Safe Work Australia Month – October 2014
Workplace health and safety obligations apply to everyone involved in a business. Ensure you meet your obligations by familiarising yourself with the laws and following them.
If you don’t meet your workplace health and safety obligations, you are putting people’s health and even their lives at risk. You are also breaking the law and you may face penalties or prosecution.
Business owners and employers
If you operate a business, you are legally required to provide and maintain a safe and healthy workplace for yourself and your workers, volunteers, customers and visitors.
Workplace health and safety legislation requires you to:
ensure safe systems of work
ensure safe use and handling of goods and substances
provide information, instruction, training and supervision to your workers to ensure they are safe
assess risks and implement appropriate measures for controlling them
report notifiable incidents to Workplace Health and Safety Queensland
investigate incidents and take action to avoid having something similar happen again
provide workers’ compensation insurance.
Workers
Workers have workplace health and safety obligations to themselves and their workmates. As a worker, you must:
comply with instructions given for workplace health and safety
use personal protective equipment if your employer provides it and if you are properly trained to use it
not wilfully or recklessly interfere with or misuse anything provided for workplace health and safety at the workplace
not wilfully place others at risk
not wilfully injure yourself.
In it for the long haul: The Tiffany Ward story
At 18, Tiffany Ward was severely injured at work when both of her arms were caught in a potato processing auger. Her film highlights the traumatic impacts of the incident and describes Tiffany’s battle to live with the physical and emotional consequences of her injury.
Published on 20 Sep 2012 – Tiffany’s film is about making sure that young workers are able to return home safely to family and friends at the end of their working day. All workers and employers need to be aware of the unique risk profile young people have which makes them vulnerable in the workplace.