Three steps to improve workplace safety
‘National Safety Week kicked off on October 1 and it’s a great time to re-commit to building a safe and healthy workplace.
This year’s theme, Safety is Everyone’s Business, highlights the need to come together and exchange ideas to build healthy and safe workplaces for everyone.
A health and safety audit of your fishing or aquaculture operation is a good place to start to help you on your way to making safety your business.
A safety audit requires nothing more than taking the time to check your work health and safety performance by comparing how you currently operate with your agreed safety management system. You can do this yourself, or better still, ask your crew or another vessel owner to help. A fresh set of eyes is always useful.
This audit will highlight any gaps you may have between what you had previously agreed would be done.
For example;
- Inductions for new crew members
- Practising emergency procedures with all crew – eg man overboard, sinking vessel, fire, injury management.
- When to use lifejackets during the fishing operation
- Ensuring guards on winches and pulleys
This will help to come up with actionable steps to improve your fishing business’ safety.
If you don’t have a safety management system, you can find templates and information here.
The safety audit process in three easy steps
Most internal work health and safety audits can follow a three-step process.
- Decide how often to audit
- Choosing how often to audit will depend on the size of your operation and if your work environment is continuously changing (such as an aquaculture site).
- Some timings are decided for you, for example a vessel survey or AMSA inspection is carried out or during the off season.
- Your safety management system should outline how often you need to audit different areas.
- You should then schedule them out for the year ahead and send out a copy to keep everyone in the loop.
2. Identify areas to audit
- It’s important that your audit doesn’t try to do everything at once.
- Make a note of each area of your operation. Some will be simple processes – coming alongside the wharf. Others will be more complex – setting trawl gear.
- You may also agree to set benchmarks and standards and ensure everyone working aboard and onshore agrees.
3. Conduct the audit
- Each audit will look different depending on the fishing vessel operation or aquaculture site.
- You may test equipment, or ask staff to explain a process and compare their response to what’s written in the SMS to assess competency and/or potential training shortfalls.
- You can:
- Start with a general chat
- Carry out on-board observations during a walk-around the vessel
- Discuss results, agree on changes or improvements, decide what’s important and create an action plan with two categories:
– Non-compliance: You have found a breach of a requirement and action is required to fix any non-compliant issues.
– Opportunity for Improvement: A suggestion for making a change that could lead to a better outcome, but it’s not compulsory.
Always document your processes and outcomes. This will assist future audits, and also help you track your safety improvements.