Meet Maddison Brown
Maddison is an Assistant Manager who supervises fitness trainers at Bounce Fitness and is also the organisation’s Work Health and Safety Officer (WHS Officer). Established in 2001, Bounce Fitness has its head office in Cairns with Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne centres. It has plans to open another centre in Perth in the next two years. It was created for the sole purpose of providing training services but now offers life coaching, remedial massage, and other health services.
Her duties include:
- retaining a broad knowledge of WHS policies and collaborating with stakeholders to stay up to date with all requirements
- exercising due diligence to ensure that the work team is complying with WHS policies
- consulting workers regarding work hazards and risks
- reporting hazards or practices that pose a risk in the workplace
- creating solutions to problems through analysis and evaluation through a variety of sources
- providing supervision and guidance to others regarding workplace health and safety (WHS).
In this module, you will learn the skills and knowledge that enable Maddison to perform her WHS role, namely how and when to:
- provide information to the work team about WHS policies and procedures
- implement and monitor work team consultative arrangements for managing WHS
- implement and monitor organisational procedures for providing WHS training to work team
- implement and monitor organisational procedures and legal requirements for identifying hazards and controlling risks
- implement and monitor organisational procedures for maintaining WHS records.
Before we get started, let us have a chat with Maddison about her role.
Maddison responds:
Firstly, we make sure we have identified the provision that needs to be communicated to staff, for example, if there has been a change in the legislation that affects the provision or if a WHS policy and procedure has been updated. We use traditional methods, such as updating training manuals, providing safety brochures, and displaying signs around all public spaces throughout the gym. We also use more contemporary, digital methods such as email reminders, updates, and other important information such as changes to WHS policies and procedures. We also communicate on WHS issues regularly through a digital WHS newsletter. We have started to explore online WHS training, and we use online forms to report incidents and provide feedback.
We value consultation and conduct bi-monthly WHS meetings, consult with health and safety representatives from government departments and industry associations and facilitate ongoing training.
We choose the most effective method depending on what we are trying to achieve. It is my responsibility to ensure that the team is aware of all relevant information about WHS policies, procedures, and programs.
Maddison responds:
In most small businesses, a work health and safety representative or officer is not mandatory. Still, an employee must be nominated to coordinate WHS activities such as consulting with workers about WHS issues, identifying and controlling risks and hazards, safety training, record keeping, and reporting to stakeholders such as management as required. Additionally, if employees request an official representative or officer, then the workgroup must be assembled to elect a representative.
I am the WHS officer at Bounce Fitness and attended an approved initial five-day course to learn about the responsibilities of a WHS officer. I will do a one-day refresher training course each year while I am the WHS officer at Bounce Fitness. We also conduct training sessions for staff interested in being part of the WHS Committee. In the past, these have been face-to-face sessions with printed learning materials. However, we are considering converting to online refresher training shortly.
Maddison responds:
Keeping records of work health and safety activities at the fitness centres makes managing health and safety easier. We retain all documents relating to health and safety for a minimum of seven years after the event. Today, many organisations choose to store these records electronically. We retain ours electronically and as hard copies.
Records we keep include training and induction records, safety inspection and audit reports, hazard reports, risk assessments, logs, a register of injuries, and copies of completed incident reports. We have a Work Health and Safety Policy and Procedures manual that provides information for incident reporting, risk assessment, issues management, hazard reporting, worker and visitor hygiene, and risk management.
