1. . WorkSafe WA – Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety. This is the Western Australian Government agency that is accountable for the execution of the Occupational Safety and Health act 1984. The main objective of WorkSafe is to lessen any workplace hazards, injuries, rate of diseases in agreement with the national targets by the reduction incidents of high risk, improve the capability of the business workers and workers for managing the occupational safety and health successfully, elimination of the  hazards at the design state and consolidating  the capacity of the government for influencing occupational health and the safety outcomes (WorkSafe, Australia, 2011).  

b. PCBU stands for a Person Conducting business or Undertaking. There is almost a difference between an employer as per the OSH and a PCBU, as PCBU;s duty is to safeguard the health and safety, eradicate any health and safety risks, minimize any risks to for the employees while they are at work, which is in accordance to section 20 of the OHS standard.  According to WHS act 20, PCBU should ensure that the entry and exit at the workplace is does not carry any harm. As per the WHS Act, 22-25, 26 a PCBU can implant, install or design any structures that are to be used ensuring them to be safe for the employees. WHS 27 states that there has to be a PCBU officer who should exercise “due diligence” for ensuring PCBU meets the duty. This is also in compliance with the section 22 of the OHS standards. WHS Act s 19(5) states that an employer or a person, who are self –employed, should ensure that they are safe during the working hours. The PCBU should ensure that their acts or omissions does not adversely affects the health and safety of the other persons, which is similar to the section 23 of the OHS standards.

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d. The policies should clearly outline, a procedure statement, definition of specific terms like Incidents, hazards, near misses. It should outline the roles and the responsibilities of the management and the employee representatives, their roles in risk assessment and management , procedures of hazard identification and reporting, description of whom to report, incidents of near miss, incident reporting and important contacts that can be helpful during hazards.

e. Due diligence can be regarded as an audit, investigation, or a review that is normally  performed by a person, before entering any kind of contract of deal with another party within a certain care standard. According to WHS section 27, the PCBUs directors are accountable to practice “due diligence” to ensure that all the PCBU’s are working in compliance with the WHS regulation and WHS act.

f. Industry standards are documents which contain requirements which has been agreed by companies and people of specific field. Meeting the industrial standards would help in achieving high standards of safety and health. Maintenance of the industrial standards enables better and safe working practice, prevents workers from getting harmed inside an organization during working, ensuring a monitoring of the health workers and conditions at the workplace. In a lawsuit, the industry standards are used usually for establishing negligence or failure to perform under a contract. If the performance is at a level lesser than the industrial standard then it can be claimed by the plaintiff that the defendant has failed to meet an appropriate industrial standards.

2. According to WHS Act section 47, An organization should have a code of practice supervising persons conducting business or undertaking how workers can be consulted effectively. An organization should ensure that the workers might take part in consultation and needs to be represented in association to work health and safety (WorkSafe, Australia, 2011). According to WHS Act section 46, Two different duty holders should form partnership and would consult and cooperate with each other so far is reasonable practicable. An organization should consult with the employees about the health and the safety requirements before installation of a new device or a strategy. According to WHS regulation 309, the contractors of a construction project are entitled to document in the WHS management plan for the project, the arrangements for consultation, cooperation and cooperation between the PCBUs at the site needs to be done (WorkSafe, Australia, 2011).

3.  Three examples of hazards working in a community service includes hazards of being exposed to communicable diseases, hazards of being exposed to violence, work related stress. The community care workers can use personal protective equipment while working in the community,  during any pandemic situation. Community violence against a particular client can be prevented by the tracking particular behaviour of the concerned client, by examining the behavioural history of the clients, designing of individualized plans. All the support workers should have the knowledge of the procedures after a violent incident or a threatening situation. In order to avoid community service related work stress, It can be reduced by the proper delegation of the tasks, to develop resilience of mind by taking breaks or by doing meditation or by spending time with the closed ones.

4. The two HR policies are “safety and health policies” that will discuss the safety and the emergency processes and requires the employees to report on any levels of work related injuries. Another policy is the zero-tolerance policy against any kind of violence and sexual harassments, which gives right to the employers to terminate and employee on grounds of violence and sexual harassment (Johnstone, 2011).

5. An employee Assistance program can be referred to as a work based intervention, that can be provided to an employee for resolving personal problems, which might be adversely affecting the performance of an employee. For example, child care referrals to a working mother, who had been struggling to keep the balance between her professional life and her baby, but is failing to care a good care of her baby and is also not being able to be productive for the company, or it might also involve wellness programme or an employee who had been under the ill effects of alcoholism and hence cannot contribute to the betterment of the organization/company (Mattke et al., 2016). EAP services are generally voluntary, work-based short term and confidential program. The support will be withdrawn, once the employee comes back to the normal pace of life. Any active state employee, his/her lawful spouse, registered partner and unmarried children are eligible for utilizing the EAP (Mattke et al., 2016).

6. Incident investigation helps in identifying the direct and the root cause of the incident. It also helps in identifying the risk reducing measures for preventing any similar events in the near future.  Record keeping helps to maintain an efficient workplace health and safety, as it can help in preventing hazards and control risks before the occurrence of a hazardous incidents. The records can include the policies and procedures for health and safety, the organizational codes of conducts, the trainings and the induction records, incident reports, equipment records, hazard identification and assessment of the risks. It helps in getting access to some particular incident or important information. Documentations are important to risk management, which can be used for proving compliance, avoid the potential penalties and fee, to investigate about any past incidents or any other information about the WHS legislation. Documents of identified hazards, chosen control measures, training records are usually maintained (Safe Work Australia, 2017)..

7. In case of emergency evacuation, it is necessary to notify the Fire and Emergency services and the security, who will then notify some other emergency personnel. There is phone Security number, where one can give name, building, level of room number for receiving an help. Fire services and ambulance service can be contacted in case of a chance of injury.

8. Steps of hazard management 

a. Hazard identification process- Hazard identification is the process that is generally used for evaluating a particular situation, items or substances that can cause harm to patients. Hazard identification should be done at time of designing and implementation, before any tasks are done, before purchasing and installation of a new machinery, at the time of inspection, after incidents, near misses, minor hazards and mishaps. In order to ensure that all the hazards are found it is necessary to include routine activities like maintenance, report or surveillance, looking at the physical work environment, devices, products and materials, reviewing the incident as well as the injury records, consulting with the workers, examining risk to the visitors (WorkSafe, Australia, 2011).

 b. Principles of Risk Assessment including analysing residual risk

A risk assessment is mainly for the determination of the severity of a risk, or whether any control measures are capable to reduce the hazard, the actions that should be taken for controlling the risk. Many of the vulnerabilities and the related risks are well known and have standardized control measures. The degree of the risk assessment takes place depending upon the type of hazards and the information. A risk assessment needs to be done if the PCBU is not sure about the hazards, if the work activities are prone to hazards, for example a chemical manufacturing company. Risk assessment should also be done if there is a change at the workplace, which might effect on the effectiveness of the various control measures. Some hazards might have some exposed standards like the noise or the airborne contaminants, which might be requiring scientific testing or measurements (Safe Work Australia, 2017).

c. Hierarchy of control and its application

The hierarchy of hazard control ranks from the topmost level of control and safeguard to the lowermost level. It should be said, that the highest protection level is to eliminate the risks, followed by replacement of the hazards with a safer options, separating the hazards from workers, visitors, clients, reduction of the risks by engineering control, reduction of the exposure to the hazard using an administrative control. The lowest level of risk control is the use of personal protective equipment. Elimination of risk is the most effective level of protection and if this is not feasible, one must reduce the risk of the hazard by using other levels in the hierarchy. The administrative and the PPE use are the least effective level in reducing the risk. They do not control the source of the hazards and gives protection at a personal level (Safe Work Australia, 2017).

d. Policies for risk assessment –A risk management policy statement can be referred to as a documentation of the risks of hazards that can occur while conducting a specific action, as any activity can have some involved risks. Every organization creates risk management policy procedures for defining the risks. This also informs the person conducting the activity about the associated risks. A risk assessment policy can make for a safer work place by alerting the employees about any risk associated to their job and what step has to be taken for minimizing the risk. Risk assessment policies also contains statements which protects the business against any claims of employee injury , if the employee was alarmed by the risk, yet did not follow any proper written instructions. The risk management process includes identification of hazards linked with the job, making decisions if the risk reducing approaches have been adopted to prevent any kind of harm to an employee.

9. Work Safe  Australia, provides safety checklists, that can be followed by the employers  and the employees to prevent hazard at a  workplace. It provides guidelines about hazards of constructions and the mining department and any other sort of workplace hazards. The Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care, also provides the baseline data of the hazards occurring. The Australian Bureau of Statistics, it gives the percentages of accidents/ hazards occurring every day in comparison the National Standards (Safe Work Australia, 2017).

10. A Safe Design can be referred to as the integration between identification of hazards and risk assessment early in the design for minimising the risk of injury throughout the life of the substance like structures, constructions, vehicles and devices (WorkSafe, Australia, (2011). A Safe design approach begins initially during the phase of the concept development or while making decisions about the design, the materials that needed to be used, the construction techniques, the installation, the dismantling, the disposal, by-product, the possibility of environmental hazards and human hazards and the legislation and the industrial standards that has been followed. The five main principles of Safe design includes- Persons with control, Product lifecycle, Systematic risk management, Knowledge about Safe design  and effective communication and documentation of the design as well as information about the risk control. A Safe design generally incorporates also ergonomic designs for eliminating any sorts of workplace hazards with respect to the designs, operational procedures or while manufacturing the product(Safe Work Australia, 2017).

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References

 Safe Work Australia, (2017). Model Code of Practice: How to manage work health and safety risks. Access date: 12.6.2020. Retrieved from:https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/book/model-code-practice-how-manage-work-health-and-safety-risks#3-step-2how-to-assess-risks

WorkSafe, Australia, (2011). Occupational Health and Safety Act and Regulations .Access date: 12.6.2020. Retrieved from:https://www.worksafe.vic.gov.au/occupational-health-and-safety-act-and-regulations

Johnstone, R. (2011). Dismantling worker categories: the primary duty of care, and worker consultation, participation and representation, in the model Work Health and Safety Bill 2009. Policy and Practice in Health and Safety, 9(2), 91-108.

Mattke, S., Liu, H., Caloyeras, J., Huang, C. Y., Van Busum, K. R., Khodyakov, D., & Shier, V.   (2013). Workplace wellness programs study. Rand health quarterly, 3(2).

 Work Safe, Australia, (2017) .Record keeping. Access date: 12.6.2020. Retrieved from:https://worksafe.tas.gov.au/topics/Health-and-Safety/managing-safety/getting-your-safety-systems-right/record-keeping