Work Health and Safety for Risk Management - myassignmenthelp

Question: Discuss about theWork Health and Safety for Risk Management. Answer: We as human beings need to blame others and the best way is to blame it on the system. This blaming culture is envisaged in us that stimulate the problems in the system. Earlier, the person-centred safety theories used to blame the humans or their actions and human traits, however it has shifted largely to system-centred theories. However, risk and safety management is still required and now people are being taught that accidents occur due to multiple factors like system elements, non-human and human factors. Risk management is important at workplace to ensure workers safety and healthy being. As workplaces have high rate of injuries, illness and fatalities, there is requirements of an enforcing and supporting environment working in compliance with the health and safety standards (Zhou, Goh and Li 2015). There should be better management of risk as the workplace fatalities to prevent the frontline workers mistakes and ensure worker safety through risk management. Therefore, the follo wing essay involves the risk management at workplaces, understanding of the occupational hazards, principles of good work design, response to risk and fatalities in frontline workers and recommendations for a safe working environment. The essay will also involve an insight into the reporting of the Royal Commission regarding the House Insulation Program (HIP) that led to the death of four workers that was preventable. Any kind of business regardless of its structure and size should have risk assessment and management to ensure work health and safety. Workplace hazards can cause injury or illness that might be physical or psychological. For example, in Australia, the risk management ensure to provide workplace health and safety that eliminates or minimize the risk for injury or harm that people might be exposed to at workplaces or work activities (Hopkins 2005). Firstly, the identification and inspection of the likely problem areas is done that might cause employee injuries. This can be conducted through a risk management analysis. Risk management involves the identification of the health and safety issues and ensure that responsibilities are clearly understood by the concerned authorities. Managing risk is a stepwise process is not guesswork or happens by chance. One should be aware of the consequences that might occur due to the occupational hazards and try to minimize or eliminate it. According to safe work Australia, Code of Practice, there is finding out of the hazards that might cause harm to the workers. There is also risk assessment that helps to understand the nature of harm that might be caused by the hazard. After that, there is implementation of effective control measures that can be reasonably used under the hazardous circumstances. Finally, there is reviewing of the control measures to ensure the safety plans are working or not (Cunningham, Sinclair and Schulte 2014). It is the legal duty of the employers to abide by the basic principles of risk assessment and management. The basic step include the identification of hazards, assessment of the risk of the harm and existing control measures, extra measures to be taken and reviewing whether the controls are working or not. In the report of the Royal Commission into the Home Insulation Program (HIP) by The Queensland State Coroner illustrated the death of the four frontline workers who were a part of the HIP scheme (Sunindijo 2015). The Prime Minister Tony Abbott stated that it a litany of failures and findings are grave. The victim Mathew Fuller died due to electrocution while working on a roof cavity in October 2009 in outer Brisbane. During the inquest into his death in Brisbane court, installation was not made 100% safe and power should have been disconnected from the main source. He also stated that the staples should have been put through the cables that would have avoided the death (Hanger 2014 ). Another victim who was the youngest among all was Rueben Barnes who died due to electrocution at a home in 2009 near Rockhamptom. The carpentry apprentice who was working for the installation company Arrow Maintenance had received no induction or insulation training. Moreover, the co-workers of Rueben were also untrained and had no idea regarding the electric shock first aid treatment. The third victim Marcus Wilson from New South Wales aged 19 died of heat exhaustion while working at the roof cavity installing insulation. After the inquest into his death, the Coroner stated that safety standards were not met and this scheme was just moneymaking process. The workers were not recruited based on the experience rather just to make money without caring about the workers. The last victim to die was Mitchell Sweeney who died of electrocution while he was using metal staples for the conductive insulation in Cairns in Queensland in February 2010. There were safety hazards, however, it was no t followed and that led to the death of the young boy. Titan insulations was sued as they provided no training and instructions before working and a strong action was taken against the company. This shows that the frontline workers; mistakes were preventable and would have saved the insulations workers life. This explains that workplace fatalities should be thoroughly understood to avoid hazards and work to design a good workplace (Asanka and Ranasinghe 2015). Workplace fatalities are common and many workers are killed every year on their job. Out of all fatalities, the maximum deaths occur due to falls at the construction sites 38.8 (364 out of 937 total deaths), struck by object 90 (9.6%), electrocutions 81 (8.6%) and caught in between was 67 (7.2%) in the year 2015 as reported by Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). In the calendar year 2015, out of 4,379 worker fatalities, 21.4% or 937 were under construction and consisted of one out of five deaths (Janicak 2014). The above statistics shows that the construction sites are mostly affected and prone to workplace hazards. There is lack of safety measures and risk management for the workers while working at the construction sites. Likewise, the HIP program depicted that there was lack of understanding of the risks and hazards that would take place at the construction sites and up taking of proper measures to prevent it (Sousa, Almeida and Dias 2014). The death of the victims in HIP clearly suggests that the death was preventable and saved their lives. It suggested that employers would have recognized that roof spacing in the dangerous working places was important to note and helped in managing the risk. However, the deaths that occurred were at different instances, the basic reason remains the same. It is the blame on the system and the management that despite of knowing the risk and hazards, they did not take any measure to look after the well-being of the workers and only wanted profit. The frontline workers (managers) knew that working at the construction sites is dangerous and experienced workers were required, however, they hired minors with no practical occupational experiences (Nadhim et al. 2016). Matthew Fuller, the victim, although had basic occupational and safety certificate, however had no training or experience in installing insulation. His employer gave no training with no supervision as he was not made aware of the stapling through the electrical cords and the death consequences associated with it. His training and supervision was inadequate and as a result, blame on the safety management system that contributed to his death. In a similar manner, Rueben had no occupational health and safety qualifications and received no training on the installation of insulation and risk management while working at the sites. The basic safe management system was required, however, it was not utilized at the job site that contributed to his death. These death instances clearly show that the management was deficient and provided no electrical safety for the workers (Bluff 2014). The death of the workers in HIP project also suggests that there was lack of safety management and good work design principles. It explains that an effective design should be able to protect the workers from risk or hazard that affect their health, welfare and safety. It should promote the health and well-being of the workers, also ensure productivity of the workers, and as a result, provide business success. According to Safe Work Australia, there are ten principles of good work design that prevents occupational injury and illness. It also helps to attain the highest-level protection that is practically possible. It also enhances the well-being and health of the workers and in turn, optimizes the worker function and their productivity. As a result, it enhances the productivity leading to success of the business. It also help to address the biomechanical, physical, psychosocial and cognitive work characteristics along with capabilities and needs of the involved people. This designing of good work design should be decided with the stakeholders and review that the decisions are acceptable or not (Reason 2000). The stakeholders involved in the protection and safety of the employees or workers are frontline workers like Managers, employers, Health and Safety Executives (HSEs), principal, supervisors, shareholders and other representatives like occupier, supplier and installer. They are the key personnel who have the responsibilities for the hazard identification at the workplaces. Communication is also important between the stakeholders in conveying the OHS information and motivates the employees to ensure continued safety in the organization. The leading cause of fatalities in frontline workers is at the construction sites excluding highway collisions that include falls, electrocution, struck by object, and caught in between objects. These are the major fatalities causes and responsible for the 64.2% of the total workplace fatalities. There is lack of training by the employers or qualifications in occupational health and safety. In the HIP project death, there were inadequacies in the system and management where there was lack of training, proper recruitment and supervision by an experienced tradesman. In some cases, where there was experience, there was lack of effective work safety system and active steps required to save the workers from on-site dangerous practices (Quinlan 2014). In the death of Marcus Wilson, although he had some training in insulation, he lacked experience and was not acclimatized to very hot working conditions. This shows that lack of training, supervision, experience and poor working conditions be cause of bad safety management system, frontline workers fatalities occur on a large scale and require change (Bal et al. 2013). The prevention of workplace fatalities is the prime goal of the safety management system where the employers lack leadership roles to prevent fatality and lead to inevitable death. According to Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) there should be well designing of the risk assessment tools to identify the specific workplace risks and most importantly, provide safety training to create awareness among the employers and ways to prevent it. A physical ability test is important before recruiting to make sure that the workers are physically capable to meet the demands of the job and existing workers are fit to handle the physical demands of the job. Proper supervision, training by the employers and effective recruitment can help to prevent the frontline workers fatalities and ensure safety at workplaces (trove.nla.gov.au 2010). Risk management is important at workplace to ensure workers safety and healthy being. For example, in Australia, the risk management ensure to provide workplace health and safety that eliminates or minimize the risk for injury or harm that people might be exposed to at workplaces or work activities. The basic step include the identification of hazards, assessment of the risk of the harm and existing control measures, extra measures to be taken and reviewing whether the controls are working or not. The death of the victims in HIP clearly suggests that employers would have recognized that roof spacing in the dangerous working places was important to note and helped in managing the risk. The prevention of workplace fatalities is the prime goal of the safety management system where the employers lack leadership roles to prevent fatality and lead to inevitable death. Proper supervision, training by the employers and effective recruitment can help to prevent the frontline workers fatalitie s and ensure safety at workplaces. References Asanka, W.A. and Ranasinghe, M., 2015. Study on the impact of accidents on construction projects. InProceedings of the 6th International Conference on Structural Engineering and Construction Management(pp. 58-67). Bal, M., Bryde, D., Fearon, D. and Ochieng, E., 2013. Stakeholder engagement: Achieving sustainability in the construction sector.Sustainability,5(2), pp.695-710. Bluff, E., 2014. Safety in machinery design and construction: Performance for substantive safety outcomes.Safety science,66, pp.27-35. Cunningham, T.R., Sinclair, R. and Schulte, P., 2014. Better understanding the small business construct to advance research on delivering workplace health and safety.Small Enterprise Research,21(2), pp.148-160. Hanger, I., 2014. Report of the Royal Commission into the home insulation program. Hopkins, A., 2005.Safety, culture and risk. CCH Australia Ltd. Janicak, C.A., 2014. OSHAs Enforcement of Asbestos Standards in the Construction Industry.Open Journal of Safety Science and Technology,4(04), p.157. Nadhim, E.A., Hon, C., Xia, B., Stewart, I. and Fang, D., 2016. Falls from height in the construction industry: a critical review of the scientific literature.International journal of environmental research and public health,13(7), p.638. Quinlan, M., 2014.Ten pathways to death and disaster: learning from fatal incidents in mines and other high hazard workplaces. Sydney: Federation Press. Reason, J., 2000. Human error: models and management.BMJ: British Medical Journal,320(7237), p.768. Smoleniec, L., McManus, P. and Duncan, E., 2017. Understanding the dynamics of sustainability transitions: the Home Insulation Program.Australian Geographer, pp.1-21. Sousa, V., Almeida, N.M. and Dias, L.A., 2014. Risk-based management of occupational safety and health in the construction industryPart 1: Background knowledge.Safety science,66, pp.75-86. Sunindijo, R.Y., 2015. Improving safety among small organisations in the construction industry: key barriers and improvement strategies.Procedia Engineering,125, pp.109-116. trove.nla.gov.au (2010).Managing occupational health and safety : a multidisciplinary approach / Philip Bohle and Michael Quinlan. [online] https://trove.nla.gov.au. Available at: https://Quinlan, M, Bohle, P Lamm, F 2010, Managing occupational health and safety, 3rd edn, Palgrave Macmillan, Melbourne. Chapter 2 esp. pp.90 102. [Accessed 14 Aug. 2017]. Zhou, Z., Goh, Y.M. and Li, Q., 2015. Overview and analysis of safety management studies in the construction industry.Safety science,72, pp.337-350.