Dashpivot article – Occupational Health and Safety Plan
Occupational Health and Safety Plan
In this article, we'll cover all of the critical details about the important Occupational Health and Safety Plan, including its purpose, key elements, and steps to develop and implement one effectively to ensure workplace safety.
What is an Occupational Health and Safety Plan?
An Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Plan is a comprehensive approach aimed at ensuring the safety and health of employees within a working environment.
The safety improvement plan sets out processes and practices to help prevent injuries, illnesses, and fatalities on the job. Its emphasis is on proactive measures to identify and manage workplace hazards, thereby reducing risks.
This breakdown of occupational health and safety plans below is relevant to construction and industrial style companies, while there is some overlap with other industries, we’ll be focusing on its relevance to built world companies.
What is the purpose of an Occupational Health and Safety Plan?
The purpose of an Occupational Health and Safety Plan is the prevention of workplace injuries, illnesses, and fatalities. Here are the main objectives and purposes of an OHS Plan:
- Protection of Workers: At its core, the primary purpose of an OHS Plan is to protect employees and other individuals at the workplace from potential hazards that could harm them physically, mentally, or emotionally.
- Compliance with Legislation: Many countries and regions have laws and regulations governing workplace health and safety. An OHS Plan helps ensure that an organisation is compliant with these regulatory requirements.
- Identification of Hazards: The plan provides a systematic approach to identifying potential dangers in the workplace, from machinery operations to chemical exposures to ergonomics.
- Risk Management: Beyond identifying hazards, the plan outlines measures to assess, prioritise, and mitigate risks associated with these hazards.
- Emergency Preparedness: The plan ensures that there are protocols in place to handle unexpected events, such as fires, chemical spills, or natural disasters, thereby reducing potential harm.
- Promotion of a Safety Culture: A well-documented and communicated OHS Plan fosters a culture where safety is valued and prioritised, encouraging employees at all levels to participate actively in safety initiatives.
- Reduction in Economic Costs: Injuries, illnesses, and accidents can be expensive in terms of medical costs, compensation, lost workdays, and reduced productivity. An OHS Plan helps reduce these economic impacts.
- Enhanced Reputation: Organisations that prioritise safety and have a robust OHS Plan in place are viewed more favourably by employees, customers, partners, and the general public.
- Continuous Improvement: The plan provides mechanisms for regular reviews, audits, and feedback, facilitating a process of ongoing improvement in safety standards and practices.
- Training and Awareness: The OHS Plan ensures that employees are adequately trained and aware of potential workplace hazards and know how to protect themselves.
- Clear Communication: It sets clear lines of communication regarding safety concerns, reporting mechanisms, and responsibilities, ensuring that everyone knows what's expected of them.
- Legal Protection: In the unfortunate event of workplace incidents, having a comprehensive OHS Plan can offer legal protection to organisations, showing that they had taken due diligence in providing a safe work environment.
In essence, an Occupational Health and Safety Plan for construction is a proactive approach to ensure the wellbeing of everyone in a workplace, aiming to prevent accidents and illnesses before they occur, and is a vital component of responsible organisational management.
How should you document an Occupational Health and Safety Plan
Here's a structured approach to documenting an OHS plan for construction activities:
- Introduction:
- Purpose of the OHS plan.
- Scope (covering which areas, departments, or activities).
- Objectives and goals.
- Policy Statement:
- A formal statement by senior management outlining the organisation's commitment to health and safety.
- Roles and Responsibilities:
- Clearly define the responsibilities of everyone from senior management to individual employees.
- Include any dedicated safety roles, like Safety Officers or Safety Committee members.
- Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment:
- Detailed procedure for identifying hazards.
- Methodology for assessing the risks associated with those hazards.
- Control Measures:
- Procedures to eliminate or mitigate identified risks.
- Hierarchy of control measures: elimination, substitution, engineering controls, administrative controls, and personal protective equipment (PPE).
- Training and Education:
- List of required training programs.
- Schedule for regular training and refresher courses.
- Procedure for documenting training and maintaining records.
- Emergency Procedures:
- Detailed plans for various emergency scenarios (e.g., fire, chemical spills, medical emergencies).
- Evacuation routes and assembly points.
- Contact details for emergency services.
- Monitoring and Review:
- Inspection schedules and procedures.
- Health surveillance programs (if required).
- Process for regular review of the OHS plan's effectiveness.
- Incident Reporting and Investigation:
- Procedures for reporting incidents, accidents, or near misses.
- Steps for conducting investigations.
- Corrective action processes.
- Communication and Consultation:
- Mechanisms for sharing safety-related information.
- Procedures for addressing concerns or feedback from employees.
- Documentation and Record Keeping:
- List of essential safety records.
- Procedures for maintaining, storing, and accessing these records.
- Legal and Regulatory Compliance:
- Reference to applicable laws, regulations, and standards.
- Procedures to ensure ongoing compliance
Once the Occupational Health and Safety plan is documented, it should be shared throughout the organisation, ensuring all employees have access to it. Regularly review and update the document, especially after significant changes in operations, after incidents, or when new information becomes available.
To see a construction safety plan template, see the example here.
See an example of how you could document an Occupational Health and Safety plan for construction and industrial style work below.
Free Safety Improvement Plan Template
Use this digital Occupational Health and Safety Plan template
Use a digital Occupational health and safety plan
A digital health and safety plan template can help to request, record and action Occupational Health and Safety plans.
This occupational health and safety plan form comes standardised with sections and field identify risks and potential hazards, set control measures, set roles and responsibilities and what training is necessary.
Customise the occupational health and safety plan with any extra fields, sections or signatures you need with the drag and drop form builder.
Capture signatures via manual eSignatures on mobile or tablet, or fully contactless signing via scanning of digital IDs.
Build automated workflows for Occupational Health and Safety Plans
An Occupational health and safety plan app offers a modern solution to traditional challenges faced in health and safety management - by digitising and centralising safety-related functions, you can enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of health and safety practices.
Create workflows to easily queue new projects or work, complete safety plans and then get approval signoff needed for compliance.
Give your team access to occupational health and safety plans on site via their mobile or tablet so they're always aware of what safety concerns they need to be following.
Attach photos and videos or risks and hazards directly to your health and safety reports with automatic timestamps, geotagging, photo markup and smart tags.
Get detailed analytics on project, team and site safety in the Analytics Dashboard to find ways to keep your employees safer.
Safe Work Procedure template
Keep people following safe every day work procedures, with ease.
Site Specific Induction template
Speed up your site induction process to keep people and projects moving forward quickly - and in an organised manner.
Weekly Safety Inspection Checklist template
Get your weekly safety inspections done easier and faster, and then keep them all organised and easily searchable.
Sitemate builds best in class tools for built world companies.
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