Case study: Determining work groups for WHS consultation
On the 9th of July 2019 the NSW Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) delivered its decision on whether an employer had made....
Changes in the Consultation Code of Practice (2019)
On 30 August 2019 SafeWork NSW released an updated Consultation, Co-ordination, and Co-operation Code of Practice. ...
Preventing Workplace Injuries
Two recent (2019) WHS prosecutions in NSW were based on WHS failures that quite commonly result in serious injuries to workers. This...
What is a Safety Champion?
A Safety Champion is a person who works with the organisation’s health and safety system to set a good example, and to encourage and ...
What is the “Adequate Number of Trained First Aiders”?
The WHS Regulation 2017 (42) requires every organisation (PCBU) to provide workers with access to an “adequate number of trained first...
Manual Handling: Hazardous Manual Tasks - Are They in Your Workplace?
This article was published in 2018 The good news is that major manual handling injuries in NSW dropped 3%, from 29% in 2015-16 to 26% in...
Doing a gap analysis may save you from prosecution
In the unfortunate event of there being a WHS incident in your workplace, SafeWork NSW may come out to investigate. When SafeWork NSW...
Running effective HSCs - Solutions to common problems
The effectiveness of health and safety committees depends on the commitment, knowledge, and individual areas of expertise of their members. HSC members need to know and understand the overall purpose of the HSC, and their role as members to ensure the duties and purpose of their health and safety committee are achieved. The functions of a health and safety committee are stated in Section 77 of the WHS Act. Here are several common issues that affect the effectiveness of health
Officer ordered to have "Due Diligence" training
Up until this time it has been rare to see an Officer of a business or organisation prosecuted, fined and given an order to do WHS training.
“Reasonably Practicable” ... Fried Onions at Bunnings
In 2018 several media outlets ran a story about how Bunnings had changed the way its iconic sausage and bread delicacy could be...
Consulting with workers and worker representatives
A business must consult with workers who carry out work for the business or undertaking and who are, or are likely to be, directly ...
What is a Reasonably Foreseeable Hazard?
As you know, a PCBU has a duty under Section 19 of the WHS Act to ensure, so far as reasonably practicable , the health and safety of...
What or Who is a PCBU?
The words, “person conducting a business or undertaking” (PCBU), appear frequently in the WHS Act.