Work health and safety legislation requires farms to consult and cooperate with personnel, and to provide information and instruction necessary to protect personnel from risks to their health and safety arising from the farm’s work. One of the ways ProcessWorx’ customers are already doing this is through their WHS Portal. Setting up a notice board to communicate with personnel is a part of the WHS portal’s implementation plan.
We also recommend conducting safety meetings every three months. However, this may not be practical for all farms, depending on how many employees a farm has and the seasons they are employed. In this instance, farms may instead hold safety meetings during peak employment seasons only. This decision should be based on your farm’s requirements and circumstances. The bottom line is, as a farm owner or manager, you need to be confident that the people on your farm are receiving adequate information and instruction from you and there are reasonable opportunities for you to consult and cooperate with the personnel on your farm.
Our Farm WHS Portal includes a Toolbox Meeting Record Template that you can use to run your safety meetings. You can do this by:
- Scheduling a time and place for the meeting, then communicating this to the personnel on your farm,
- Lead the meeting by discussing the topics on the Toolbox Meeting Record Template,
- Inviting personnel to have a say and provide feedback on what the farm can do to improve safety on the farm,
- Introducing a safe work procedure to personnel by reading through the key requirements, asking for feedback then posting it up on the notice board,
- Reviewing a selected section of your risk register together with the personnel on your farm, and making any amendments necessary,
- Recording the topics discussed and input received from personnel into the Toolbox Meeting Record Template then posting it up onto the notice board and archiving a copy of it with your WHS records.
In addition to providing personnel with important information relating to WHS on the farm, safety meetings allow personnel to have a say and feel important. This can have very positive impacts on organisational culture on the farm.
ProcessWorx has just finished developing a new Farm Work Health & Safety System that together with ProcessWorx’s support will greatly assist farmers to meet their WHS duty of care under the new WHS legislation.
For more information about Farm Safety contact ProcessWorx on (08) 9316 9896 or enquiries@processworx.com.au
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