Hello Visitor,

Welcome back to 2016!

This is our first edition of our monthly Safetyfirst e-newsletter for 2016.

We hope you enjoy the new format, and please remember to send through your stories and good news events throughout the year to info@safetyfirst.org.au

AUSTRALIAN WHS STATISTICS

15 Workers have been killed in the first 6 weeks of 2016, with the highest numbers in South Australia (4) and Victoria (4).

Safe Work Australia regularly updates the records and statistics related to this information and produces relevant reports.

The Construction and the Agriculture, forestry and fishing industries have recorded the highest numbers with 4 fatalities each. Five other different industries have recorded one fatality each.

While the 15 fatalities are 15 too many lives lost, the figure is an improvement on the 2015 worker deaths year-to-date when the total was 27.

The total number of fatalities in 2015 was 190 with the Transport, postal & warehousing industry reporting 55 fatalities, Agriculture, forestry and fishing industry with 52 and construction with 25 fatalities as the 3 industries with THE highest fatal incidents.

In Victoria the first 2 of the 4 fatalities were due to electrocution and in both situations the men were under 25 years old. In the ‘Letter to the Editor’ on the WorkSafe Victoria website, Marnie Williams, the Executive Director of Health and Safety stated that “Electrocution is one of the leading causes of workplace fatalities but there are simple steps that can be taken to ensure this type of tragedy does not happen again.”

More at the WorkSafe News website.

 YOUNG WORKERS MUST BE SAFE AT WORK

Throughout Australia workers have by now returned to work and they were joined by many thousands of young workers entering the workplace for the first time. This will require that the businesses which employ these new workers are prepared to provide appropriate training and supervision.

Data provided by SafeWork NSW shows that young workers under the age of 25 accounted for 16 per cent of all injuries in NSW workplaces during 2013/14 with 15,708 young injured and seven killed across the State.

In a Media Release, Executive Director of SafeWork NSW, Peter Dunphy said young workers must receive appropriate training and supervision so that they do not get injured, and experienced workers should be reminded not to become complacent.

More at WorkCover NSW.

Several incidents that involved young workers have occurred already, the latest in Queensland, at Kallangur worksite, where an 18-year old man has been shot in the chest with a nail gun.

As a reminder of the safety requirements when using a nail gun please access our recently reviewed ‘Pneumatic Nail Gun Operating Procedure’ as well as Guidance material from WorkSafe sites of various jurisdictions.

SafetyFirst Pneumatic Nail Gun Operating Procedure

Guidance Material

Worksafe Victoria - Preventing injuries from nail guns

SafeWork SA - Nail Guns

WorkCover NSW - Safe use of nail guns

WorkSafe Victoria - Your health and safety guide to managing young workers

 ANTI-BULLYING MOVEMENT

More and more people across the world, from CEOs to students, are taking a stand against bullying whether they have been bullied or not.

Sharina Mayman, a 15-year old Gisborne student, has created a “banner pen” to tackle the bullying issue in schools. 1000 of these pens, containing anti-bullying and mental health information will be given to secondary school students in the Macedon Ranges. This will provide students with information ‘in hand’ and allow them to contact support services if they are bullied.

At the other end of the spectrum, Twitter announced the formation of a Trust and Safety Council which will act as an advisory body to the company to deal with cyber bullying and abuses which have become common on its platform. The council is made of 40 organisations around the world, 4 of which are Australian.

Abusive content and cyber bullying was a frequent problem on Twitter. Its CEO, Dick Costolo conceded that Twitter could not do much to stop the trend.

“We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we’ve sucked at it for years,” the ABC quoted him as saying. “We lose core user after core user by not addressing simple trolling issues that they face every day. I’m frankly ashamed of how poorly we’ve dealt with this issue during my tenure as CEO. It’s absurd. There’s no excuse for it. I take full responsibility.”

More information available here.

Dealing with bullying is important for every workplace as well.

Safe Work Australia has developed a Worker’s guide on ‘Dealing with workplace bullying’ which covers information such as: what is workplace bullying, what is not considered to be workplace bullying, what can you do, what should you expect from your workplace etc.

The document can be downloaded from here.

GTAV is hosting a Workplace bullying workshop in partnership with the BullyZero Foundation.

Session details:

Date: Wednesday 2^nd March 2016
Location: GTAV Office – Lvl 3, 478 Albert St, East Melbourne
Time: 9am – 5 pm

Click here for further information and registration form.

WORK HEALTH AND SAFETY PERCEPTIONS – CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

In 2015 Safe Work Australia published a research report on the development of policies in relation to work health and safety in the construction industry.

The Australian Work Health and Safety Strategy 2012-2022 describes the construction industry as a priority industry for work health and safety. While much is known about work-related injuries and illnesses in this industry from the national workers’ compensation dataset (NDS), more needs to be known about disease-causing hazard exposures, work health and safety attitudes and perceptions and work health and safety activities in this industry.

The information contained in the report will help to identify issues requiring prevention action and will ensure that resources and prevention efforts can be targeted appropriately.

The report summarises findings from construction employers and workers from six existing Safe Work Australia data sources.

An interesting fact outlined in the report is that “almost half of construction employees sourced their work health and safety information from Training courses”, such as work-based, TAFE, and apprenticeships etc.

It is encouraging to see that training programs such as the Safety Induction, Licensing training and specific training for certificates at various levels are providing workers with the knowledge required to complete their work safely.

SafetyFirst - Ahead of the Action

Your own branded learning management system not only benefits your apprentices and trainees, it also benefits you as a business. You need not worry about putting your resources out of play for a day or two just to conduct the program. With SafetyFirst's online safety induction training, you'll enjoy benefits such as:

• Assist in meeting compliance - designed as tools to assist managers and supervisors to meet their Work Health and Safety obligations
• Do it anytime - The training course is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week
• Interactive and engaging - easy to use by various learners, entertaining content for a more enjoyable learning experience
• Cost-effectiveness
• Consistency - ability to maintain a particular standard with staff WHS training
• Results – immediate results and feedback that identify further training needs

SafetyFirst can assist you in creating a safe work environment for all your new employees, apprentices and trainees.

A free trial of the material can be found here - demo.safetyfirst.org.au

 NOMOPHOBIA

Do you know the meaning of this word?

Nomophobia is the fear of being out of mobile phone contact.

Several surveys have been conduct in the last few year to establish how dependent we are on our mobile phones. The results are probably not surprising to some of us but they are concerning.

An article published on news.com.au in 2013 stated that Cisco, in a survey of 3800 people, found nine out of 10 in the group aged under 30 were addicted to their smartphones and became anxious when their phone went missing.

It also contained a ‘mobile phone addiction test’ which anyone can complete in less than 1 minute to ascertain if they are nomophobic.

More concerning is the information contained in an article posted on bbc.com which reveals that a recent study which surveyed almost 1,000 students in South Korea and found that 72% of children own a smartphone by the age of 11 or 12 and spend on average 5.4 hours a day on them - as a result about 25% of children were considered addicted to smartphones. The study, to be published in 2016 found that stress was an important indicator of your likelihood to becoming addicted.

More information available from the BBC Website.

Learn more about SafetyFirst

SafetyFirst is an initiative of the  Group Training Association of Victoria. Visit our site to keep up to date with the latest Health and Safety news Australia wide. SafetyFirst.org.au