The goal of every organisation is to maintain business as usual regardless of what gets thrown its way. Unfortunately, no matter the industry, there are situations that could arise when least ideal or expected that have the potential to derail business operations. The problem could be something completely out of an organisation’s control like a natural disaster, or especially in today’s digital age, something IT related like an unplanned outage, cyber attack or a data breach. In any case, businesses can’t keep the lights on, so to speak, if they aren’t prepared for certain circumstances and must do their best to not fall apart when issues arise.

Organisations should be aware of effective workplace risk management practices that ensure a healthy and safe environment. Workplace hazards can incur great costs for a company, but if identified and assessed properly, they can be controlled and prevented, or at least minimised.  We've listed out the 4 most common ones - physical, ergonomic, chemical, and biological.

In Australia, all companies and organisations are legally obligated to make sure they are providing a healthy and safe working environment for their employees, customers, contractors, visitors, volunteers and/or suppliers. This multidisciplinary field concerned with the safety, health, and wellbeing of all stakeholders in the workplace is known officially as Workplace Health & Safety (WHS).

While there are numerous WHS requirements, luckily they are readily available and meeting these requirements carries extensive benefits such as saving costs, higher staff retention and avoiding serious legal and business consequences.

Did you know that 56 workplace fatalities have already occurred this year (source: Safe Work Australia)? This statistic is an unfortunate fact that highlights how critical Workplace Health and Safety is, irrespective of what industry you’re in. While Australia is still ranked among the top health and safety performing nations, this statistic is still too high.

With greater focus being placed on the risk control environment these days, the challenge for a lot of risk managers is how to be across everything. The big benefit to living in the information age is that technology can be used to create a virtual centralised model via a decentralised approach.