Since 2009, Safe Work Australia has led a national campaign each October to build community awareness and knowledge of work health and safety. National Safe Work Month is hugely popular and provides a great platform to promote WHS and encourage everyone to work towards healthier, safer workplaces.
Each year, Safe Work Australia selects a theme for the month. This year the overarching theme is "For everyone’s safety, work safely" - encouraging everyone to make health and safety in the workplace a priority. There's also weekly themes:
While October seems like a long way off, Safe Work Australia are encouraging all sorts of businesses to download their campaign kit now so you can start preparing to take part, including logos, posters, video call backgrounds, social artwork and email signatures.
They will also be running the SafeTea campaign, which encourages workers at all levels to contribute to the safety conversation over a morning break - identify, assess, control, review.What process do you currently use to notify personnel of an evacuation or nurse call (medical) emergency? Do you have evacuation sirens installed? How are those evacuation sirens triggered? Who do you notify if a worker has a medical episode or is injured? How do you notify them?
If you're not using a smart system, or your system is old, consider a Vanguard Wireless emergency alert system. They're easy to retrofit, simple to use, and take very little time to manage and maintain. Once an evacuation or nurse call alert is triggered, all the relevant personnel are notified so they can coordinate a response in conjunction with the workplace emergency plan. Close the loop on your workplace safety by making sure that if there is a safety issue, you and your team can quickly alert the right people who can respond accordingly.
Start planning your work health and safety activities for October by joining National Safe Work Month. To participate, follow these steps:
For more information and resources, go to the National Safe Work Month website.