Are your Work Health and Safety needs unique? No Way!

I though that you might like a change from me, so I have asked a WH&S expert from our team to write this blog.

 

In 2010/11 - 374 people died due to work-related traumatic injuries.

Australia’s Lost-time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR) paints an unsettling work health and safety scenario - one week or more was lost per million hours worked.

Worse still, we are only now up to March - 30 lives have been lost in Australian workplaces so far ...

But how could these statistics be of any possible relevance to SMEs? We're not the same as the big gun industries - we don't hazard the same risks! They have agriculture, mining, forestry and construction - that's sowing, tree felling, mine blasting - the big stuff!

The truth is that SME workers frequently face very real workplace risks - given that 99% of Australian businesses are SMEs - this situation cannot be ignored.

Why?

OK, natural protective mechanisms, typically built into the culture of large (200+ employees) organisations by natural evolution - think how higher staff volume might equate to greater information capacity and, therefore, to greater necessity in supervising  work practices:

·         think about the complex safety management systems - the policies and safe operating procedures

·         the hierarchy of control, the complexity of infrastructure - the representatives - the systematic ways of controlling or eliminating risk, and their continuous development

·         the huge diversity of Safety Employees; advisors, managers, coordinators, analysts, strategy and risk professionals; there are many more

Now think of the barriers to building a safety culture for SMEs...

• the typical capital-raising constraints that so often result in low investment in safety practice
• the severe time constraints on business owner/operators, who often take the view that ‘our safety management system will just have to wait’

Think of how the post-GFC economic conditions severely dampened SME business confidence - we couldn’t help but focus on the bottom line, just to stay in business- and we still can’t!

Greg Baynie is one of our HR Partners and our resident expert in W&HS, call him today for an obligation free discussion to understand your risk and exposure.