The location of your business can determine your health and safety policies

Unique health and safety dangers in Australia are a constant worry for businesses. Taking into account the threat of bushfires, floods, cyclones, and other dangers should be a priority for organisations set in areas where those threats are imminent.

HR Leader recently spoke to Kerry Kingham, chief executive of The Chooze Shop, about the importance of health and safety measures and the unique threats that are a danger to various Australian businesses based on the area in which they reside.

Kingham uses North Queensland as an example of an area that is prone to unique health and safety threats that are a danger for businesses in the area.

“If you’re in Far North Queensland, it’s cyclones, it’s flooding, it’s extreme weather, but that’s going to impact people more and more as climate change becomes more evident. Even things like heat, whether you’re working indoors or outdoors, you still need to be aware of that sort of thing,” she said.

Being in these areas, employers must ensure that their employees have the proper training in case a situation does arise. If employees are trained, and therefore knowledgeable of a unique threat, then the risk of it being a damaging situation is far less likely.

“It all comes down to education and training. First aid training, especially. For example, if you’re working in a more remote area around bushland, or say, the Australia zoo, you’ve got to have more focus on what to do around bites and stings,” Kingham said.

“If you’re working in a resort in Far North Queensland, you’re going to have to make sure that all your staff are trained around how to manage stingers and jellyfish and all those sorts of things. So, you have to be a bit situational too, around what you add on to your standard work health safety training.”

Having that situational training within your health and safety policies can be the difference between a bad situation becoming a horrible one. Adapting is another key inclusion when it comes to health and safety, considering the impact that climate change is having, the weather has never been more of a threat to employees than it is now.

“Things like heat stress are going to be more prevalent. If you’re working in construction or working externally, you have to have really tight protocols around that and make sure people adhere to them and not try and push through. So, if you’re looking at things like the construction sector, a lot of them have things like completion bonuses in place,” Kingham said.

“The bonuses ensure that you’re not encouraging the wrong behaviours by linking payments or extra money to performances that could be impacted by the heat. It’s so bosses can’t pull the old ‘if we finish this today, you’ll get your bonus or extra wage.’ But then 50 per cent of that workforce end up with heat stress. So again, it’s that walking the talk and making sure that you’re really clear about your policies.”

Walking the talk when it comes to health and safety is crucial, being complacent or lethargic with these measures can lead to some disastrous consequences. As the working world changes, employers must continue to adapt their policies to their environment and the environmental changes that occur, if not, they are directly putting their employees at risk.

The transcript of this podcast episode was slightly edited for publishing purposes. To listen to the full conversation with Kerry Kingham, click below: