Work Health and Safety Management plan

"Peek a Boo"

Yes well now it will only cost members $290.00 complete for a customised work health and safety plan with certification certificate and optional stickers at a small fee for your trailer etc. Members call Dean on 1800501662 or email info@indmowing.com.au No more headaches it will exceed Australian Standard.

New National WHS as of Jan 2013 except for Victoria. However i have been advised that federal law overrides state laws. So why Vic didn’t sign up I'm not sure .

WHS IF YOU HAVENT GOT ONE GET ONE

The operators that have no insurance no WHS plan NO ABN and only working for cash down your tools and stop putting your customers at risk .Your days are numbered.

Does a Sole Trader, One Man micro business really need a WHS Management System? - Sorry, but yes they do!

There are over 1000 pages to the act

Well, here's the long answer to your important questions. Where to start seems daunting, over whelming for small businesses just trying hard to make an honest living - our job together is to make it as simple, quick and painless as we can for our members.

The important increases in obligations for those people running businesses are found in Sections 19, 28 & 46 of the WHS Act 2011.

You might not be fully aware that the ACT, NSW, NT, QLD, SA, TAS and Commonwealth versions of the Model Work Health & Safety Act 2011 (the so called "Harmonised" WHS/OHS legal process) requires each employer to effectively implement a formalised risk management program, through which to identify workplace hazards, assess them and take action to either eliminate or control them. The Victorian OHS Act 2004 is, it is claimed, so similar to the Federal Government one drawn up by Julia Guilard when she was Federal Industrial Relations Minister that the Victorian Government doesn't want to change to the new Commonwealth Model WHS Act & Regulations and even ignored incentive to "harmonise".

"harmonise" This is what they actually call it

These Acts are highly detailed, very complex and imposed serious obligations on you and how you run your business. Even if you don’t really want to know about it - the law assumes that you DO KNOW in detail and the courts will not accept ignorance of this law as an excuse for failing to obey it.

EVERYBODY is included in the new definition of a Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking (P.C.B.U. or pronounced "Peek a Boo"). Directors and business managers of public & private companies, but also Sole Traders and One Man Micro Businesses, even people without a formal business structure & just providing a casual service for cash! Every PCBU is required by this new "harmonised law", which sounds nice and innocent, almost harmless & friendly, to actually know about their increased obligations & increased responsibilities for safety.

All PCBU's, of any type, have a positive obligation to undertake due diligence to ensure that their organisations or just they themselves are fully compliant with this new law.

So, you do NEED to know about it and you MUST act now to ensure that your workplace is as safe as possible for everybody in it including the sole operator . And this includes having a proper Safety Management System - even if they don't spell it out what this is. It can be written on paper or in a computer system of some sort but cannot just be in your head from 30 years of working safely without ever having had an accident.

What the law is really saying is that you MUST be able to prove, if necessarily in a Court of Criminal Jurisdiction before a Judge, that you do have a "system" that always identifies possible risks and mitigates them when "reasonably practicable". So if there is a person injured in your workplace (which is ANYWHERE you work!) without something actually written down (better still dated and signed) like a policy or a safe work method or a list of safety instructions or a job risk assessment (SWMS, SOP, JRS & JRA - FORMS, FORMS FORMS!!!), it is of course, very difficult for you to prove you have tried to fully meet your safety obligations.

Yes, it is a complete pain and of course it might not actually make you any safer than you are already. And yes, let's face it running a small business is hard enough already. But try to think of the positive financial benefits to you personally rather than just concentrate on yet more of your time being wasted by politicians, Yes, it is truly amazing - but it is THE LAW and an incident at your workplace involving the injury or death of a person can literally ruin your business, and can loose you your house and send you to prison if you keep on ignoring reality and fail to protect yourself.

All businesses, very large or very small, need an up to date, personalised & comprehensive workplace safety management system to ensure their business fully complies with the legal requirement for best practise safety policies, procedures and processes.

With a fully compliant, robust workplace safety system it will be easier for you to:

Win contracts with larger companies including safety conscious retirement villages & body corporates or win government tenders (especially Local Governments who now want to sight your safety manuals & expect your Safety Management System to be at least up to AS4801:2001 standard & will ask lots of questions about your safety policies as part of letting you just tender for their work or to supply them with goods and services). EVEN THE DOMESTIC CLIENTS YOU HAVE TO HAVE A WHS

Understand and fully comply with the new Work Health & Safety Act and Regulation and of course,(IF YOU HAVE DONE ONE WHS YOURSELVE DOES IT COMPLY WITH THE LAW ), avoid workplace injuries, prosecution, potentially heavy fines and possible jail terms.

Specifically:

Here is a quick summary of your legal obligation to manage safety in your workplace as well as you are able:

See http://www.workcover.nsw.gov.au/newl...s/default.aspx

Directors and officers, business owners

Officers, including company directors, are individuals who have high level obligations for work health and safety.

These obligations are important as health and safety commitment and leadership from the top levels of the business or undertaking is critical to health and safety outcomes.

Therefore, officers must ensure the person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU - the new term that includes employers) has arrangements in place to comply with its legal obligations.

It is an officers duty to exercise due diligence to ensure their business or undertaking fulfils its health and safety obligations under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011.

A quick summary of your need for health and safety policies and procedures under the WHS Act 2011.

Simply - a PCBU (Person Conducting a Business Undertaking) MUST have lawful and reasonable health and safety policies and procedures.

The primary duty under Section 19 of the WHS Act 2011 clearly requires a safe system of work to be in place. This requires the development of lawful and reasonable safety policies and procedures.

Under Section 28 workers must, among other things, comply so far as they are reasonably able, within any reasonable instruction that is given by a PCBU, to allow the worker to comply with the WHS Act 2011. Further, they MUST cooperate with any reasonable policy or procedure of the PCBU relating to the health or safety of the workplace that the worker has been notified of.

Workers have a duty under Section 46 of the WHS Act to, so far as reasonably practicable, consult, cooperate and coordinate activities with the PCBU and officers to ensure safety in the workplace.

As a result, policies and procedures are a critical part of the WHS Management System and must be drafted so they:

(The worker is you )

comply with the WHS Act;

provide reasonable lawful directions to the workers;

ensure the workers are instructed in and aware of those policies and procedures;

ensure workers are competent in carrying out those policies and procedures; and

ensure workers are appropriately supervised in respect of those policies and procedures.

Important: A failure to undertake the above will leave the PCBU and its officers open to prosecution. However, if the PCBU complies with this obligation and a worker breaches that obligation, the worker may be liable to prosecution and the PCBU will be justified in taking disciplinary action against the worker.

Yes, you might get away with it for years & years & years - no wucking forries mate! - but just like Drink Driving or parking in front of a pedestrian crossing or not giving way to bigger vehicles, ignoring moving trains on a railway crossing, speeding or running red lights - you will get caught one day and the penalties are severe and designed to punish you for being stupid.

So there you go.



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