The Purpose of the Ohs Act

Task 1

The Purpose of the OHS Act

The Occupational Health and Safety act is designed to safeguard the health, safety and welfare of employees, employers and anyone else against the potential risks or hazards that might occur at the workplace. The act would be reinforced through legislation, policies, procedures and activities.

Main responsibilities of an employer

The main responsibilities for employers are as follows under section 8(1) of the OHS Act 2000 it can be understood that all employers are to provide a safe and suitable working premise with adequate facilities for all their employees. All equipment and materials required for use are to be properly maintained with sufficient correct tools deployed to every employee. Proper training by qualified instructors has to be given to all employees and a standard working procedure and supervision has to be given to employees, so has to allow them to identify any potential hazards before they happen. (OHS Act 2000, 2000)

Employers are also not allowed to make employees pay for any training courses required by them to carry out work safely. Have time or pay deducted due to commitments of being an OHS spokesperson or on the OHS commission team or be dismissed or demotion due to highlighting any health or safety issues. (Safety at Work – Your responsibilities as an employer, 2008)

Employers and self-employed personal are also liable that other people are exposed to any risk pertaining to their health or safety that might arise from the conduct of their workers or their activity whilst at that person's worksite.

Main responsibilities of an employee

Responsibilities of the OHS act do not only fall upon the employers but employees are also responsible for their well-being and also have to ensure that their employer follows the OHS act. Employees are responsible to care of their own health and well-being to the best of their ability, while cooperating with their employer with regards to any improvements made to ensure a safer working requirement. All employees have to ensure that their actions do not jeopardize others. It is important for employees to carry out work in a safe manner and for everyone to follow all safety guidelines or signs. All employees are also required to be adequately trained in every tool or machinery prior to use.

Everyone in the workplace

As for anyone else within the work place section 21 of the OHS Act states that no one is to intentionally jeopardize the safety of anyone within the worksite though the following actions. Removal or defacement of any safety related signs or alarms as a practical joke is also prohibited due to the potential of placing others at risk.

Task 2

Risk Illustrated Handout (Appendix A & B)

Refer to Appendix A for the illustrated handout.

There are numerous hazards when one works, this is especially true when one is working within the Food and Beverage (F&B) industry. An illustrated brief run through of various hazards that can be found is seen below. Likelihoods’ and consequences are derived from the Risk Assessment Matrix (Refer to Appendix B).

Task 3

Managing psychosocial hazards

Psychosocial hazards can be classified as a situation which causes a person to suffer from psychological and social problems, which results in an unharmonious community relation and improper public relation between employee and company or employee. Some commonly seen psychological hazards are bullying, discrimination and harassment. Also repeated unreasonable behaviour such as verbal abuse, intimidation, sexual harassment, assigning of impossible or meaningless unrelated tasks, isolating and exclusion of employees constitutes as psychosocial hazards. (Rick, Briner, Daniels, Perryman and Guppy, 2001)

Psychosocial hazards are detrimental to an organization and can happen unknowing to anyone at anytime, however there are ways to manage such psychosocial hazards. The human resource department can and should employ the methods below so as to better identify and manage psychosocial hazards in the future.

• Listening to any issues raised during any consultation or consultative functions.

• Discussion, observation and study of the work environment and past statistic records.

• Reading the reports