Find out the needs and priorities of WHS.

1. WHS Needs and Priorities -
Nature of Hazards and Risks
Occupational Health and Safety Training

2. The second criteria that you need to satisfy in order for you
to complete the first element of the competency unit and
to get your Certificate IV in Occupational Health and
Safety is to determine WHS needs and priorities in
consultation with relevant managers and other workplace
stakeholders and key personnel.
The next thing to consider in prioritising WHS for
planning is the nature of hazards and risks.

3. Nature of Hazards and Risks
What hazards and risks should be prioritised in the planning
process? Many organisations focus on the causes of Lost
Time Injuries and Diseases (LTI/Ds) in their planning as
their effects can be seen and counted.

4. While it is important to address all causes of injury, the folly
of focusing on LTI/Ds has been demonstrated in the
investigations of disasters such as the gas plant explosion at
Longford (Hopkins, 2000) and the Texas City Refinery
explosion (Hopkins, 2008).
In each case a focus on LTI/Ds at the expense of more
critical risks* led the management to ignore risks with a high
potential consequence but where the occurrence of such
incidents was much less frequent. A focus on LTI/Ds also
ignores the hazards likely to impact on health.

5. This is where the input of the WHS practitioner is
important in enabling those involved in strategic
planning to understand how hazards cause injury
and ill-health and so how they should be prioritised
in strategic planning.

6. The learning guide for the competency BSBOHS403 Identify
hazards and assess OHS risk introduced the definition of a
hazard as a „source of potentially damaging energy‟. This
definition is more useful in understanding and identifying
critical risk than the commonly used definition of a hazard a
„source of potential harm‟.
When using the concepts of energy to think about hazards
and risk, some types of energy, and their mechanism of
causing damage, are more likely to cause high consequence
outcomes (serious injury, death, destruction of property),
while other types of energy and mechanism may be more
likely to impact on health. High magnitudes of energy are
more likely to lead to more serious consequences.

7. Status and Effectiveness of Current WHS Activities
So far the planning process has focused on where we want
to be: the vision, the mission and the goals. But before the
plan can be developed we have to assess where we are now
and so identify the gap between where we are now and
where we want to be a „gap analysis‟.

8. The sort of questions we might ask are:
 What hazards are in the workplace?
 What are the critical risks?
 What controls are in place for these hazards and risks?
 How effective and reliable are these controls?
 What are the legal obligations regarding WHS?
 Are we at least compliant with the legal obligations?
 How do we compare with industry standards?
 What are our strengths in WHS? What are our
weaknesses?

9.  What external changes (eg: legislation, economy) might
occur in the future that may impact on WHS?
 What internal changes (eg: new technology,
organisational re-structure, skills shortage, changes to
management) might occur that could impact on WHS?
Answering these questions requires access to various
external and internal sources of information.

10. Good planning requires good information. Any major
review or development of a strategic plan will
usually involve a WHS audit. People at all levels of
the organisation, and across a number of functions
will have information relevant to the plan.

11. The importance of worker input to the planning process
is reflected in the WHS legislation which has the
requirement that workers be given a reasonable
opportunity to:
 express their views and to raise work health and
safety matters;
 contribute to the decision-making process relating to
work health and safety matters.

12. This consultation should occur when:
 identifying hazards and risks;
 making decisions about ways to eliminate or minimise
the risks; and
 when proposing changes that may affect the health or
safety of workers. (“Model Work Health and Safety Bill,”
2009, s 47,48)

13. A strategic plan is not just a piece of paper; it has to be
implemented. Thus we want managers and key people to
have some ownership of the plan and so be motivated to
implement the plan.
„People‟ sources of information in strategic planning for
WHS are stakeholders, key personnel, technical advisers
and WHS specialists.

14. Stakeholders are those people or organisations
who may be affected by, or perceive themselves to
be affected by an activity or decision. Stakeholders
in workplace WHS include:
 managers;
 supervisors;
 health and safety and other worker representatives;
 health and safety committees;
 workers and contractors; and
 the community.

15. Key personnel are people who are involved in WHS
decision-making or who are affected by decisions.
These may include:
 quality;
 purchasing;
 contract management; and
 finance.

16. WHS technical advisers are persons providing
specific technical knowledge or expertise in areas
related to WHS and may include:
 risk managers;
 health professionals;
 injury management advisers;
 legal practitioners with experience in WHS;
 engineers (such as design, acoustic, mechanical, civil);
 security and emergency response personnel;
 workplace trainers and assessors; and
 maintenance and trade persons.

17. WHS specialists are persons who specialise in one of the
many disciplines that make up WHS, including:
 safety professionals (generalists who are most likely to
be consulted on management issues); and
 hazard specific specialists such as:
 ergonomists;
 occupational hygienists;
 audiologists;
 safety engineers;
 toxicologists; and
 work health professionals.

18. Line Management Institute of
Training delivers the Occupational and
Healthy Safety Training via our online
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