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Workplace injuries are a major concern for many Australians working in industries where physical and manual operations are performed. The trade industry sees its fair share of workplace accidents that cause injury to personnel onsite.
Property Owners and Building Managers must ensure that they have firm guidelines on what kind of works can or can’t be done on their site. Any contractor that wins a tender to do works onsite must abide by the Property’s Work Place Health and Safety Code of Practice as well as ensure that all contractors working onsite have been inducted and know what to do in an emergency.
Sometimes trades find this annoying because most safety manuals and inductions cover the same old, same old information but it’s important to carefully take in the messages in the induction because some properties may be more stringent with their onsite safety expectations.
Years ago when dad and I were working in commercial buildings, I would do the inductions for our sub-contractors. This was mainly because they had to be done online and some of our plumbers didn’t have access to the internet and we couldn’t guarantee they would do the induction elsewhere to get their certificate so they could work onsite. Eventually online inductions became smarter and realized that the admin girl was doing them for their employees, so most now require a unique email and password for each individual who needs to be inducted to work onsite. Some inductions now require a payment just for the opportunity to work in a building.
In a perfect world, every tradesperson would follow the workplace health and safety manual to a tee to avoid injury but there is one factor that often gets forgotten and that is simple human error.
Humans aren’t perfect and it can take one wrong move with a tool or a simple oversight from another trade that can cause injury to you or someone else onsite. Accidents happen.
If you are injured on a worksite, it’s important that the incident is reported to the onsite Safety Officer and Building Management even if it is a near miss. If you are the one injured onsite, you may need to talk to a reputable law firm like Sinnamon Lawyers who have experience with personal injury claims.
Keeping a building site safe is not the responsibility of just the builder or Property Manager. It is everyone’s responsibility who works onsite. Sadly, a surge in claims (some legit, some outrageous) have led to an increased obsession with Safety Manuals, Inductions and Toolbox Talks (a weekly meeting with employees on how to stay safe at work). All this extreme safety admin can make workers aware of safety onsite, but won’t necessarily prevent them from getting injured.
Have you ever been injured at work? Did you get compensation and how did you go about it?
This is post has been written in accordance to my disclosure policy.
