Legislative Requirements

Royal Melbourne Hospital needs to have strong legislative requirements that need to be addressed immediately. This would relate to the commitment to a safety culture extending beyond the traditional view of health and safety. There needs to be an initiative to encompass psychological and physical health and well-being of the staffs within the workplace health and safety policies. A number of factors affect the impact on the design of hazard identification. According to Gallagher and Underhill (2012), hazard identification requires effective risk management initiatives and commitment from managers and officers at the higher level. The input of the workers and their active involvement in hazard identification is required. It is the responsibility of the manager to supervise the entire process. At Royal Melbourne Hospital, this initiative is missing as managers do not consult with the workers for proper hazard identification. Workers lack responsibility to put forward optimal cooperation and do not comply with the policies set up. As a result, constructive and effective information is not transferred among the members of the organisation. The required feedback for aiding hazard identification is therefore scarce. At Royal Melbourne Hospital, the policies and procedures that need to be reviewed are on hazard identification, risk management, information and training delivery, supervision and managerial aspects, claims management, injury treatment and management, incident reporting and analysis and measurement of WHS performance. The managers are to be consulted and communicated for clarifying the policies and procedures (Papadopoulos 2010).

From the analysis of the existing workplace relationships, it has been found that it is effective to the extent that change can be brought about through engaged commitment towards it from all. Employees have developed a professional relationship at the workplace that does not interfere the with the work performance of either the individuals or the effective functioning of the workplace. Employees are devoid of any form of bias, conflict of interest or ethics. Counsel and advice are sought from the higher level of the administrator in case of any concern. The managers exert control and influence on the employee’s conduct. There is a need for  communicating the needs of strong health and safety policies and procedures to the concerned stakeholders and motivate and guide them to abide by the same. The stakeholders in this regard are the managers, employees, volunteers, contractors, sub-contractors, apprentices and trainees, students on work experience or clinical practice and other placements (Holt and Allen 2015). For measuring the effectiveness of existing hazard identification process, the outcome indicator and measures that would be used are the frequency of incidents of hazards, the severity of hazards, involvement of stakeholders in the resulting hazards.

Continous improvement is a significant element of all organisations and planning process are to be considered for bringing development in the hazard identification process. At Royal Melbourne Hospital, there is a need of bringing changes in the hazard identification process for the better. Refining the hazard identification process would make it more effective and aligned with the health and safety policies. A change in the format of hazard identification would be suitable. The areas that need to be given emphasis for hazard identification on the basis of priority are an administrative domain, record keeping, fire safety, general work area, personal protective equipment, exiting and egress, electrical, equipment and tools, hoists and lifts and so on. Hazard reporting on a regular basis would be crucial for improving identification process (Hughes and Ferrett 2011).

Review of Existing WHS Consultation and Participation Processes

A skills audit and TNA reflecting the skills required by workers for improving processes in relation to hazard identification is significant. Managers need to ensure effective implementation of practices in alignment with WHS framework. They need to ensure that local procedures are in place for the systematic identification of hazards. They also need to ensure that the staff report any psychological and physical injury as per the key indicators. Employees need to assume that they are accountable for the personal health and safety. They need to take part in the consultative forums and come up with ideas for how hazards can be identified (Lukic et al. 2012).

Consultation with the workers of Royal Melbourne Hospital is essential for improving processes for hazard identification. The process of consultation needs to establish the acceptable, practical and realistic. Consultation needs to be a two-way process with the employees wherein a discussion needs to be carried out regarding health and safety matters, and concerns that are raised are to be addressed. Sharing and seeking information and views would be the justified approach and seniors must consider what juniors needs have to say before making the decisions. Open communication and management commitment between the workers and the managers would be important for achieving effective consultation. They are to be engaged in the consultation by acknowledging their ideas and knowledge. Workers are to be encouraged to ask any question they want to, report issues and raise concerns, and make proactive participation in the problem solving process. Though the consultation might not result in agreement, it should be the objective to make decisions through active support (Holt and Allen 2015).

For participative arrangements to be in place, certain policies and procedures are to be developed. The legislations are to be build upon the existing WHS policies through improvement, progression and up-dating. Legislations and Policies need to be centred around hazard identification and risk assessment, risk control, re-assessment of duty of care of the employer, and consultation (Eeckelaert et al. 2012).

Training strategies need to be developed for hazard identification process, and these are to be recommended to the key personnel. Methods of training can be passive or active, depending on the group of employees who are to be trained. The most significant strategy would be the development of knowledge through different stages. The emphasis of this can be on behavioural modelling. This modelling takes into account observations of a role model, and feedback to bring modification to the behaviour. The methods can be a hands-on demonstration of the hazard identification methods associated. Active participation would be required in this case. For making the behavioural stimulations effective, interactions is a must between the trainers and the trainees. This needs to go beyond the one-way feedback for engaging the trainees in exchange of information and ideas for actions to be taken. The personnel with whom the findings are to be consulted are the directors of the Royal Melbourne Hospital and the mangers of the different  departments. They would be consulted with as they would have the authoritative power to bring changes in the reforms regarding employee training and engagement. By exercising their control, suitable changes can be made in how employees are trained (Gallagher and Underhill 2012).

Development of WHS Consultation and Participation Processes

For the implementation of the training strategy, successful allocation of resources is needed. Funding is needed that would suffice the preparation of training materials that would be disseminated to the participants. In-hand materials, as well as computer-based materials, would be helpful. In addition, funding is required for providing hands-on training to the concerned individuals.  

The following is the action plan in relation to highest level training strategy-

Strategic pillar	Programs of work	High level actions	Time frame	Measures of success
Enable the WHS strategy	Strategic plan endorsement	·   Presentation of information materials to employees, ·   Communicate safe performance level	2 months	Evaluation of knowledge gain by employees
Reporting and metrics	·   Align objectives of the training with knowledge of employees ·   Training would be provided in accordance with the hospital’s training needs analysis	2 months	Advanced training goals achieved
Communication plan	Communicate with two-way communication through feedback and discussion	2 months	Active engagement of the employees with the higher authority and proactive approach in raising concerns

Monitoring the success of the strategic plan is essential for understanding the future needs. The key intervention for monitoring the progress would be to assess the motivation level of the employees to work in partnerships towards a more positive safety culture. This is to be done through assessment of data on accidents, breaches of legislations and incidents. Consultation would be done with the employees about all significant matters related to health and safety management practices. Employees would be regarded as the valuable source of information and feedback would be taken from them on effectiveness of health and safety management arrangements as well as control measures. The results of monthly surveys are to be given attention. Monitoring the survey results would provide an idea of regular progress.

Evaluation protocol is to be set in place for understanding the effectiveness of the action plan against key performance indicators. The evaluation can take place with the help of the Workplace Standards Self-Assessment Tool as this would provide information on the action plan.

For ensuring that the training continues to be effective and applicable to the Royal Melbourne Hospital, data is to be collected from all the departments of the organisation on a weekly basis. This would be compared with the WHS Committee guidelines. Data needed for measuring the effectiveness of the training would include all vital aspects of health and safety of an organisation. Conditions warranting the review of the training on a more frequent basis would consider non-conforming systems, reported injuries and hazards and concern of employees. Following the completion of the certain review, the training can be revised or updated in order to correct any deficiencies. It is pivotal that the changes brought about are communicated through the senior committee (Australian work health and safety strategy 2012).

References

Australia, S.W., 2012. Australian work health and safety strategy 2012-2022: Healthy, safe and productive working lives. Safe Work Australia.

Eeckelaert, L., Dhondt, S., Oeij, P., Pot, F.D., Nicolescu, G.I., Webster, J. and Elsler, D., 2012. Review of workplace innovation and its relation with occupational safety and health. Bilbao: European Agency for Safety and Health at Work.

Gallagher, C. and Underhill, E., 2012. Managing work health and safety: recent developments and future directions. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 50(2), pp.227-244.

Gallagher, C. and Underhill, E., 2012. Managing work health and safety: recent developments and future directions. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 50(2), pp.227-244.

Holt, A.S.J. and Allen, J., 2015. Principles of health and safety at work. Routledge.

Hughes, P. and Ferrett, E., 2011. Introduction to health and safety at work. Routledge.

Lukic, D., Littlejohn, A. and Margaryan, A., 2012. A framework for learning from incidents in the workplace. Safety Science, 50(4), pp.950-957.

Papadopoulos, G., Georgiadou, P., Papazoglou, C. and Michaliou, K., 2010. Occupational and public health and safety in a changing work environment: An integrated approach for risk assessment and prevention. Safety Science, 48(8), pp.943-949.