Do you have workplace incident procedures in place?

Now that January 1 2012 has come and gone, there will be some businesses that operate under the new WHS Act, and there will be some businesses that still operate under the relevant, existing OHS legislation in each State or Territory.

No matter whether you operate under the WHS Act or existing legislation, the procedures in place in your workplace for the notification of incidents are an essential part of your safety management plan.

And while we all hope that these procedures will never need to be put into action in our workplaces, unfortunately sometimes they do need to be.

Do you have workplace incident procedures in place?

In order for there to be a swift and smooth response to any incident that may occur in your workplace, you need to have a plan of action mapped out, have your employees both informed and trained in the plan, and make it available for your employees should they need to refer to it.

Use the following checklist as a guide in creating your own tailored procedure for after an incident has occurred in your workplace.

Checklist: How to respond to a workplace incident

• Seek immediate medical attention for the injured person by providing first aid or dialling 000 to request an ambulance.
• Arrange the rescue of anyone still within the incident area.
• Make the area safe to prevent any other incidents from occurring.
• Do not disturb the site of the incident unless it is to assist the injured person or make the site safe.
• Notify the health and safety regulator of the incident.
• Contact your legal adviser to help protect you rights and minimise your exposure to unnecessary prosecution.

For more detail about how to notify your health and safety regulator of an incident, and which kinds of incidents are considered to be notifiable, please refer to the relevant chapter in your OH&S Handbook:

• N1 Notification of Incidents; or
• N2 Notification of Incidents under the WHS Act.

If you are not yet a subscriber to the OH&S Handbook and you would like to learn more about how it can help you maintain a safe and healthy workplace, please click here for more information.

Tags: incident procedures

This entry was posted on Friday, January 6th, 2012 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Popular Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.