OH&S

Occupational Health & Safety, or OH&S for short, is one of the most important policies in each and every workplace around Australia. You can bet your bottom dollar that every job interview you go for will have a question about OH&S and if you are not familiar with it the employer will be far less likely to consider you for the position.

It’s all about a safe workplace.

Safework SA

One of Safework SA’s functions is the investigation of serious accidents and incidents to establish if they could have been prevented.

This website is your one stop shop for all your occupational health and safety questions!!

What is Occupational Health & Safety?

Occupational Health & Safety is a term used for reducing the risk of injury or illness in the workplace. Largely, OH&S is about common sense and personal risk assessment, but, it is also about the employer providing adequate safety precautions to ensure the safety of all people in the workplace.

For instance – installing appropriate ventilation is more effective as a safety measure than expecting workers to monitor the levels of hazardous vapours in the air they breathe.

Wikipedia describes the reasons for OH&S as falling into 3 main categories:

Moral – An employee should not have to risk injury at work, nor should others associated with the work environment.

Economic – many governments realize that poor occupational safety and health performance results in cost to the State (e.g. through social security payments to the incapacitated, costs for medical treatment, and the loss of the “employability” of the worker). Employing organisations also sustain costs in the event of an incident at work (such as legal fees, fines, compensatory damages, investigation time, lost production, lost goodwill from the workforce, from customers and from the wider community).

Legal – Occupational safety and health requirements may be reinforced in civil law and/or criminal law; it is accepted that without the extra “encouragement” of potential regulatory action or litigation, many organisations would not act upon their implied moral obligations.

 

For more information please feel free to visit Wikipedia and have a read for yourself!