What You Need To Know: What You Need To Do
Workplace Health and Safety and
Injury Management can be a source of irritation, frustration or fear for many
small to medium size business owners.
Large businesses with over 100 staff typically have staff trained in
injury management or prevention . Small to
medium business owners however, are more likely to be jack of all trades and master of
none, often having noexperience whatsoever in dealing with the workers compensation system or if they do, their experiences are very limited. This section outlines the keyconsiderations for small to medium size business' in workplace injury prevention.
Big businesses by the nature of
their size will inevitably have had some staff injured and have had to develop
skills in injury management to support them and fulfil their legal obligations.
Small businesses however, often have no experience whatsoever in dealing with
the workers compensation system or if they do, their experiences are very
limited.
Small business owners
may struggle when a staff member is injured. They may:
- Not have known what their obligations were in regards
to claim lodgement
- Have been given inaccurate information about what a
claim might mean for their bottom line. This may lead them to avoiding a claim, only to get fined down the
track by Workcover.
- Have had poor experiences with their insurer in terms
of being given clear information
- Have found the information at the NSW WorkCover or similar websites hard to find, access, or not be what they needed.
- HAve had poor experiences with their employee returning to
work. Their employee, (in their view) may not be injured as badly as they say, or their doctors are saying
- Be expected to find suitable duties for their workers when there are none, or their creation would utilise time and resources that would place
further strain on their business
- Have been expected to do things that seemed
unreasonable in view of the nature and size of their business.
The end result is that WHS is likely to be seen as a
“necessary evil”, it is often not given top priority because it does not effect the business on a daily basis unless something goes wrong and someone is injured. Infortunately many small and
medium size businesses only review their systems (or develop them) after
something has happened or because they are forced to.
SOME IMPORTANT NEWS:
- WHS DOES NOT HAVE TO BE
INCREDIBLY TIME CONSUMING
- IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE
EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE
- IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE A
DISTRACTION TO ACHIVING PRODUCTIVITY GAINS - IN FACT GOOD WHS AND INJURY MANAGEMENT POLICIES AND PROCEDURES
WILL ENHANCE PRODUCTIVTY AND PROFITS (Why do most successful big business take WHS
seriously?!)
GETTING STARTED OR REVIEWING WHAT YOU ALREADY DO -
Initial considerations:
- Decide
it matters and you are going to develop or review your systems
- Allocate
time to assessing what you are doing from a risk management perspective - much of this can be done within the
business.
- Plan
the methods you are going to use to
assess you WHS and risk management,
- Commit
yourself to some sort of
budget – costs need not be in purchasing anything, but rather in allocating and
using time to develop or change
systems, to train staff in new procedures and in monitoring their effectiveness.
