Health and Safety

Main Body

Part A

l1. Provide an overview of the activities carried out by your organization 

Premier food is the British leading food manufacturer which has been engaged in development of cakes and desserts for the Cadbury using that brand under licensing process. Premier foods is consists of several other brand names such as Mr Kipling, Ambrosia, Angel Delight etc. It has a big structure, thus, there might be situations of danger at any moment which is hazardous and danger for all people who are working there (World Health Organization, 2016). The major characteristics of Premier food is its multilateral infrastructure and plant based techniques which is being adopted in the infrastructure.

Premier has been recognised for its quality and performance measurement of their employee's along with the consideration to measure their people safety and also matter of their health issues. There are certain misshapenness which has been occurred last year, in which one employee's was suffered with hand burn, because of ineffective to that person. Thus, firm has faced out the work closure and business loss. Need of the organisation is its structure and regulation for providing safe and secure work environment for employee in order to protect them for the business benefits and work regulation (Shojania, 2016). Action plan is a major need along with regulation towards the business enrolment on the larger basis. It has become necessary to uphold the measurement as well as evaluation of the techniques which is majorly required for bringing relevant changes into the procedure and process to gain business effectiveness into the premier plant.

l2. List the legislation relevant to your state of training and the Work Safe website

It is become necessary to identify various legislation which are being connected with human safety and their health related conditions. Finding and identifying appropriate legislation is necessary to ensure work health safety at the greater level along discussion to make it clear for business development and continue business for longer period or duration. Model WHS act, 1982 is a necessary legislation which has been implemented in most jurisdiction across an entire Australia (Berwick, 2018). The main object is to provide for a balanced and nationally consistent framework to make secure health and safety of the worker and workplace. The major purpose of this act is to encourage unions and employer's organisation to take a constructive role in promotion improvement in the WHS practices (Gandhi, 2018).

Another legislation which applies to Premier and are relevant to its state of training and Work Safe website is Work Health and Safety Act, 2011. This legislation would be protecting each individual within the organisation in terms of safety as well as health. As per this legislation, it imposes this duty on Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking (PCBU). This sets up various requirements for Premier, such as:

• Managers must consult with their subordinates in setting up safety standards.
• There must be various penalties set up for any individual who is taking safety of themselves or others for granted.

l3. Identify and list the relevant Codes of Practice that apply for the establishment 

Safety and health in the use of machinery: This code of practices deals with sets of out principles concerning safety and health in the use of machinery and defines the safety and health requirements and precaution applicable to government, worker and employers and also to engineer, designer, manufacturer and suppliers of the machinery. In context with Premier foods Plc, various code of conduct such as:

Business sustainability: 

Business sustainability is required in sector of health and safety measurement in order to make goals and targets more wide and relies with business growth. Business sustainability means the practice which involves the fair practice in regards with the usage of technology, machinery and equipment. Effective and green revolution based practices is the major requirements in context of code of conduct (Merritt, 2017).

Ethical relationship with the manpower and machinery: 

Ethics has been considered as most fair and favourable code of conduct which is necessary to uphold safety and health matter at an utilised and reliable manner.

There are various policies set out for food safety which are described below:

• Effective suppliers must be chosen to acquire raw food products which are of high quality and kept with utmost safety and par quality standards.
• Food must be refrigerated systematically and their expiration must be reviewed effectively to ensure high safety standards for the food items.

Amongst food safety policies, there are procedures to be followed by Premier for food services which are mentioned as under:

• For assurance of highest service quality, employees must focus on their personal hygiene to keep up the standards of services.
• Employees must also be consistent in terms of serving food items as requested in the most professional way possible which ensures cleanliness and consideration of safety.

l4. Research and analyse:

Adequacy of facilities for employees:

 In context with Premier foods Plc, it is necessary for business entity to have look on availability and structure of health and safety system to make it useful for employee's to work better and with intention to contribute its for benefits of an organisation (Helmreich, 2018). In regards with health and safety culture, it is necessary for business firm to provide health and safety protection in context of fire, water, damage, injury to an employees as well as lack of measures to attain business effectiveness. These facilities needs to be take with full implementation and ensures that fire fighters, fire avoidance measures needs to be undertaken along with emergency alarms and emergency measures needs to be taken care such as tools and techniques to safety checklist, implementation tools and techniques to make safety measures more productive and pro-active to continue effective working along with overall improvement.

Issue with work environment: 

Major issues which are evident in working environment are the problems related to heating in infrastructure at a greater and optimised level which is faced by employees (Arntz-Gray, 2016). Various other issues such as lack of proper and desired machinery, lack of strategies to work collaboratively also effect the company. Premier foods needs to have full co-ordination with techniques to measure any kind of defect in their manufacturing process to ensure solving of these issues.

Issues with machinery, tools or equipment:

During the work of premier foods Plc, workers has been noticed that machinery was old, degraded and less updated to get right use. Packaging tools were less good, but of junk and dismantle condition, because of chances of injury was higher and response of less consultative basis. The expense was highly incurred into the process of machinery, but still they are not in proper condition.

Incidents or accident which have been occurred: 

There are various incidents such as breakdown of tools and machinery which reduces its advantage for longer period of time. Another incident are injuries experienced by employees. These are major incidents which needs instant solutions along with longer remedies.

Potential issues with training: 

Above given issues have shown scope for wide training and development to an employee's to motivate and train them for effective working over usage of tools and machinery to work with effectiveness (Y?lmaz, 2017). These issues can be fulfilled through effective practices to people along with full of them to teach how to operate hard machinery.

Provision for security emergency procedures:

 Various procedures such as making of the checklist to inform about implementation of security emergency, planning for future uncertainty and raise chart making procedure to identify future any kind of future uncertainty or misshapen. This procedures needs an urgent remedy and evaluation to make several changer or rectification for further good process or conditions.

5. Develop or update a complete WHS system which includes all the required policies and procedures

Name of substanceÂ	Chlorine Solution		Latex Gloves
SupplierÂ	Chemical Suppliers		Rubber Companies
Location of substanceÂ	Kitchen		Kitchen
Hazardous (Y/N)Â	Yes		Yes
Current SDS i.e. less than 5 years old Date of issueÂ	These solutions are renewed once in every two years along with regular testing.	Packaging and storing is given utmost importance and suppliers are chosen as per the set standards of medical safety.
Risk Assessment(Yes/No)Â	Yes		No
Uses	Used in dishwashing and as a disinfectant		Used as protection of hands from various chemicals while cleaning dishes.

l6. Develop a hazard identification and risk assessment template

No Hazard DescriptionLocation Comment ConsequenceProbabilityExposure1The hazard has been caused in Premier food Plc, due to cause of the fire to three people which was hazardous for others. Also, the major behind this hazard was its lack of maintenance, which is major of incidents.St Albans, United Kingdom.This hazard was caused due to lack of awareness to employee which was as a reason of ineffective tools and equipment applied during the production process. The results was the hand of an employee and he was admitted.

The cause for  burning was leak of gaseous from the cylinder, which has been catch fire easily and worker was near to cooking process which has led to major injury. In future, probability will be less for such incident, if in case such situation may arise and also  premier needs to take care of long procedure to make measures with an intention to protect lives of the human life from such hazards. Exposure says that this leading food business entity needs to work over their structural implementation along with finding the sources for making changes into tools and equipment 2This hazard was happened during stage of packaging, when hands of one worker has been cut down by cutter machinery and also reason of which person has lost his job or unemployment. This incidence was happened in area of packaging of premier food, when hand of employee has been cut down. As, this is critical stage which needs  a formal practice long with strict regulation over the work or its regulation.

This hazards has been occurred because of lack of effective planning and less supervision over the machinery handling and procedures to led it for effective working. It has become necessary to look out at an entire process to assess risk associated with  projects or machineryThe major consequence was the lack of ineffective support and improper regulation for the greater and larger period of time. It was also happened because of supervisor carelessness and avoidance toward the operation of the machinery and led effective regulation over the activities.

In future, probability of such occurrence can be high, if proper and required measures would not been implement into the proper functioning and take care of the machinery. In order to avoid this issue, it is necessary to identify risks associated with this context. It has been exposed, this type of happening will not tolerated the administration  or policies to harm the people life and culture. This kind of careless activities are responsible to going through of employee's from the business organisation along with closure of business is also the case. 

l7. Write a job description which clearly defines the health and safety responsibilities for each job role           

Job Description

Job Code: 123

Job role: Senior manager

Report to: General manager

Date: 27. March, 2019

Job summary:

The job role is about the management of health and safety of the manpower into the factory of the production of Premier foods Plc. This role actually says about the effective regulation into the work process along with the complete process of work and led proper utilization and structure of the plan to make health and safety as cumulative measures.

Roles & responsibilities: 

• Monitoring health and safety risks and hazards in the workplace
• Advising employees on how to minimize or ultimately avoid risks and hazards in the workplace
• First aid / nursing duties

Pastry Chef

Job code: 234

Job role: Pastry chef

Date of joining: 24. 5. 2019

Report to: Senior manager

Job summary: The Job summary of the pastry chef says about the making of tasty and delicious pastry with incurring of less time and duration to make the pastry product more and more attractive in order to deliver it to the people at the lesser period of time. This job role is assigned to each and every to show his/her at the greater and desired level or situation.

Roles or responsibilities:

• Manages all day-to-day operations of the pastry and bakery section of the kitchen.
• Prepare a wide variety of goods such as cakes, cookies, pies, bread etc. following traditional and modern recipes.
• Able to produce all baked goods including but not limited to artisan breads and rolls, muffins, laminated Danish, laminated croissants and doughnuts etc.

Job description

Job role: Kitchen hand

Job code: 345

Report to: Senior Kitchen

Date: 28.3.2019

Job Summary: 

The major job summary is to assist the kitchen functioning along the management of the kitchen to led cooking complete towards the major aim to accomplish the desired aims of the premier foods Plc. Plus, candidate needs to effectively manage the work with higher expectancy of an outcomes and scenario building for business to manage kitchen effectively.

Roles & responsibilities:

• The Kitchen Hand is responsible for maintaining the order and cleanliness of the kitchen’s facilities up to government and company sanitation standards.
• The Kitchen Hand ensures that all dishes are adequately sanitized by maintaining required water temperature and chemical levels
• Kitchen Hands assist line cooks by completing food preparation tasks.

8. Action Plan to evaluate the effectiveness of organisational WHS system

It is essential for Premier Foods to develop appropriate action plan in order to ensure effective WHS standards and appropriate handling of workplace safety. To ensure this, it is vital that the company develops a checklist covering all necessary aspects of handling a hazard. This checklist is mentioned below:

ITEM	COMMENTS
Chemicals  > appropriately stored  > decanted materials labelled  > Safety Data Sheets AvailableÂ	While the chemicals are appropriately stored in the company along with presence of SDS, it is still recommended that decanted materials and chemicals are rightfully labelled for effective usage up to its expiration. Moreover, this would also help raising the safety standards of employees using the same.
First Aid  > first aid kits adequately stocked  > first aid kits clearly located  > first aid room adequately stocked  > FAO appointed and trained	The first aid systems within Premier Food Ltd. are stocked as well as clearly located. Furthermore, the first aid room is adequately stocked. However, there is still a need of an FAO within the firm to take over the management of first aid items. Company must hire apt personnel for the position and train them in order to manage these materials well.

 

• PART B

1. Establishment of structural, characteristics and needs of Premier Food Plc

Premier Foods follows a multilateral infrastructure including adoption of plant-based techniques for execution of its operations. As per the Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Act and Regulations 2004/2017, it is the responsibility of employers to protect their employees from any kind of mishap or hazard occurring at the workplace. In order to provide safe work environment with maximization of sustainability and productivity, it is important for the business enterprise to integrate its operational structure along with their needs as well as strong suits for driving competition.

Premier Foods Plc can achieve this by supplementing adequate information, instruction, training and supervision to its workers through clear two-way communication channels. The company manufactures a wide range of food products in multiple formats, it operates under the OHSAS 18001 accredited health and safety management system. This requires for employees to be highly skilled at their work. The company can ensure prevention of overuse injuries by limiting the amount of repetitive movement as well as duration of tasks. This can be done by implementation of varied tasks, job rotation and multiple shift breaks. As food industry demands a highly time-constrained work environment, Premier Foods must monitor their work pace to reduce risk of slip trips.

2. Important Legislations to look at while developing a health and safety system

While developing a health and management system, Premier Food Plc must look at following relevant standards:

• OHS ACT 2004 and Regulations 2017:

For Premier Plc, it is an important legislation to consider as it sought to safeguard the welfare of employees who are directly or indirectly involved in the manufacturing of food products sold by the business.

• OHS (Manual Handling) Regulations, 1999:

As a food manufacturer, manual handling is an essential part of Premier Foods Plc. Therefore, adhering to the regulations especially in relation to musculoskeletal disorders associated with such work. prescribed in the aforementioned legislation is important during the development of health and management system of the company.

• OHS (Noise) Regulations, 2004:

In order to prevent hearing loss, it is important for Premier Foods to reduce exposure of employees towards noise by creating policies that involve consultation within workplace among the subordinates and their supervisors.

• OHS (Plant) Regulations, 1995:

Utilization of heavy equipments in the plants for processing and packaging of food products, the health and safety system must adhere to this legislation for safeguarding of workers from any hazard occurring in such premises.

3. Health and Safety Code of Practice

As the name suggests, a health and safety code of practice is one that deals with guiding individuals, corporations or both involved in provisioning of work health and safety duties. These help in providing a certain set of procedures that must be followed in order to adhere to a certain legislative body. Apart form this, these code of practice ensure that risks related to workplace are minimized to a greater extent through identification of such problems in an effective way. These are the steps that are needed by a complying organisation to be followed. This helps organisations to check their measures internally at each step of implementation of business processes. A complete adherence to such regulations will ensure that the company has complied with the aforementioned legislation fully resulting in effective internal control.

4. Five penalties that can be applied under health and safety legislation in Victoria

1. Breach of OHS Act:

As per the OHS Regulations effective in Victoria, the state can penalize unruly organisations as well as individuals for breach of OHS Act as per the maximum limits set by Monetary Units Act 2004 in the following manner:

• Corporations: $3,171,400
• Individuals: $285,426

 Such fines are scaled regularly in order to include the effect of inflation. The penalties in regards to this legislation involves penalty units. The current value of a penalty unit for 2017-18 is $158.57.

2. Enforceable Undertaking:

An enforceable undertaking is one which includes rectification of a breach of Act in writing by an employer.  A penalty of $396,425 is charged to a person held on the grounds of contravention of such undertakings.

3. On-the-Spot Fines:

The OHS inspectors can issue a notice of infringement for minor offences that do not attract prosecution.

4. Reckless Endangerment:

As per Section 32 of OHS Act, Victoria, any sort of reckless behaviour exhibited at the workplace is punishable. This includes careless behaviour exhibited by an individual that puts their colleagues at risk in the workplace. Such conducts attract a maximum fine of  $285,426 and/or imprisonment of up to 5 years.

5. Alternative Penalty Options:

The State of Victoria can also impose adverse publicity orders or to undertake improvement projects in addition to the aforementioned penalties for both individuals and corporations.

5. Ensuring compliance of Premier Foods with its legislated obligations

Premier Foods Plc is a food manufacturer that needs to adhere to OHS Regulations in regards to noise exposure, manual handling, safeguarding employees from work hazards incidental on the premises of company's manufacturing facilities. In order to ensure compliance with its legislated obligations the business must ensure that there is no overlap or clashes of legislations while implementation of relevant management systems in the organisation. The company must have all its WHS documents up-to-date.  Also, issue resolution, notification and investigation of any mishaps and renewal of various licenses and permits would ensure that Premier Food with its legislated obligations.

The business operates under OHSAS 18001, this requires that the business employs prescribed frameworks to identify, control and decrease risk of hazard within the workplace. Compliance with this international health and safety standard ensures that the company has completed required training and demonstrates that company employs relevant processes to check health and safety related issues arising in the workplace.

6. Elements and Aspects of a health and safety system

The three main elements of a health and safety system are mentioned below:

• Safety Plan:

It is a part of business plan that analyses current and future risk of a business. Also, it helps in eradication and controlling of risks involved in a workplace for a given financial period. The main aspect of this element is to ensure governance within the business entity resulting in clear communication of safety obligations to the workers.

• Training and Induction:

In order to ensure effective control of hazard risks, it is important for a business to provide proper training and induction in regards to the workplace rules and regulations. This aspect ensures that there is awareness among the employees in regards to possible risks that can occur and their mitigation.

• Monitoring:

Depending on the circumstances and need a health and safety system ensures proper monitoring of enforced regulations in the business. It is to be noted that if there is higher risk involved in the operations of the business, a higher degree of monitoring will ensue. This element ensures that proper risk assessment is undertaken by the business especially when during investigation following an incident.

7. Procedures included in health and safety system

A health and safety system includes procedures in relation to the following issues:

• Issue Resolution:

Any issue arising regarding health and safety of an employee or worker at the workplace is an important procedure to be included while formulating a health and safety system as per Work, Health and Safety Regulations, 2011. This would call for quick resolution of such issues in an effective manner so that productivity does not deteriorate as well as the health of the worker is also safeguarded.

• Consultative Arrangements:

Consultative Arrangements in regards to any kind of changes made in the process must also be included. Also, consultation with the workers regarding work health and safety must be done through formation of health and safety committees in compliance with Work, Health and Safety Regulations, 2011.

• Monitoring:

Apart from consulting, the company should formulate necessary monitoring procedures so as to observe risk centres arising during implementation of a business process.

• Training and Information:

Proper Training and Information must be provided by the supervisors regarding work environment so as to ensure that no worker is hurt while handling a machine.

• Risk Assessment:

Through regular monitoring, proper risk assessments must be carried out for entire management systems so as to identify possible risk factors in advance so that proper mitigation steps can be undertaken.

8. Strategies or methods used to support worker participation and consultative input into health and safety processes

The following methodologies or strategies can be adopted by organisations to support worker participation and consultation input into health and safety processes:

• Direct Consultation:

Through direct consultation, a company can get the inputs from their workers in regards to how safe they feel while working at a job centre. This information helps in creating worker participation informing authorities whether improvement is required or not.

• Health Circles:

A heath circle is one that includes a group of people from whom the information regarding current health and safety system is derived. These involve workers employed in the various stations of a company's premise divided into several groups based on similar opinions. They can ensure prioritization of inputs derived by the authorities.

• Interviews or Surveys:

Another effective strategy undertaken by organisations to encourage worker participation is conduction of interviews or surveys. These help in encouraging anonymity as well as gives valuable insights from those who shy from voicing their opinions boldly.

• Peer Observations:

Peer observations includes a situation where colleagues observe a worker's behaviour. These revelations help in spotting weak points at the workplace and help in correction of work habits so  that company's safety culture can be improved. Implementation of Mentor System can help reduce stress and relive workers from psychological traumata after work-related accidents.

• Feedback System:

A Feedback System or Suggestion scheme can help in innovation of an existing health and safety system with the help of worker participation. This system helps in prevention of dangerous situations prone to occur at individual or collective level as it leads to identification of smallest risk centres that could result in occupational hazards which could impact the health of employees in the long run.

9. Three circumstances leading to hazard identification process

There are various circumstances that effectively lead to identification of hazards in a workplace.  Various circumstances which led to this process is mentioned below

• The first circumstance which led to hazard identification was the spreading of viruses which promoted ill health in the organisation due to lack of effective sanitation practices.
• Another circumstance was chemical side effects faced by employees due to usage of decanted chemicals in cleaning utensils.
• The third circumstance leading to hazard identification system was the tripping hazards suffered by numerous employees due to wet floor and improper handling of the same.

All these hazards and circumstances developed the need to create a process of identifying hazards which would lead to a better safety environment along with proper welfare of employees.

10. Advantages and Disadvantages of five different communication strategies

There are various strategies in event industry which is essential to ensure appropriate health and safety standards within these companies. However, there are various advantages as well as disadvantages associated with these strategies which are described below:

Consultation When Developing Policies and Procedures:

• Advantage: The biggest advantage of consultation in developing policies as well as procedures is that it helps in identifying the loopholes in these procedures and help to take corrective action which is suitable for the whole organisation.
• Disadvantage: Its drawback is that while policies and procedures might contain strict actions against people not following the policies, it might lead to disagreement which might lead to conflicts.

Communicate health and safety policies, procedures and safe working practices:

• Advantage: Communication of policies, procedures and working practices is imperative as it would serve as a guide to employees working within the organisation to effectively work and follow policies.
• Disadvantage: It might take immense training and development to train employees in order to follow these aspects effectively.

Conduct ongoing health and safety consultation:

• Advantage: Consultation would appropriately help in setting up work frame for new ideas and policies which is essential for maintaining effective working standards.
• Disadvantage: Such consultation might result in development of ideas which are too costly to be implemented and too rigid to be modified later.

Evaluate the effectiveness of health and safety management practices:

• Advantage: Evaluation would help determine the shortcomings of these practices which is essential for these practices to ensure long term growth in sustainability of these policies.
• Disadvantage: Regular evaluation would require immense workload over employees to evaluate those procedures and policies which are already effective and serving in a better manner.

Conclusion

From the above report, it is concluded that maintaining and ensuring the health and safety is important for every business organisation whether working in the separate business standards. It has been noticed that manpower regulation is necessary and important in managing and regulating the process of business functioning on the larger basis. Risk assessment is necessary for every business organisation along with the techniques or methodology used to solve an issue of the manpower hazards. Also, action planning is necessary to get the required and suitable results in case of business regulation on the larger basis, when operating pantry or kitchen sector. Business entity whether operates into the food and beverage sector needs to have right measurement of their working process to make operation effective along with taking strategies to save cost at the higher and right stage of the work or its role.

References

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• Arntz-Gray, J., 2016. Plan, Do, Check, Act: The need for independent audit of the internal responsibility system in occupational health and safety. Safety science. 84. pp.12-23.
• Helmreich, R. L. and Merritt, A. C., 2017, November. 11 Safety and error management: The role of crew resource management. In Aviation Resource Management: Proceedings of the Fourth Australian Aviation Psychology Symposium: v. 1: Proceedings of the Fourth Australian Aviation Psychology Symposium. Routledge.
• Gandhi, T. K., Berwick, D. M. and Shojania, K. G., 2016. Patient safety at the crossroads. Jama, 315(17). pp.1829-1830.
• World Health Organization, 2016. Consultative meeting planning for the global patient safety challenge: medication safety, 19-20 April 2016, WHO Headquarters Geneva, Switzerland: meeting report (No. WHO/HIS/SDS/2016.20). World Health Organization.
• Souza, J. P. E. and Alves, J. ., 2018. Lean-integrated management system: A model for sustainability improvement. Journal of Cleaner Production. 172. pp.2667-2682.

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