Priority areas
WorkSafe is working with employers, employees and employee representatives to set up and maintain systems of work so that employees are not exposed to hazards
This page explains how we are setting priorities so that our joint efforts make the greatest possible impact on workplace deaths and lost time injuries.
Contents
1. The goal
Our goal is to achieve a safety culture in workplaces, to the benefit of business and all Western Australians.
We can achieve this if all employers, managers, supervisors, safety and health representatives and employees continually focus on the three ThinkSafe steps:
- spot the hazard;
- assess the risk; and
- make the changes.
2. Setting priorities
To ensure that our preventive work has the greatest possible impact, we have identy priority areas that we target through inspection programs. These priority areas have been shown to result in high rates of injury or a higher than average number of deaths.
Initially, we will be concentrating mainly on the following eight priorities:
- mobile plant - traffic management;
- manual handling (particularly lifting);
- electricity;
- work at heights;
- slips and trips;
- hazardous substances;
- new and young workers; and
- guarding
These priorities change over time and new areas and issues may need to be added, particularly as technology changes, new work practices are adopted and new information on workplace risks become available. We are also confident that some problems will be substantially reduced so that they may no longer be considered a priority.
3. When our inspectors visit
Our inspectors will give the priority areas special attention when they visit your workplace. When checking that your workplace complies with occupational safety and health laws, they will be looking at some fundamental safety aspects in relation to each priority area and issue.
Inspectors will have a checklist of half a dozen or so critical elements. These elements do not cover all mandatory requirements under workplace safety and health laws. Rather, they cover many of the common problems that WorkSafe has found in workplaces, in relation to each priority area. Each checklist is a good starting point when working towards meeting your responsibilities in the priority area.
Our inspectors will provide information and work with you to continually improve safety, but they will also require you to correct any failure to meet required legal safety standards. They may give you a verbal instruction, issue an improvement notice or prohibition notice, or any combination of these steps.
An improvement notice will set a date, in consultation with you, by which any breach of safety legislation must be fixed. Failure to fix the problem by the agreed date can lead to prosecution. There are processes in place for you to request a review of an improvement notice.
If the inspector believes the safety problem presents a risk of imminent and serious injury or harm, he or she will issue a prohibition notice that will require the dangerous work activity to cease immediately. There is also a review process for prohibition notices, but work activity may not continue while they are reviewed.
Two considerations guide our inspectors in their work. They will be fair, but they will also be firm in enforcing workplace safety and health laws. It is the safety and lives of you and your colleagues that are at stake.
4. Priority area fact sheets
The fact sheets below provide extra detail about the priority areas and the elements covered in the investigation record to give you a clearer idea of what inspectors will be looking for when they go through their checklist.
These fact sheets will be invaluable to you in checking that you are meeting basic standards of safety in each area.
The seven fact sheets are:
- Safety priorities for forklifts (Mobile plant - traffic management);
- Safety priorities for manual handling (particularly lifting);
- Safety priorities for working with electricity;
- Safety priorities for working at heights;
- Safety priorities for preventing slips, trips and falls;
- Safety priorities for working with hazardous substances;
- Safety priorities for new and young workers; and
- Safety priorities for mobile plant
Our inspectors will provide these to you when they visit your workplace.
A bulletin has been released concerning the eighth priority area, guarding.