Every business is unique, make sure your health & safety program is relevant to your context!

There is lots of noise out in the marketplace from concerned small to medium businesses regarding health and safety.  There is a common misconception that complying with health and safety laws is highly complex.

Much of this stress and angst comes from missing the point about context.  All businesses (or PCBU’s as they are now known) are unique and have a unique risk profile. Health and safety laws state that a business must effectively manage the health and safety risk relative to the size and scope of the businesses operations. For many small to medium businesses, this process can really simplify and focus your efforts to provide a healthy, safe workplace.

Ask yourself these key questions:

1. Do we have clarity on all operations we undertake? In other words, do you understand what your people are doing in their job?
2. Do we understand what could go wrong? In other words, based on the environment, equipment, materials, tools, plant and tasks being executed, how could people be injured or become ill?
3. Have we got a clear game plan for managing these potential “what if’s” so they don’t occur?

The level of complexity of your health and safety program should be related specifically to the context of your operations.  Be careful not to ‘cookie cut’ health and safety initiatives from other businesses that have not been adjusted to your own unique context. This can create blind spots, put your focus in the wrong area and result in you investing hard earned money into solutions that are not right for your business.

Using a high-quality diagnostic like Safe365 can play an important role in providing you with a set of health and safety priorities that are specific to your own unique context. This allows you to put your time and money into developing your health and safety program across the areas that most need it, ensuring you efficiently achieve appropriate health and safety capability.

Safe365's high-quality diagnostic assessment ensures your business focuses on the areas you need to enhance, improving efficiencies and making your dollars go further.