Keeping up with safety legislation requirements can be difficult. You want a safe work environment but you're busy just keeping everything else running. Anywhere where work is undertaken, whether for payment or not is considered a workplace; and all workplaces are covered by the jurisdiction of relevant state health and safety acts.

A lot of people fear the responsibilities that are heaped upon them by these acts but the obligations are not as onerous as would first appear if you take time to understand them and are prepared to take important yet simple steps to manage them. Due to the similarity between the major provisions of all of Australia’s state health and safety acts; I will refer to the Queensland Workplace Health & Safety Act 1995.

In a nutshell, the aim of health and safety legislation is to prevent a person’s death, injury or illness being caused by a workplace.

Current employers’ obligations come in the form of section 28(1) and (2) of the WH&S Act whereby A person who conducts a business has an obligation to ensure the workplace health and safety of the person, each of the person’s workers and any other person is not affected by the conduct of the relevant person’s business or undertaking. The obligation is discharged when the person, the person’s workers and any other persons are not exposed to risks to their health and safety arising out of the relevant person’s business or undertaking.

Acknowledging your obligations and committing time and resources to health and safety will pay you dividends; particularly with respect to experience based WorkCover premiums. Other benefits of managing workplace health and safety come in the form of improved morale, lower absenteeism, skill retention, improved and more efficient business processes and other intuitive benefits such as good public image and reputation.

Generally, workplace health and safety can be ensured when employees and others are not exposed to the risk of injury. There is a hierarchy of legislation from act, regulations, codes of practice to Australian Standards that give you guidance on specific health and safety issues but, where no guidance material can be found (95% of the time), the principles of risk management must be applied. Where no guidance material is available, Section 27A of the WH&S Act requires employers to adopt the principles of risk management by considering measures in the following order: Eliminating the hazard, substituting the hazard, isolating the hazard, minimising the risk by engineering means, applying administrative measures, and using personal protective equipment (known as the hierarchies of control).

It is important to maintain documentation that supports or justifies the decision to treat a risk in a certain manner as your decisions may be scrutinised by inspectors or lawyers in the future. It is timely to remind resort managers of the litigious times we live in and of how both inaction and the selection of inappropriate control measures can have dire consequences.

A word of caution must be given to employers who think they are discharging their obligations by erecting signage everywhere. As per the hierarchies of control, signage is a form of administrative control that should only be considered once other hierarchies have been considered. It is no good to erect a sign warning people about a hazard if you have not taken other more substantial steps to rectify the hazard. This merely shows lawyers that you identified the hazard but failed to act properly. Signs have their place but only as a last resort, and as part of a broader, safer system of work.

If you employ more than 30 people, you need to appoint a qualified workplace health and safety officer. This person can be yourself as long as you are qualified but it is now mandatory for the appointed WHSO to perform at least one annual workplace assessment. The assessment must be conducted using the approved safety criteria issued by Workplace Health & Safety Queensland, unless you have a workplace health and safety committee that has agreed on alternative safety criteria for inclusion in the assessment.

The results of this assessment must also be recorded, including recommendations that have been made to rectify identified hazards and unsafe practices.

Even if you do not employ 30 people and you have chosen not to appoint a WHSO, it is advisable that you take similar steps to identify hazards in the workplace. Regardless of the statutory obligation, common law would still require evidence of you exercising proper diligence. If you or your WHSO do not feel confident performing assessments, or you feel you need advice, it may be wise to contact a professional to point you in the right direction.

In order for employers such as resort managers to manage their obligations for preventing injuries and illness in the workplace, it is recommended that a safety management system (or elements thereof) be developed to comply with the Australian/New Zealand Standard AS/NZS 4804:2001 Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems. At the very least, employers must provide and maintain safe plant, provide safe systems of work, provide training and adequate supervision and have procedures for hazard identification, hazard/risk assessment and control of activities, products and services over which they have control. The employer should also establish and maintain procedures to identify all legal and other requirements that are directly attributable to health and safety issues related to the employer’s activities. The employer should keep this information up to date. Several sources can be used to identify health and safety regulations and ongoing changes, including:

(a) all levels of government;

(b) industry and employer associations

(c) employee associations and unions;

(d) commercial databases; and

(e) professional services.