National Safe Work Month: tips for stopping costly trips, slips and falls
11 October 2022
In October 2020, Gold Coast woman Charlotte Bobbett, announced she was suing Woolworths $1 million for slipping on a loose grape in the supermarket, which Ms Bobbett alleged to have caused her to injure her lower back, shoulder, and hip in 2015.
Ms Bobbett’s claim argues that what started out as a simple slip on a grape resulted in her needing a hip replacement, meaning she is unable to finish her university degree.
Similarly, in the case of Hargreaves and Telstra [2011] AATA 417, Telstra employee Dale Hargreaves slipped down the stairs in her home while working from home, not once, but twice. It first occurred when retrieving cough medicine from her fridge, with the second slip occurring when Ms Hargreaves went to lock her door, as per direction from her employer.
The employer had initially denied liability, as the accidents occurred away from Hargreaves’ workstation and outside normal office hours, but the injury “arose out of Hargreaves’ employment with Telstra” when she was working late. The Commonwealth Government Administrative Appeals Tribunal however disagreed and deemed it a workplace injury because the injury fell within the scope of her employment, Ms Hargreaves was awarded significant compensation.
All businesses have a duty of care to ensure all people who turn up to a workplace – wherever that is – are safe and well. With October being National Safe Work Month, now more than ever is the time to commit to building a safe and healthy workplace.
What the numbers show about workplace hazards
More than half a million Australians sustain a work-related injury or illness each year, costing the country over $60 billion.
These injuries aren’t all occurring in factories, forestry and freight. Slips, trips, and falls can – and do – occur every day in shopping malls, supermarkets, retail stores, offices and clinics. The costs may surprise you.
Safe Work has found that slips, trips, and falls incur the highest unit cost, at $104,370 – far more costly than any other workplace hazard.
Australia’s Workplace Health & Safety (WHS) laws are severe – both companies and individual managers can be held criminally responsible for injuring people at work, particularly if individuals are seriously hurt. It’s important to keep employees and visitors at your business safe, not only so every person can go home to their family at the end of the day – but so that your business is not exposed to the significant penalty regime that regulates WHS in Australia.
The best way your business can mitigate the risk of workplace injury happening is by complying with Australia’s workplace health safety laws – failing to do so can be costly. Whether these costs are the impact of injured staff member, fixing risks after the fact, penalties from SafeWork or being sued because a customer was injured when you left an unsecured power cord on the ground.
Keep WHS records as you actively minimise hazards
The law says employers need to keep staff safe and the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 imposes a legal duty on PCBUs to try eliminate slipping, tripping and fall-related harm to employees in the workplace.
To stop a series of small incidents escalating into a disabling or fatal accident, slips, trips, and falls need to be recorded and monitored with workplace health and safety software for which enableHR’s WHS module is an ideal option.
For now, to mark National Safe Work Month, here is some easy-to-remember advice about how to keep staff safe from the terrible trio of slips, trips, and falls in the workplace – with thanks to Safe Work Australia for their data, statistics and advice.
These are the factors Safe Work tells us are causing slips in Australian workplaces:
According to the SafeWork information sheet about adjusting your workplace to reduce the harm of slips, trips and falls, the main factors causing these incidents are:
- The wrong footwear.
- Polished, wet or greasy floors.
- Low obstacles which are hard to spot, such as uneven edges in flooring, loose mats, open drawers, untidy tools and electrical cables.
This is what SafeWork advises you can do, today, to minimise the chances of injury occurring:
- Consult with workers.
- Review control measures to ensure they are working as planned.
- Eliminate hazards at the design stage of the workplace.
In designing floors, stairs, lighting, drainage and storage:
- Keep floors at a single level and use slip-resistant floor coverings.
- Install extra power points to avoid trip hazards from trailing cords.
- Ensure all areas are well lit, particularly stairwells.
- Have good drainage and slip-resistant grates.
- Have lots of storage, so things aren’t left in walkways.
Safe Work also advises that employers have clear procedures to:
- Remove rubbish to avoid trip hazards.
- Return tools and other items to their storage areas after use.
- Report and clean spills.
- Keep the workplace clean by:
- Install adequate rubbish and recycling bins
- Have cleaning schedules in place
- Dry floors after cleaning
- Don’t have cords on walkway or work area floors.
These procedures should be recorded in writing. The procedures ideally should be read by every employee. Ensuring employees receive and read WHS policies and procedures can be managed with enableHR’s employee self-service (eSS) module.
A good idea is to use enableHR to schedule employees to complete workplace safety training in enableHR’s WHS module. Training should cover:
- Awareness of slip and trip hazards.
- Identifying effective control measures.
- Duties of workers.
We hope National Safe Work Month inspires safety improvements in your workplace which fit in seamlessly.
Generating change in your workers’ culture, attitudes, approaches and their adherence to safety policies and procedures shouldn’t be expensive, if you let enableHR’s workflows take care of the heavy lifting.
enableHR is particularly useful when onboarding employees.
- Onboarding is an ideal time to begin engraining safe work practices.
- Make reading and following policies and procedures part of onboarding.
- Show staff how they can notify of risks on the enableHR WHS Risk Register themselves.
Being cloud-based, the software lets you expand the WHS capabilities of your organisation regardless of dispersed teams and locations.
If there’s anything that could hurt someone in your workplace, enableHR has a way of managing that information to keep your people safe whether you’re operating a clinic, retail store, supermarket or shopping mall business, or if you’re in a high-risk industry like mining, industrial or oil and gas.
Click on through for a demo of enableHR to help make your workplace safer.