Attitudes To Work Health Safety Legislation: Legal Requirements, Hazards, And Risk Assessment

Legal Requirements for Workplace Safety

Discuss About The Attitudes To Work Health Safety Legislation.

Bolt and Catchy Pty Limited manufactures hinges and gate bolts. The press room contains notices signaling all employees to wear safety equipment in the place. There is a section of employees who are adhering to the rules and wearing the safety garments. However, others are not putting on the required safety gowns. There is noise in the room hampering communication between the workers. The new machines lack guarding equipment on the stamping head. There is also improper labeling of material. There is equipment labeled in Chinese while only a few contain English instructions. This paper will identify the WHS legal requirements that are relevant to the company. management, the essay will identify the hazards, their assessment, and controlling procedures. The essay will also draft a process for identifying, assessing, and controlling the risks. Finally, the report will offer recommendations for compliance with the legal requirements.

 To ensure that there is safety at In the Bolt and Catch Pity Limited, individual managing an organization must ensure that there is full compliance with the WHS. The following are some of the relevant WHS legal requirement to control the perils that relate to the safety and health of the employees.

• There should be provision of health and safety policy to all employers, employee as well people who are paying visit to the organization premises.
• The company commitment must stick to audit criteria of WHS. The general manager must work along with the consultants and auditors within the company premises to identify as well as assessing hazard events.
• All company employees working in the press room must wear protective clothing such as face mask, gloves, safety boots and hearing protection
• All the employees working in the press room must be supervised by the management and those who fail to wear protective clothing hold accountable while operating the press machine.
• The working environment in the press room must be made less noisy be encouraging all workers to wear ear protectors such as ear muffs or plug to protect their eardrum from getting harmed. Secondly, there should be attachment of the silencers in the press machine to suppress the noise making it unreachable to employee.
• In the Bolt and Catch Pity Limited, the labeling of start, jog as well as stop button must be in live that is in vision by the operator. The company must combat the accident issue resulting from trips being made to the local hotels through posting of speed limits signage within the road next to its premise. The sign for speed limit will force the drivers of forklifts to avoid over speeding and cause accident. In case they forklift drivers fail to observe the sign, then the company can seek assistance from the police (Xiang et al., 2014).
• Finally, the management together with the employee should meet and discus work, health as well as safety issues to come up with solution to accidents and injuries.

In the Bolt and Catch Pity Limited, the production manager must ensure that employees are safe during the working hours. Protection boosts the morale of the workforce hence improving the improving the overall productivity of the firm (Macdonald et al., 2012).

Hazards can be categorized according to their toxicity levels. They can either be acute or chronic in their toxicity levels (Coenen et al., 2017). There are those that employees can ingest orally and include liquid hazards such as leaking chemicals from their storage. Others can enter the body through dermal means while employees can also inhale other gaseous substances. Some substances come into contact with the skin thereby causing an itching effect. Some materials cause the irritation and damage to the eyes. There are also hazards that affect the ozone layer. Other perils affect the aquatic life in both acute and chronic measures. Gases that are flammable also pose a threat to the employees.

In order to ensure that there is effective and efficient assessment of risk at In the Bolt and Catch Pity Limited, i.e. the likelihood as well as the severity resulting from various hazards, there should be employment of semi-quantitative strategy of risk assessment (Oakman et al., 2018). The company should use the prioritization matrix. The matrix simply positions the hazards that are identified from most significant to the list. The livelihood as well as the severity is derived from WHS audit carried out the manager should identify the individuals to carry out the assessment procedure (Potter et al., 2017).

Hazards in the Workplace and their Assessment

The selected persons should have adequate knowledge of the hazards and their characteristics. The assessment should determine whether the risk involves continuous movements or otherwise (Shea et al., 2016). Accounting, the assessment team should identify the sources of the dangers. After knowing the causes, the team should reduce or eliminate the reasons that they have identified.  A change to the chances is necessary if total elimination or reduction is impossible (Roberts, et al., 2015). The primary sources include the layout and the design of the workstation. Another source is the number, weight, or size of equipment that employees use to carry out their work. The following indicate the table showing probability matrix.

1	Insignificant
2	Minor impacts experienced by small group of employee
3	Minor impacts experienced by a bigger group of employee
4	Major impacts happening to a small number of employee
5	Major impacts happening to a bigger number of workers
Likelihood	Duration
1	1 in 5 yrs
2	1 in 1 yr
3	1 happening 1 month
4	1 occurring per week
5	Almost sure off ( at least  once a day

Hazard	Course	Likelihood	Severity	Risk rating	Responsibility	Date for Control
Poor commitment by the organization	Provision of little time by GM to WHS consultant	3	4	Medium	GM	22/8/2018
Lack of putting on protective clothing	Poor supervision of workers as well as inspection of press room	3	5	Very high	Eployees	20/8/2018
Press machinery that is harmful	Lack of shield press machine	4	5	Very high	GM	28/8/2018
Noisy and unhealthy work place leading to stress and hearing loss	Noise originating from press machines fixed in the press room	5	5	Very high	GM	2/9/2018
Dangerous press machinery	Lack of shield to press machines	3	4	High	GM	5/9/2018
Little knowledge concerning the button used for press machine operation	Failure  to re-label the press machine in English	3	5	Very high	WHS Consultant	8/9/2018
Employees not able to locate the start, job as well as stop button	Directly labeling of all the 3 button above the operator head	3	4	High	WHS Consultant	15/9/2018
Employee’s accident	Driving over the limits by the drunk forklift operators while visiting the local hotels	3	4	High	Employee	20/9/2018

The first control measure is to get rid of the risk. The elimination process should come at the initial stages of work. The organization should budget for the control measures at the design or the planning phase of activity. The company should minimize the effects of the risks if they cannot eliminate them. The process of minimization involves substitution of high-risk equipment with another tool that lowers the percentage of occurrence (Sekendiz et al., 2018). The institution should remove the source of risk away from the people that can encounter them. Moreover, the company should implement control machines to monitor and stop the threats. A proper method of risk control improves the safety of the workers.

There are various ways that can be used to identify a risk. General Manager at Bolt and Catchy Pty Limited may want to use the combination of all these techniques. E.g. review of checklist and assumption on weekly basis on subsequent meetings. Here are some of the ways of risk identification

1. There should be selection of stakeholders. Planning for the interview should then take place. During the interview, there should be definition of main goals and documentation of interview result.
2. Brainstorming. Planning of brainstorming question should be done in advanced. Here, question that should always be used include:

• Project objectives. What are the significant risks that are related to project objective e.g. budget etc.
• Project task: What are some of the significant rsik related to task e.g. training, implementation e.t.c.
• Checklists. Have a look if the company several list of common risk. Bolt and Catchy Pty Limited should conduct a post review after each project to capture the significant risk
• Assumption Analysis. Define as factors that are taken into consideration Bolt and Catchy Pty Limited to be real, true without demonstration Gm should ask various stakeholders that assumption that they have concerning the ongoing projects since they are sources of risk
• Cause and effects diagram. GM at Bolt and Catchy Pty Limited can utilize this method to help with identification of causes-facts that give rise to significant risks.

Going by the initial phase of risk identification, GM at Bolt and Catchy Pty Limited should develop a working list of various risks that have been identified to have potential effects in the ongoing projects. From the list, the GM should then identify the minor risk that do not need further attention and the major risk that require follow up (MA, 2016). After that then there should be qualitative, quantitative analysis, active mitigation as well as management the two matrixes too has been used to assess risks on their impacts and probability (Ximenes, and Pearse, 2017).

Risks that are characterized to have low impacts as well as probability of occurrences are often considered negligible and removed from being in the list of active consideration (Quinlan, Bohle, and Rawlings-Way, 2015). However, those that are considered to have high impacts and probability of occurrence capable of terminating the projects are always considered. The GM at GM at Bolt and Catchy Pty Limited must often determine if the project is to be terminated or if the potential benefits are great to justify the risk taking (Smith et al., 2015).

Risk Management in the Workplace

Refers to additive quantitative tool used in risk assessment. It uses the front-end method of project planning to assist the GM at Bolt and Catchy Pty Limited to carry out the assessment of the definition of project scope, identify element of risk and afterward generate mitigation plan. It entails details explanation of issues together with a weighted checklist related to project scope (Tompa, 2015, p. 238). It provides opportunity to carry out assessment of risk at different stages during the front-end process of project planning hence focusing a lot of efforts on the areas with high risk that require more definition.

Avoidance is always considered the best option to risk control. As the name go, avoiding risk completely. If the efforts of Bolt and Catchy Pty Limited Company on avoiding the loss become successful, then they will a zero probability of suffering from any loss. Therefore, Bolt and Catchy Pty Limited Company should put avoidance to be their first risk control method

Separation is a technology in risk controls that involves dispersing vital assets within the company. Therefore, if there is catastrophic happening at one location, therefore, the impact caused to the business is only limited the assets found in that location.

It involves risk control method that deals with creation of buck-up plan. The control technology of this type is important for big companies. For example, a failure in information system within the Bolt and Catchy Pty Limited Company should not leads to the collapse of the business. Buck up should always be ready in the event that the main primary server fails.

This is a technique in risk control allocating recourses to business to create numerous lines of trade capable of offering verity of goods and services in various industries, (Tompa et al., 2016, p. 925). With diversification, a huge amount of loss in revenue from one business line is not capable of causing irreparable harm with the Bolt and Catchy Pty Limited Company.

Conclusion

WHS provides clear guidelines for ensuring a safe workplace for the employees. The legal framework of the WHS requires the managers of various organizations first to identify the potential hazard. The organization should then eliminate or substitute the risk to stop or minimize its effects. The company should then come up with control techniques. Hazards can either be chronic or acute or include chemicals that irritate the skin. Identification of hazards enables the stakeholders to know their sources. The assessment process should reveal the characteristics of the risk. Control involves elimination or substitution process. An organization should follow the above steps to eliminate hazards and create a safe working environment.

Technologies for Risk Control

The employees at any company should wear safety clothes. The garments protect them from harmful chemicals. There should be minimal noise at the press room. A serene working environment ensures proper communication hence improving productivity. All machines at a factory should have guard equipment. Proper labeling is essential to avoid confusion. The labeling should be in a language that every employee understands.

The stakeholders should review the measures of managing risks from time-to-time. Furthermore, the key players should revise and update the control methods to conform to the legislation. The organization should follow the law that requires it first to identify, then eliminate or substitute the hazard. Finally, the organization should implement and review the control mechanisms on a regular basis.

References

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Tompa, E., Kalcevich, C., Foley, M., McLeod, C., Hogg?Johnson, S., Cullen, K., MacEachen, E., Mahood, Q. and Irvin, E., 2016. A systematic literature review of the effectiveness of occupational health and safety regulatory enforcement. American journal of industrial medicine, 59(11), pp.919-933.

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