“Leaders of the organisation have to take a more active role in ensuring worker participation and promoting a positive safety culture… Safety starts at the top of the tree.”
– Fadi Alzubaidi, Integrated Management Systems specialist.
On Wednesday, the third of March, Anitech hosted an informative, engaging webinar on the benefits business’ stand to gain by implementing the ISO 45001 Occupational Health and Safety Standards. It was hosted by Anita Patturajan, director of Anitech, and featured two work health and safety specialists, Fadi Alzubaidi and Julian Wandres, as the key speakers. They all spoke about some of the occupational health and safety challenges that business’ are currently facing, and discussed how the implementation of the ISO 45001 Standards can provide organisations with a clear, structured approach to effectively handling work health and safety matters.
It offered key insights into how these standards help management achieve their OH&S goals.
Julian and Fadi discussed different areas of the standards. Julian discussed the implementation process, some of the common work health and safety challenges that business’ are facing, and how these standards help them effectively address them. On the other hand, Fadi discussed how the standards have a strong focus on the responsibility and participation of upper management within a business in developing a safe, compliant work environment for their staff.
Some practical advice was offered at the webinar, such as when Julian discussed that these standards can be applied to all kinds of business types, of different sizes, regardless of whether they have five or 700 employees. Julian explained that this is because the standards offer structure, cohesion, and clear direction about how a business can achieve its OH&S goals.
Some of the key points discussed at the webinar were:
- That there have been far too many work health and safety accidents in Australian workplaces, with several of these incidents causing severe injury, or even death. It was explained how the ISO 45001 Standards encourage a participatory culture within workplaces, where upper management are required to hold regular meetings with their staff to discuss their work health and safety concerns, and then take appropriate action to ensure that all employees are provided with a compliant, safe work environment.
- How the standards offer practical work health and safety strategies, that promote employee participation, to achieve its OH&S goals. This includes the formation of a staff-comprised Designated Work Group, who are committed to ensuring that the business continues to meet its OH&S obligations.
- How the standards address both the physical and mental wellbeing needs of staff. It was discussed how effective OH&S practices need to address the mental wellbeing requirements of staff, and provide supportive, compliant practices to prevent potential OH&S threats such as stress, worry, and burnout.
“45001 is a set of tools which can be used to significantly improve and drive a culture of safety… in any business”
– Julian Wandres, Occupational Hygiene specialist.
In the webinar, Julian explained that “the level of detail, complexity, resources and the extent of documentation that your system will require depends on the nature and scale of the business.” He went on to explain that while the ISO 45001 Standards can benefit all business’, the specific ways individual business’ stand to gain from its implementation depends on their specific operations.
Julian went on to note that this means that the best way for business’ to get maximum value from these standards is to adopt a “proactive” approach during the implementation process, by clearly establishing your company’s OH&S goals. Doing this makes the implementation process easier, as the organisation can then work at aligning its OH&S practices to the standards, thus ensuring safe, supportive, compliant work health and safety practices.
One of the central benefits of implementing these standards, Julian discussed, is that they can effectively be applied to all business types, no matter how small or large. He explained that this is because, in order to develop compliant OH&S practices, all organisations need to develop a thorough understanding of the potential OH&S hazards across their worksites, and then implement “appropriate tools to identify, assess, control and review risk mitigation strategies.” He noted that while larger business’ will require more comprehensive, detailed work health and safety and risk management processes, smaller business’ will still benefit from conducting a work health and safety audit of their existing practices, albeit on a smaller scale.
Watch the webinar for free
A video recording of this webinar is attached to this blog, so anyone who was unable to attend this session can watch it here at their own convenience. It was an interesting, informative session, full of practical insight and advice for business’ to gain an understanding of how to develop safe, compliant work health and safety practices.
Further, Anitech will be hosting another informative webinar next month, on the Digital transformation of your health and safety practices, and recommended practices in utilisation of software. It will be another informative, educational session, so please stay in touch for information regarding the date and time closer to the event.
If, after watching this webinar, you would like to know more about how these standards could be applied to your operations to help it identify and control risks, develop a safe, supportive work environment, and achieve regulatory compliance, then please give Anitech’s safety consultants a call today on 1300 802 163. They will be able to provide you with the same high level of insight and information that Fadi and Julian offered at our webinar. Doesn’t that sound like something worth following up on?
Please click here to read more about how the ISO 45001 Standards can be applied across your organisation to help it achieve its operational goals.
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