By Mark Hamon, Risk Management Specialist. Having a safety management system not only benefits your business, but also your customer reputation.  Safety is a key part of risk management where hazards or actions of the business, can impact on:

• Employee health & wellbeing
• Operational activities (disruptions)
• Prosecution& litigation risk
• Company reputation
• Financial loss
• Loss of customers or contracts
• Insurance costs
• Personal stress and morale
• Equipment damage

In order to prevent a business from being exposed to these kinds of risk, a business owner should develop or review their business’s safety management plan. Committing to such action shows a committed “Duty of Care” as a Manager to your business, employees and customers. So what are the benefits? The positive aspects of improving your business’s safety performance can include; better standard of safe workplace practices, enhances employee health and wellbeing, established systems of hazard identification and control, promotes legislative compliance, establishes a duty of care,  promotes employee consultation and communication, reduced operating times and costs, better customer reputation, reduced insurance premiums, promotes employee morale, enhances your competitive advantage, supports tender and contract requirements, promote marketing opportunities and supports best practice standards. Safety Management Systems can be bench marked against national standards AS/NZS 4801 or international standards OHSAS18001 of safety excellence depending on your needs. What are some other issues, I should consider for my workplace safety requirements?

• Do you have a broad brush risk assessment and task specific risk assessments for all business activities?
• Have you a risk management system in place for all your hazardous and dangerous materials?
• Is there an effective workplace induction and training system established for all your employees, visitors and contractors?
• What resources and training do you have in place for staff to carry out safety inspections and audits?
• How effective is your workplace injury management program?
• How current or relevant is your safety policies and procedures, do they need a serious review?
• Contractors can directly impact your business’s reputation and safety performance? Do you have a contractor management plan in your workplace?
• Emergency management systems, what do you have in place for your employees should an emergency occur?
• Safety management systems can be used to support evidence of compliance with pre-tender contract requirements. Can you show an established evidence trail of proof, and met all your customer’s safety needs to win work?
• Internal audits of safety systems can be a great way to show an independent review of your safety performance. Do you need an expert independent review?
• Do you have a document control system for safety management system? Do you have a control and review process in place?

By consulting Mark Hamon, the Risk Management Specialist from KONA Group, an evaluation of your workplace safety management requirements can best determine where to priorities actions for hazard identification and risk control of your business operations. Bottom line is don’t leave yourself exposed to possible workplace hazards and safety risk, get on the phone and contact KONA Groups Risk Management Specialist Mark Hamon at info@KONA.com.au or call 1300 611 288