Health and Safety in the Workplace

The Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992 changed on the 5^th May 2003 when the amendment that was passed by the Government on 24^th December 2003 came into effect. The new objective of the Act is to promote the health and safety of everyone at work and of other people in or around places of work. To achieve this, it requires people who are responsible for work and those who do the work to take steps to ensure their own health and safety and that of others. The Act also recognises that employees have a valuable contribution in making workplaces safe.

About the Act

The Act is about making work activities safe and healthy for everyone connected with them. It seeks to achieve that firstly by recognising that:

	Constructive employment relationships generate safe and healthy workplaces.
	Those involved in the work (employers, employees etc) are usually best placed to decide on the particular measures to make their own workplace safe.
	The only sure way to do that is by systematic management of all hazards.

 These principles are supported by specific arrangements that:

	Reinforce the primary responsibility as being that of the employer or other person responsible for the work.
	Acknowledge that employees too have responsibilities to themselves and others. In bringing those two sets of responsibilities together, require good faith cooperation between employers and employees.
	Have the expectation that employee participation in health and safety issues will bring to bear readily available knowledge on the issues.

The Act does not set out to tell people how to make particular work situations safe and healthy. Rather, it requires them to approach that systematically but flexibly, with the ability to draw on generalist information in Regulations, Codes of Practice, and Best Practice Guidelines, as well as from their workforce and specialist OSH personnel.

The standard that they have to achieve is that of having taken all practicable steps to make work safe – this is what can reasonably be expected given the circumstances, state of knowledge, resources etc. You don’t have to deal with things that you couldn’t possibly have known about or control. However if hazards that are found within your workplace are standard across your industry sector then this could considered by the courts as something you should have know and therefore taken practicable steps to control these hazards.

Involving employees in health and safety

Successful management of health and safety issues is best achieved through good-faith co-operation within the workplace and in particular, it should be achieved through the input of those doing the work. Employees often have the relevant knowledge and expertise of health and safety issues that contribute to making the workplace safer. When employers have to make decisions that affect the health and safety of employees at work, it can be useful to have information from their employees who face these health and safety issues in practice.

Obligations toward employee participation

Every employer must provide reasonable opportunities for their employees to participate effectively in ongoing processes for the improvement of health and safety in the workplace. If you already have an employee participation system and the employer, employees and their unions agree to keep it, then you may continue to use that system. There is no need to establish a new system if everyone in the workplace agrees to retain the existing one.

The only new requirement is that existing systems must include a process by which that system can be reviewed to ensure that they remain up to date – Can you show that this process has happened?

Do you have 'ongoing processes for improvement' in your place of work?

Among other things, this includes hazard identification and management systems, which employers must operate in all workplaces. It also includes the systems that employers must have in place for providing information to employees and health and safety representatives about health and safety issues – Do you need well trained people for this role?

As an Employer it is your duty to involve employees in health and safety matters

There is a general duty to provide reasonable opportunities for employees to participate effectively in ongoing processes for the improvement of health and safety in the workplace under Section 19B – this applies to all employers.

The obligation to develop an employee participation system and to allow training for health and safety representatives applies to employees who have worked for their employer for at least 180 hours over the previous 12-month period.

By enrolling in one of our Health and Safety Representatives Certificate courses or a National Certificate in Occupational Health and Safety or Health and Safety Injury Prevention to meet this obligation, whilst ensuring that those people are trained for the work they do, thereby complying with Section 13.

You need trainers and properly trained staff to comply with the training requirements of the Health and Safety in Employment Act (sections 7-14). Follow these hyperlinks to see that proof of training and performance are essential elements that are reviewed by both ACC and OSH and extra penalties apply for failure to involve staff in training and emergency procedures (section 52).