6 ways that Employment Hero helps manage health and safety in the workplace

We know how critical health and safety is for employers, and what a responsibility it can be. Whether you’re in charge of a small business or work in a large corporation, health and safety is a constantly evolving concern and, as a legal obligation, one that should always be taken seriously.

Employment Hero isn’t just here to help with HR and payroll – our software also has a number of features to support you in managing health and safety in your business, from incident reporting to policy acknowledgement.

Your legal responsibilities

Before we get into our software’s health and safety features, just a quick sense check – are you aware of your responsibilities as an employer? Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, both “Persons Conducting Business Undertaking” (PCBU) and workers (including employees and contractors) have respective health and safety duties in the workplace.

PCBUs include employers, self-employed workers, manufacturers, principals to contract, managers etc. As a PCBU, you have primary responsibility for the health and safety of the workplace.

PCBUs’ health and safety responsibilities include:

• Maintaining a work environment free from health and safety risks
• Providing information, training, instruction and supervision needed to protect people from health and safety risks
• Monitoring the health and safety of workers in the workplace to minimise illness and injury related to work

Workers’ health and safety responsibilities include:

• Taking reasonable care of their own health and safety
• Complying with reasonable instructions given by PCBUs, including wearing necessary personal protection equipment (PPE)
• Following reasonable health and safety policies and procedures

Remember that hazards and risks to health and safety don’t have to be environmental or physical hazards – social hazards like overworking, bullying or stress all count as potential risks to your employees.

The key to being across health and safety in the workplace is to be proactive. Mitigate risks, record incidents and ensure that your employees are supported and safe while conducting their work.

Here are Employment Hero’s top six features that are designed to help you do just that.

1) Report incidents and save them in one digital space

As much as employers can mitigate risk, sometimes a near miss or an incident will happen. Employers are legally obligated to record any occurrences where health and safety was at risk, so that you can track, manage and report on your employees and your safety procedures. In the case of serious incidents, you’ll also need to notify WorkSafe directly.

Many of us will have worked somewhere with an ‘accident book’, a battered notebook that is taken out of the cupboard and then promptly forgotten about once something is recorded. These days, technology offers a better alternative in the shape of a secure digital register, where incidents can be easily searched for and updated. There’s no chance of losing any information in the back of a drawer either.

That’s what Employment Hero’s safety incident report feature offers. As a secure space with all your employee information and HR details, it’s easy to log any safety incidents quickly. You can also set up the platform so that the designated WorkSafe authority in your organisation will directly receive the details of the incident and has an opportunity to review. It’s easy, it’s efficient and it’s super handy for incident reporting.

2) Monitor important equipment with our asset register

Faulty or outdated equipment is a safety risk, whether it’s clunky machinery in a factory or a malfunctioning computer screen that makes that ominous fizzing noise when moved. Left unchecked, issues like that can cause safety incidents and pose a serious risk to your employees.

Monitoring your assets isn’t just about keeping track of company property, it’s about ensuring that what you have actually works and is well maintained. It’s also a way to mitigate risks. Like the safety reporting feature, Employment Hero offers digital asset management, including a detailed online register and options to set notifications for regular asset reviews.

The asset register on Employment Hero also allows you to assign assets to different employees, so it’s easy to find out where an asset has gone and who is responsible for it.

3) Customise and assign important safety policies

Policies are an important part of meeting your health and safety obligations as an employer. By having clear policies on everything related to health and safety, you can be sure that all your employees are adequately knowledgeable and that you have a single source of information should anything need to be clarified.

Here at Employment Hero, we want to make it really easy to have a comprehensive raft of workplace policies. All our admin users have access to a policy library that covers a range of topics, from a drug and alcohol policy to a code of conduct.

These policies can then be customised to suit your organisation, and assigned to employees to acknowledge digitally. Which brings us to the next point…

4) Keep track of critical policy acknowledgements

It’s all very well creating policies, but employees need to acknowledge them to ensure they’re applicable. Employment Hero has a system that allows admins to assign policies to various employees and track whether the employees have read and signed off on them.

A simple dashboard on Employment Hero shows administrators how many employees have signed off on specific policies, and who still needs to complete their acknowledgements. Managers can check through the list and follow up with whoever is still outstanding.

This is really useful for health and safety as a way of demonstrating that you’re completing your responsibilities as an employer, but also showing that your employees are aware of the responsibilities they hold too.

5) Run induction checklists for new employees

There’s always plenty to cover when it comes to onboarding new employees. Health and safety is one of those key elements, and often includes a range of tasks, such as workplace site tours, equipment training and policy acknowledgments.

Employment Hero offers a checklist feature for HR leaders and managers to use during onboarding. These checklists can be pre set or customised, and can be activated in a few clicks, from the moment the new employee signs their employment agreement. This way, you can make sure various health and safety tasks have been completed during their first week on the job.

6) Stay up to date with employees with 1:1s

Have you got a robust feedback system in your organisation, including one-to-one meetings between managers and employees? It always pays to talk to your team. Those meetings are not just important for workplace relationships, tracking productivity and career development, but they can be an opportunity to identify any potential health and safety risks.

For example, one employee could be experiencing repetitive strain that they think is a result of their work. Another could be going through workplace bullying and their emotional health is struggling as a result. All of these are real health and safety concerns which could escalate without action by the employer.

Employment Hero supports those all-important meetings with a 1:1 feature that allows both the employee and their manager to answer a series of questions on the platform. Notes can also be added after the meeting, such as next steps or points to follow up on in the ‌ meeting. This way, ‌meetings become productive and there’s a digital record of any actions and progress over time.

Get a first-hand look at how Employment Hero supports health and safety management

Our all-in-one HR, payroll and benefits platform makes workplace health and safety a breeze. We’re proud to provide that kind of support globally – Employment Hero services over 300,000+ SMEs, with 2 million employees on our platforms.

Find out how our platform can transform your organisation and make processes much, much easier by booking a demo with one of our team today.