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Are you a manager or supervisor at your workplace? Do you know your responsibilities in relation to work health and safety (WHS)? Perhaps more importantly, do you feel you have the skills and competencies to carry out those responsibilities?
If you are a CEO, WHS manager or learning and organisational development manager, are you confident you have done enough to equip your managers and supervisors to meet their WHS responsibilities?
Supervisors are critical to an effective WHS culture
Supervisors play an important role in promoting and maintaining safety in any workplace. While driving a safety culture needs to happen from a Board and CEO down, staff interact with their supervisors more often. They are more likely to take note of and be influenced by the words, actions and attitudes of immediate supervisors.
A supervisor has a big influence on how staff approach safety. This means they are well-placed to be safety advocates.
What are the WHS responsibilities of supervisors in NSW?
According to SafeWork NSW, the regulator of WHS in NSW, if you are a supervisor, you are responsible for the carrying out of work in a safe manner in the workplace. This responsibility applies to people who supervise others, even if they are not officially recognised as supervisors.
WHS encompasses physical safety and mental health safety.
An effective supervisor intentionally and purposefully promotes health and safety. They should be proactive, not reactive, about WHS.
Duties include:
- make decisions about health and safety that may affect work activities or other people
- meet health and safety legal requirements
- action safety reports and carry out workplace inspections
- ensure completion of complete safe work method statements
- ensure safe work practices
- conduct inductions and regular safety briefings and observations
- participate in incident investigations
- lead by example and promote health and safety at every opportunity including during tool-box talks, WIPs and other meetings.
The WHS actions or tasks supervisors should be doing as part of their role include:
- training workers before they do new tasks
- making sure workers’ performance meet safety expectations
- correcting improper and unsafe work activities and conditions
- identifying new hazards and working to minimise the risk
- reinforcing safe and proper work performance
- making sure all safety documents are up-to-date and easy to understand.
If your workplace supervisors aren’t carrying out these duties and tasks, then you need to look at how to support supervisors to meet those WHS responsibilities.
WHS training for supervisors
Training is one way to ensure supervisors understand their WHS responsibilities and gives them the skills and competencies to effectively carry out those responsibilities.
Forsythes Training offers a range of WHS training including nationally accredited qualifications and short courses and skills sets. We can customise short courses to meet your needs.
Short courses
WHS Responsibilities for Supervisors Course – 1 day, risk management program on the key areas of responsibility for supervisors across all industries.
Resilience First Aid – a 2 day, practical, proactive and preventative approach to build mental fitness in the workplace.
Mental Health Workshops – a range of workshops.
Nationally accredited qualifications
BSB41419 Certificate IV in Work Health and Safety – Offered via virtual classroom and face to face.
More information on WHS training for supervisors
Contact us today to discuss your WHS training needs today.
