WHS Obligations for Host Employers

Hostess with the Most-ess….The WHS Obligations for Host Employers

Posted on October 20, 2011 by The Safety Nerd

Training organisations are PCBUs who share WHS responsibilities (if that sentence was a whole load of acronyms you thought I just made up, you may want to read my earlier blogs). As a group training organisation, not only do you have a duty of care to your direct employees, but also to those that you farm out such as apprentices, trainees and also those that you bring in to train.

You have specific responsibilities such as:

– Providing safe plant and equipment
– Providing safe systems of work
– Providing adequate facilities
– Provide adequate information, training, instruction and supervision
– Consultation with workers and other PCBUs
– Resolving health and safety issues
– Complying with the regulations
– Notifying incidents

If as a training organisation you have workers farmed out to other employers, you need to work together with the host employer on things like:

– Placement assessments
– Monitoring
– WHS impacts of work practices and process changes
– Incident follow up

So if you don’t like the host employer that your apprentices are going to, tough – you still have to talk to them. You need to consult with workers AND the host employer on WHS issues. You need to assess if the workplace is suitable, you need to provide induction training and then monitor the placement with the host employer and follow up on WHS issues.

If you’re a big wig in a training organisation, or a key decision maker you need to demonstrate that you:

– ensure placement and monitoring processes are effective
– Act on unsafe practices/ workplaces/ incidents
– Regular reporting on safety performance
– Ensure suitable WHS expertise is retained

Gone are the days that boards can assume that things are being done. You need to get on the band wagon and understand the issues and take reasonable steps to make sure that you as the training organisation are meeting your obligations.

So off you go…..and assume your positions.

The Safety Nerd x

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Safety Nerd

Owner and Principal Consultant at Riskology

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I’ve been in safety my whole career. Well nearly my whole career, I started off as a secretary for a recruitment company, then dabbled in HR whilst stumbling onto safety, which I fell head over heels ….literally in love (I know safety nerd alert) with safety after reading the book Lessons from Longford by Anthony Hopkins at the age of 19 and haven’t looked back since. I had a few friends that had been permanently injured in their early 20s and my Dad nearly lost his foot in a workplace accident when I was a twinkle in his eye and the Lessons from Longford book made so much sense to me. I started my life in safety knee high to a grasshopper working for Aristocrat in the 90’s, a gaming machine company in Sydney where I introduced national safety handbooks, alerts, industry focus groups and decided this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life; during this time I also headed off to Uni and completed an MBA specialising in industrial relations, the closest qualification at the time related to safety, since then there’s been an explosion of courses so I then got my teeth into a masters of safety. I then went onto a safety role at Coca Cola Amatil and tackled the logistics of ensuring multiple sites were compliant from call centres to sales to manufacturing workers. This was an interesting time when new manufacturing plants were opening and becoming fully automated, never a dull moment in the world of safety. I’m a bit of a car buff so then moved into a safety role at Inchcape, you know the guys that own Subaru. I was looking after the safety for 45 sites and came up with some great strategies to get them all confident and running with safety. After saving my employers in total over $1.5million in workers comp and setting up some great strategies I decided to jump ship and moved away from the big smoke for love. That was a couple of years ago now and that’s when Riskology was born. I love helping other businesses create safer workplaces helping them through the minefield of legislation with simple easy solutions with the end goal of making workplaces safer. The safety industry has changed significantly in recent years, with new legislation and tougher penalties. Small businesses are expected to comply just as much as large businesses, that’s where I come in, helping to bridge the gap and cut through the jargon. Safety doesn’t have to be the elephant in the room, good safety practices is good for business. Qualifications Master’s degree in Occupational Health and Safety Master’s degree in Business Industrial Relations Accredited Lead Auditor Graduate Certificate Health and Safety Management Systems Cert IV – Workplace Training, OHS, HR(and Dip), Secretarial