Thinking of commissioning a WHS review?

Here’s everything you need to know.

As one of the leading WHS consultants in Sydney and Melbourne we get many requests from potential clients who know that their health and safety practices are not up to scratch, but they don’t quite know why. Often there are ‘trigger events’ such as a serious incident, a visit from the safety regulator, or questions in a tender that require them to demonstrate they are managing safety correctly.

So, for many reasons business owners and managers call and ask for a ‘WHS review’ or an ‘OHS Review’.  However, there are several different types, and the purpose of this article is to help you understand how a particular type of review may give you the important information that you need.

Here are the broad types of WHS (OH&S in Victoria) Reviews:

Safety System Documentation Review

A review of your safety system documentation is by far the most common request we get. Business owners see safety in the evening news and realise that it’s time to make sure they are compliant with the state Health and Safety regulations. Often they are construction contractors who have had a visit from the regulator and the resulting Improvement Notice is a wake-up call that they have dropped the ball on safety.

Getting the safety system documentation right is essential. Safety must be managed in a systematic manner if you are to have any chance in being compliant with the law. Several years ago, Australia adopted the ISO 45001 standard for OHS Management systems, so if your system is pre 2016 then it was probably based on the old standard which placed insufficient emphasis on consultation with workers, among other things.  Other recent changes in the legislation have also occurred around the management of asbestos, respiratory crystalline silica, scaffold safety, and psychosocial hazards just to name a few, so if your existing WHS system is more than three years old it needs to be reviewed and updated.

For a safety system documentation review (sometimes known as an OH&S system gap analysis) our team at BWC Safety will review your documentation against the framework of the ISO 45001 standard and the relevant OH&S Act and regulations. We can simply identify the gaps and leave it to you to make the improvements, or more commonly our clients will ask us to bring the whole system in line with best practice.

Time and costs to complete this vary depending on the size and complexity of the business. Small businesses usually take around two weeks to complete and range from around $3k.  Large businesses with multiple types of operations across different states will take several months and cost anywhere between $10k – $15k.

There are plenty of people who will sell you a ‘cookie cutter’ safety system that does little to satisfy the safety legislation and nothing to keep your people safe.  The key to getting a worthwhile system is to take the time to understand the nature of the business and its main OH&S risks.

The health and safety system must provide guidance in two broad ways:

• System core elements must provide guidance on best practices for things like risk management, incident reporting and investigation, consultation with workers etc. Following the framework of ISO 45001 ensures that this is achieved.
• Safe Work Practices – must be understood and documented in a simple way that explain the nature of the risks and how the job is to be done safely. A worker or supervisor must be able to pick up a procedure and clearly understand what has to be done. This is the aspect that is neglected in the ‘cookie cutter’ systems and without this the system is only going to sit on a shelf.

Although BWC Safety will develop a great OH&S system that looks highly professional, please let us make one thing clear:

A great health and safety management system will not meet the regulatory requirements or keep your people safe – UNLESS IT IS IMPLEMENTED!

Which takes us to the second most common type of WHS Review:

Work Practices & Culture Review

This is where the rubber hits the road.  Once you can confirm that your WHS system meets the required standard and can provide practical guidance to your people it is very important to get an experienced and independent OH&S consultant to conduct a WHS review of the work practices and culture. Essentially this type of WHS review determines if ‘you do what you say you do’.

Our approach is to assess your work practices and culture by holding confidential one on one interviews with a cross section of staff and then conducting a number of site visits to observe the work practices.

The end result with this type of WHS review is an understanding of the type of culture that exists along with practical advice on how to improve the culture of the organisation. Examples of cultural aspects include answers to questions such as:

• Do our staff follow procedures, or do they take shortcuts with safety?
• Do our leaders model the right safety behaviours?
• What do staff think of their supervisors?
• Do our procedures make sense?
• Is it profit before safety?
• Is there a just and fair culture?

This type of review is very helpful in circumstances where the business leader wishes to benchmark the culture of the organisation against its peers. We provide a detailed management report with recommendations and a feedback session to the executive.

Timing and costs are a factor of the size and complexity of the organisation. A typical safety work practices and culture review for an organisation of 1000 people will take around six weeks to complete and costs will be in the range of $40k to $80k.

Targeted Health and Safety Reviews

Targeted WHS reviews can be done across any aspect of safety and are usually requested by savvy WHS managers who want an objective and independent opinion on the topic at hand. Recent popular requests include reviews of psychosocial hazards; safety critical risks; and board due diligence.

Due to their narrow focus, they are normally conducted using a combination of safety information review, confidential interviews and site observations. Small groups of subject matter experts are sometimes assembled in risk workshops and this guarantees that the best minds have been applied to the topic.

Final Thoughts

Hopefully we have provided some useful guidance for those who wish to engage a consulting firm for a WHS review. Regardless of whether your review is for safety systems, work practices, culture, or a more targeted requirement, the use of an experienced OHS consulting firm provides the benefits of objectivity and the ability to deliver feedback to executive staff in a respectful but candid manner.