Manage health and safety

Employers are responsible for the health and safety of everyone who conducts work for you on a worksite. This includes employees, contractors and visitors, and volunteers in the workplace. 

As an employer, the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 (NZ) or the Work, Health and Safety Act 2011 (AU) requires that you must take ‘all practicable steps’ to ensure the safety of your employees while they are at work. This includes any place where work is performed, such as a building, farm, vehicle or forest.

Taking 'all practicable steps' includes thinking about the ways that someone could be harmed and doing what is reasonably practicable to ensure the safety of that person, weighing up the potential risks, the seriousness of harm if the event occurred, and any mitigating or elimination factors that can be applied.

What you must do

As an employer you must:

  • Provide a safe working environment and facilities, such as first aid kits and PPE, for staff safety and health

  • Ensure any plant or equipment they use is designed and made safe for the employee to use and is properly maintained

  • Develop emergency procedures

  • Develop a system to identify new and existing hazards then eliminate, isolate, or minimise significant hazards

  • Record the details of any incidents or accidents and investigate to determine what needs to be done to prevent it happening again

  • Report any serious harm incidents

  • Involve your employees in developing ways to improve health and safety

  • Make sure that all employees are effectively trained in safe operating procedures and supervised as they learn

  • Keep a first aid kit in each place where people are working. Kits should be a sufficient size to cope with the number of people needing to use it

     

If you are self-employed you must:

  • Take all practicable steps to ensure that your work does not harm you or anyone else

  • Record the details of any incidents or accidents and investigate to determine what needs to be done to prevent it happening again

  • Report any serious harm incidents

What you could do

  • Setting up health and safety systems show a commitment to general workplace Health and Safety, it boosts morale too

  • Develop your own Health and Safety Policy and plan. Display it in your workplace and make sure everyone is clear of their roles and responsibilities. Site Safe and WorkSafe are great resources

  • Think about the impact of health and safety on productivity

  • Safe Work Australia provides some really practical guidance on remote and isolated work in Australia in their guide available here. They include things like what Australian law determines a lone worker to be; what to consider around communication options; the different types of roles that might be viewed as a lone worker, and other possible mitigating controls you could implement to keep workers safe

  • Employment New Zealand offer some good advice around lone worker protection, click here for more

  • Check out Health and Safety Executive UK for more information including a free downloadable e-book on protecting risks associated with lone working

 

Contact us for additional support.