OH&S

Occupational Health & Safety has become a prominent issue in the current economic climate as work related injuries, compensation claims and subsequent payouts and fines continue to effect the health of employees and the bottom line of employers.

Figures provided on The WorkSafe website (www.worksafe.vic.gov.au) show that since 1985, there have been more than 667,000 injury claims and 2440 claims in respect to work related fatalities in Australia. In 1999-2000 alone, this figure was over 33,170 injury claims and 103 work related deaths. Excluding fatalities, average individual claims are costing employers around $16,500 and between 135 and 852 days of employee inactivity. It must also be remembered that these figures do not include self employed workers and those accidents that are never lodged with WorkSafe.

While there has been a continuing improvement over the last 10 years, there are still far too many workplace accidents and fatalities. Many of these accidents and the subsequent payouts and fines could have been avoided with more precise and up to date industry specific training for both employers and employees.

With increased civil and criminal culpability for all persons and companies found blameworthy in the workplace the need for better training and workplace management has become an essential consideration in the running of all types of businesses.

Safety training programs currently available are generally not comprehensive in their design or content, nor are they targeted to specific industries. Generally they are not sufficiently focused on the employee to be trained and have only informal follow up procedures in place. Worse still, te programs are generally outdated and generic in nature, created in the United States or targeted toward Secondary School students.