for a particular hazard is, this
needs to be documented. The safe work procedure for the job needs to be written based on those
risks and controls.
 ASSESMENT 3

Required Amendments:  Regularly review and evaluate health &

safety management system through audits
and workplace inspections.
 Establish measurable objectives and targets
to ensure continued improvement aimed at
elimination of work related injury &
illness, & ensure that adequate reporting
mechanisms are maintained in order to
facilitate this.
 Provide required training or instructions to
employees for manually handling, lifting
heavy outdoor furniture, safe storage of
harmful chemicals, petroleum etc.
 Maintain regular contact with injured/ill
staff members to monitor their progress
and to ensure that they are receiving their
entitlements and the appropriate medical
assistance.
Hazards of long latency may include: Conditions, illnesses and other health risks that
result from longer-term exposure to specific
triggers and do not manifest themselves in the
short-term, such as:
 chemicals
 noise
 Safe storage of petroleum
 Manual handling
 psychosocial factors
 Radiation.
Hazards of low frequency/high consequence High impact events that may result in very
may include: serious injury, death or multiple death
situations that occur rarely, such as:
 building collapses
 explosions
 Fires.
Persons other than workers may include: Contractors
 customers/clients
 neighborhood or local community members
 Visitors.
Organizational factors may include: Authority
o geographical spread of sites
o nature of hazards and level of risk
o other management systems requiring
interface or integration with
 management of WHS
o participatory arrangements
o reporting structure
o roster and shift arrangements
o supervision structure
 workforce structure, such as:
o contractors
o cultural diversity
o labor hire
o part-time and casual workers
o work place culture, including industrial
relations and safety culture.
Specialist personnel may include: External consultants specializing in specific
areas of WHS, such as:
 ergonomics
 occupational health
 occupational hygiene
 psychology
 safety engineering
 toxicology
 specialist staff within government agencies
offering assistance in specialist or problem
areas within WHS.
WHS legislation may include:  Acts
 regulations
 codes of practice
Key personnel and stakeholders may  board/committee of management and
include: shareholders
 customers/clients
 management, persons in control of the
workplace, and supervisors
 Workers and other parties across a range of
levels and roles, including health and safety
representatives, and health and safety
committee members.