Over the past couple of months, there has been an increase in people working from home, but we realise that now is the time for a lot of these people to return to their workplace. Ensuring the safety of your work environment for employees and visitors is essential in the return to work. In this video, Michael talks about Work Health and Safety Work Environment Management.
When it comes to the work environment, this is the environment that we are working in. This is going to be different depending what industry your organisation operates in, but it’s just a general workplace. We’re not talking about processes or tasks, it’s just where we are.
Identify Hazards
When it comes to the work environment, you will mainly be using your inspection checklist to identify different potential hazards, such as:
- Entry and exits
- Housekeeping
- Floor surfaces
- Trip hazards
- Slipperiness
- Lighting
- Ventilation
- Air quality
- Heat
Heat is an issue in a lot of workplaces, particularly in the Australian Summer, and it can be a real health and safety issue.
Risk Assessment
The risk assessment for all of these is a very simple process. If you identify there to be a hazard you’ll use the standard risk assessment process. Please refer back to our risk assessment video, if you require any additional information on this.
Work Environment Code of Practice
When it comes to the work environment, we do have a really useful resource in the work environment code of practice – this is a document that gives a lot of information about specific control measures for these different topics.
For example, when it comes to lighting, you can actually look at the work environment code of practice, and it’ll give some recommendations as far as a lux reading for different types of tasks are recommended.
Specific Controls
The code of practice also provides you with some really good information as far as some standard requirements and specific controls. For example the facilities in the workplace, which could include:
- Amount of available drinking water
- How many toilets should you have per staff member
- Do you need change rooms and showers?
All these requirements will vary for different workplaces, but the code of practice gives clear guidance on what is required for different types of workplaces.
Takeaways
The work environment is fairly simple processes, nothing too complex about it.
- Identify work environment issues using a checklist
- Control as per risk assessment
- Refer to specific controls and facility guidance as per the Code of Practice
Thanks for watching the five minute safety series. If you felt like you got some value out of this video and blog, please check out some of our other videos via our YouTube Channel and feel free to subscribe so you can be updated on new videos.