What is a Safety Management System?
It is a living document that details how you, as an employer plan to protect the health, welfare and well-being of your workers and all person(s) who may be affected by your business operations.
While the details on how they are implemented will vary across industries and individual organisations alike, there are core values that should be upheld by your Safety Management System.
These core values relate to “upholding the spirit of the regulations”. Two key elements of any Safety Management System should contain mechanisms to assess risks in the workplace and consult with all parties (mainly employees, but not limited to) who may be affected by your organisations operations.
Why do I need a Safety Management System?
Under the Occupational Health and Safety Regulations 2001 every work place requires a Safety Management System.
As an employer, you have a duty of care on many levels to protect the health, welfare and well-being of your workers and all person(s) who may be affected by your business operations.
This is a legal requirement.
How can I implement a safety system for my business?
Safety Management Systems should be built from the ground up in consultation with your employees.
A framework for it’s structure and content is provided in the OH&S Regualtions 2001. As this is lenghtly document with many external references, it can be like a minefield to work through and very time consuming. The rules and guidelines on establishing your own Safety Management System are all in the public domain (free of charge, mostly).
Various companies provide off the shelf products that are then modified to suit your specific business needs. The prices and quality for these products/service range widely.
All too often, the implementation of safety usually sits on the shelf until there is a problem. The key here is to ensure that Safety becomes a part of your business, on a conistently regular basis. This appears to be a problem for many businesses, particularly the smaller operations.
A risk assesment is one of the key elements of any safety management system. Its form is always dynamic and is dependent on the nature, design and implementation of work practices.
In essence, there should be a process in every workplace to consider the risks associated with all tasks carried out by employees. Of course, various workplaces can change very rapidly for example, a construction site.
Many people are aware of a Safe Work Method Statement which details risks while carrying out a pre-defined task. The risk assessment process (while considering a Safe Work Method Statement) also factors in the environmental aspects in which that work is carried out.
Further explanantion and/or assistance can be obtained by contacting Anthony Baldwin directly on 0417 326 783 or anthony@thesafetycrew.com.au.
We can assist by leading you through the process and offer reminders to ensure that all is kept on track.
Once people have committed to implementing a Safety Management System, the challenge then becomes maintaining this system on a regular basis. It is pointless to invest in a system and then have it sit on the shelf.
From the start, we sit down with you and explain how the system works, why we need to do the things we need to do (if not already clear) and recommended maintenance tasks required to keep your system updated