Tag Archives: Safety

Work Health & Safety also know as OH&S

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Prevention is better than a cure and although everyone thinks it will not happen to them, unfortunately, accidents happen! In Australia, small businesses have a duty of care for work health and safety.  This guide will help you understand how you can make your environment safer as well as what your legal requirements are to create a safe work environment.

Work Health and Safety (WHS) – sometimes called Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S) – involves the management of risks to the health and safety of everyone in your workplace. This includes the health and safety of anyone who works for you as well as your customers, visitors and suppliers.

WHY do I need to worry about Work Health and Safety?

If an employee or any type of visitor is injured while doing your business you will most likely be held liable for medical bills and lost wages. Unfortunately, some small businesses in Australia have lost their business because they did not take the proper precautions and have legislated insurance.

Benefits of having good WHS include:
  • staff retention
  • a reduction of injury and illness in the workplace
  • improved productivity and minimise disruptions
  • reduce your liability for injured workers

WHAT do I need to understand about WHS (OH&S)?

If you employ staff you need to take out workers’ compensation insurance. This insurance covers payments to workers for medical costs and rehabilitation expenses as well as lost wages if they are unable to work due to an injury or ill health. Workers compensation schemes are different by states and links for further details can be found further into this guide.

As a small business owner, you have an important role to play when it comes to championing safety. If you take the lead your employees will understand they should follow your safety procedures and raise safety issues.

You must put health and safety practices in place as soon as you start your business. Under Australian WHS laws, your business must ensure the health and safety of your workers and not put the health and safety of other people at risk. To do this you must:

  • provide a safe work environment
  • monitor the health of workers and conditions at the workplace
  • provide and maintain safe machinery and structures
  • provide safe ways of working
  • ensure safe use, handling and storage of machinery, structures and substances
  • provide and maintain adequate facilities
  • provide any information, training, instruction or supervision needed for safety
  • monitor the health of workers and conditions at the workplace

HOW do I manage Work Health & Safety Risks?

  1. Identify hazards in your workplace – look for physical (such as machinery noise), material or substance (for example, poison) and work task (like heavy lifting) hazards that may harm people.
  2. Assess risks – If an employee is exposed to one of these hazards how dangerous is it, can protection be added or controlled and should that hazard be fixed before work continues?
  3. Control Risk – look to prevent hazards when designing the process and if one is created work to remove that hazard.  The remaining risk may be minimised by using appropriate personal protective equipment and providing appropriate training and supervision.
  4. Review controls –  Schedule regular inspections to identify new hazards and ensure measures are being adopted.  Don’t wait for an issue to occur.
  5. Record and report safety issues- To begin with it identifies what is an issue and provides a record for any claims. You must keep records concerning certain hazards including:
    1. energised electrical work
    1. diving work
    1. hazardous chemicals
    1. plant
    1. equipment

A link to each state WHS laws and regulation can be found at the bottom of the page.

The WHS framework includes:
  • Act – outlines your broad responsibilities.
  • Regulations – set out specific requirements for hazards and risks, such as noise, machinery, and manual handling.
  • Codes of practice – provide practical information on how you can meet the requirements in the Act and Regulations.
  • Regulating Agency (regulator) – administers WHS laws, inspects workplaces, provides advice, and enforces the laws.

HINTS

It may be worth getting independent advice on the WHS requirements for your business.

Emergency plans and first aid – Part of WHS is being ready to respond if an accident or emergency happens. Do you have a first aid kit and someone trained to use it? If you evacuate do you know where you will safely assemble?

Extreme weather, including cold, extreme heat, hail or strong winds may affect your business. You must keep your workers safe and ensure you’re aware of the signs of heat-related illness and how to manage the risks.

You still have WHS responsibilities at a work function.  Your staff may be letting their hair down but ensure you have internal policies around acceptable behaviour, bullying and harassment in the workplace, and sexual harassment. Any alcohol should be served legally and responsibly.

Safe Work video on how small businesses can comply with WHS requirements

SafeWork NSW provides a helpful assessment tool https://www.safework.nsw.gov.au/easywhs-beta

SUMMARY – Preventative health & safety for small business

Work Health and Safety is an important consideration for your workplace including your requirement to have workers compensation insurance for your employees.

A safe environment encourages productive, happy staff.  Creating policies and plans in the event of an occurrence is a precaution that, although extra work, will help prevent and deal with any risk that may occur.  Each state has its own WHS laws and regulation.

Australian Capital Territory

Act – Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (ACT)

Regulation – WHS Regulation 2011 (ACT)

Codes – ACT Codes of Practice

Regulator – WorkSafe ACT

New South Wales

Act – Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW)

Regulation – WHS Regulation 2017 (NSW)

Codes – NSW Codes of Practice

Regulator – SafeWork NSW

Northern Territory

Act – Work Health and Safety (National Uniform Legislation) Act 2011 (NT)

Regulation – WHS (National Uniform Legislation) Regulations (NT)

Codes – NT Codes of Practice

Regulator – NT WorkSafe

Queensland

Act – Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Qld)

Regulation – WHS Regulation 2011 (Qld)

Codes – Qld Codes of Practice

Regulator – Workplace Health and Safety Queensland

South Australia

Act – Work Health and Safety Act 2012 (SA)

Regulation – WHS Regulations 2012 (SA)

Codes – SA Codes of Practice

Regulator – SafeWork SA

Tasmania

Act – Work Health and Safety Act 2012 (Tas)

Regulation – WHS Regulations 2012 (Tas)

Codes – Tas Codes of Practice

Regulator – WorkSafe Tasmania

Victoria

Act – Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (Vic)

Regulation – Occupational Health and Safety Regulations 2017 (Vic)

Codes – Vic Compliance Codes and codes of practice

Regulator – WorkSafe Victoria

Western Australia

Act – Occupational Safety and Health Act 1984 (WA)

Regulation – Occupational Safety and Health Regulations 1996 (WA)

Codes – WA Codes of Practice

Regulator – WorkSafe WA

Commonwealth

The Commonwealth jurisdiction covers workers for the Commonwealth Government (for example, the public service and the Australian Defence Force) and businesses licensed to self-insure under the Comcare scheme.

Act – Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Cwth)

Regulation – WHS Regulations 2011 (Cwth)

Codes – Commonwealth Codes of Practice

Regulator – Comcare

Backup keeping your data safe

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People most often consider a backup of their data when it is too late. I am sure you have heard of many horror stories of people losing all their data. The best insurance policy you can have for your business is to have a copy of your files that will enable you to continue your operation in the situation of some disaster. This guide will look at what you should back up and how to do it.

In information technology, a backup or data backup is a copy of computer data taken and stored elsewhere so that it may be used to restore the original after a data loss event.
Source Wikipedia

WHY do you need to backup your data?

Disaster can strike at any time and can come in many forms.  You could lose your data from:

  • Theft
  • Fire
  • Equipment failure, for example, hard drive failure
  • Data corruption
  • Malware or ransomware (see the guide on internet security)
  • Data is accidentally deleted

In theory, if you have a copy, especially at an offsite location, you can then use this to get yourself back to before the disaster.

WHAT do I need to consider in backing up my files?

Backups are periodic, short term images of files for disaster recovery purposes. Archiving, meanwhile, refers to the long-term storage of data that is no longer in regular use but can be restored if need be.  

Three rules of backing up:

  1. Backup regularly
  2. Backup to a reliable medium
  3. Backup to an offsite location

Just as important as backing up your data is the ability to restore your data.  If you cannot restore, then the backup is useless. Understand how to restore and keep a copy of, or know the download location of the software that will restore.

Label your backups, so you know which is the latest.

What data should you backup?

Everything!  Any file that you have created or modified should be backed up.  For a small business, this will include everything from accounting files to emails.  If you are using cloud-based applications, ensure that the vendor has appropriate backup procedures and save a copy of your cloud data locally so if their systems fail, you can still restore it.

HOW do I back up my data?

To back up our files, we need to decide on a medium, select a schedule and develop a process to complete the backup.

Media Options include:

  • USB (thumb) drives – a low-cost physical device that must be moved offsite.
  • External Hard drives – a larger capacity physical device that must be moved offsite.
  • Shared or NAS storage (see our guide on shared storage) – onsite network attached storage for local copies across multiple devices. (Easy way to implement a backup policy)
  • Cloud Storage – subscription-based storage with its own backup and security. Requires internet.

The best practice for a small business would be to backup all the files you are using. Make a  copy to keep at your office and an additional copy at an offsite location.

Set a schedule of how often this should be done.  The rule of thumb is how many days of work you can afford to lose.  As a general rule, either daily or weekly.

Finally, what is the process to actually do the backup?

  • Manual task – A person has the task of manually doing the backups based on a prescribed agenda.
    • Very labour intensive
  • Application-based – automatic routine as set up in an individual OS or application.  For example, Windows 10 can be set up to automatically back up all data off your PC
    • Only good for individual PCs or applications
  • Specialised backup software –
    • Costs more but may automate the entire process
  • Combination – Hybrid of the above 3.

We strongly recommend that you discuss this with your IT Support organisation as they will have the right knowledge to suggest and set up the right solution for you.

HINTS

Sync is not backup. With sync services such as cloud-based Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, OneDrive, or others, if you accidentally delete a file on one device, it’s gone on all of your devices as soon as the next sync happens.

Getting this solution right will take a bit of homework, but in the event of failure will save you big time.

When moving your confidential files, always ensure they are secure.

Consider having some backup log to understand what you have from when.

A full backup will back up everything.  An incremental backup will only backup those files that have changed since the last full backup.  Incremental backups will be much faster.

SUMMARY – Secure data backup

Data backup of all your files means that you can restore and keep working in the event of a disaster.  Back up solutions can be low cost and high maintenance through to high cost and automated.  Backups should be done reliably, securely, regularly, and kept at a different location.