Managing health and safety risks in the workplace is essential.
The consequences of unsafe acts or conditions can impact greatly on people’s personal life, their family and friends, as well as impacting the reputation and even the future of a business.
Businesses have a statutory obligation to ensure the health and safety of their employees, contractors and other persons at work
Specific requirements regarding systems of work, working environment, plant, equipment, substances and materials used in the workplace and the certification and training of workers, must also be adhered to.
At V.E.T. Centre we provide a range of services to help you achieve Work Health and Safety Compliance.
‘White Card’ Training
Work Health and Safety Compliance Training for workers starts with the ‘White Card’.
This is an induction program covering safe work practices, risk management principles, safety signage, personal protective equipment, relevant legislation and more.
V.E.T. Centre’s experienced trainers deliver informative, engaging, industry-specific White Card training to workers across the construction, resources, agriculture and pastoral sectors.
Staff Skills Audit
V.E.T. Centre has the skills and experience to audit the proficiency of your workers in the operation and use of a wide range of workplace machinery and equipment. Having assessed their level of competency we devise and deliver refresher and/ or gap training as required.
For those in the pastoral industry, we can also audit your workers’ handling and use of horses and the handling and management of livestock.
Certified Training
Under the Work Health and Safety legislation, employers owe a duty of care to their workers to ensure the safe use, storage and handling of machinery, plant and equipment. The best way to fulfil that duty is to ensure that workers have an accredited qualification or ‘ticket’.
Individual workers using machinery and equipment must be able to demonstrate to WorkCover that they have been properly trained and formally assessed. Again, the best way to do this, is through an accredited qualification or ‘ticket’.
V.E.T. Centre’s highly experienced trainers and assessors can provide the training and assessment services to deliver the required qualifications and meet all of your workplace needs.
Verification of Competency (VOC) Assessment
Employers have a legal responsibility to ensure their workers’ skills are competent and current. In the event of an accident, an employer must be able to prove that they took every reasonable step to ensure the competency of their workers.
Where an accredited qualification has been held for some time, a worker may be unable to immediately verify their competence against current industry standards.
A VOC is a non-accredited method of assessment that helps employers meet their WHS obligations and ensure workers are competent, current and safe to operate equipment or perform a task.
Conducted by an independent, certified third party trainer/ assessor, the VOC process is transparently separate from any type of in-house process conducted by someone who may or may not have the right skills, knowledge and qualifications to verify competency.
V.E.T. Centre’s highly experienced industry expert trainers/ assessors can assess and validate the skills, knowledge and capability of workers, verifying their competence to perform specific tasks or operate machinery and equipment. Where the appropriate equipment and environment are provided by the employer, we can verify your workers onsite, ‘on-job’, with minimal disruption to your business.
Work Health and Safety Handbook
Everyone within a business has a role to play in making the workplace as safe and healthy as possible. Under Work Health and Safety legislation, a duty of care applies to everyone within the workplace. As these duties differ, it is important that everybody is informed of and understands their duty.
V.E.T. Centre works with you to design a WHS Handbook that provides information about work health and safety rules and regulations, sets out health and safety policies and procedures, outlines workers’ responsibilities, explains how to manage risk and report incidents and hazards, and provides guidance on the arrangements for ensuring safety across all business operations.
Tailored to your business, a WHS Handbook will ensure workers are informed about respective health and safety responsibilities, policies and procedures and help you meet your legal obligations.
Note: The WHS Handbook is best used in conjunction with a comprehensive set of Standard/ Safe Operating Procedures.
Standard/ Safe Operating Procedures (SOP)
A Standard/ Safe Operating Procedure or SOP is a key means through which a business can manage risks and meet its health and safety duties to workers.
A SOP is a set of step-by-step instructions for workers on how to safely perform a task or activity which involves some risk to health and safety. A SOP guides workers when performing a particular task (e.g. working with chemicals), operating a particular piece of machinery (e.g. using a chainsaw), working in a particular environment (e.g. in a remote location or hot weather), working with particular materials (e.g. asbestos or silica dust) or managing general risk (e.g. COVID-19).
SOPs ensure that workers carry out operations correctly, consistently and safely. They make workers aware of the risks involved in each activity, and the actions they should take to control them.
V.E.T. Centre will review your business and design a comprehensive, tailored set of SOPs that embody best industry practice. We also provide a complementary package of supporting documents to assist your hazard and risk management including risk assessment and hazard report forms, training and competency registers, incident and accident report forms, worker induction checklists, contractor safety checklist, property/ site inspection and safety checklists, records of staff consultations/ toolbox meetings and emergency plans.
