Is Your Business Safe, Healthy and Environmentally Friendly?
Business in Australia needs to make sure that they comply with Government regulations in their daily business operations. That includes health and safety, and environmental requirements and recommendations.
If you’re planning to run a business or if you already have a business in Australia, here is what you can do to help you make sure that your business follows the health, safety and environmental requirements issued by the Australian Government.
Comply with Legislations that apply to all Businesses
BusinessBasics Australia details the safety compliance that you might be needing for your business. Accordingly, there are certain legislations that apply to all businesses.
These are the Australian Privacy Principles, Work Health & Safety, and Competition & Consumer Act 2010. To help you out with these, you can just focus on the areas of compliance for you not to be doing a very long reading of the legislations.
There are areas of compliance which often merge into existing legislations. Nevertheless, these areas can also give you an edge over your competitors.
So, compliance will not only help your business to be law abiding, but it can also help your business improve.
Thinking about how could that be possible? It involves working towards achieving international accreditation in environmental management, safety management or quality management.
To be able to achieve for an international accreditation, you must meet the requirements given by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
ISO is an international standard-setting body. This means that by gaining ISO accreditation, you have meet the requirements of a well-recognized and respected international organisation.
Identify what your organisation needs to do
Safe Work Australia provides you with information on the things that an organisation needs to do. According to them, if work health and safety (WHS) laws apply to your organisation, then, you must ensure health and safety protection to all of your workers, including the volunteers.
The protection covers the physical safety and mental health of all workers, including volunteers.
There are factors which your organisation need to consider to be able to provide health and safety measures to your workers and volunteers.
These factors include the type of business or undertaking it is; the type of work that the organization carries out; the nature of the risks connected with that trade and the probability of injury or illness occurring; what can be done to eradicate or minimize those risks and; the location or setting where the work is carried out.
Understand the health and safety obligations
Business Queensland (2017) points out that work health and safety obligations apply to everyone involved in a business. You have to meet your obligations by familiarizing the laws and following them.
Business owners and workers have their corresponding health and safety obligations.
If you are a business owner you need to provide and maintain a safe and healthy workplace for yourself, visitors and your workers,
If you are a worker, you must comply with instructions given for work health and safety.
To make sure that you satisfy your work health and safety obligations, Workplace Health and Safety Queensland (WHSQ) monitors the work health and safety in Queensland businesses.
WHSQ enforces work health and safety laws. It also conducts inspections and investigations to guarantee that you are meeting your obligations.
Be guided by a checklist for Work Health and Safety (WHS) Laws
A checklist may assist your organization in complying with work health and safety duties.
You can do your own checklist for your organization. This checklist should include specific items that are aligned with the WHS laws.
If you are still looking for a checklist, there is one which was provided by the Safe Work Australia.
It is not a complete account and there may be other actions needed to comply. You can follow Safe work Australia for the detailed checklist.
Create a health and safety management team under your organisation
A health and safety management team is like an internal WHSQ which can monitor the work health and safety obligations that your organization is complying. The team that you will create will hold responsibility with quality management, environmental management and safety management.
In quality management, the team should look into the organisation’s processes, procedures and quality control.
It’s also about ensuring your customer or client receives a product or service that meets or exceeds their expectations.
Moreover, in environmental management, the team should focus into how your organization impacts in the environment within your workplace. It helps you to streamline your waste management, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, find ways to reuse materials and much more.
Lastly, in safety management, the team should check whether your organization follows the minimum requirements for health and safety as prescribed by the government.
Create an energy efficiency plan
To create an energy efficiency plan, determine first the maximum energy consumption of your own business. To help you with it, the NSW Government offers a series of online guides.
The guides will help you identify potential energy-savings across different technologies and enterprises, as well as step-by-step advice on successfully implementing the plan with the support of your staff.
Assess the sustainability of your resources
Assessing the sustainability of your resources is important because it helps your business survive. If you want to assess the sustainability of your resources, read about sustainability projects in other businesses.
If those sustainability projects were effective in helping those other businesses survive, then, you could adapt some of those projects for your own business.
You can also use insights from case studies to inform energy performance and sustainability schemes in your business.
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