Health & Safety Reps

Information

A group for all Health and Safety Reps or Work Safety Reps - be they from the Commonwealth or appointed under the ACT's OHS Act.

Location: Canberra, ACT
Members: 15
Latest Activity: Jun 3

About Health and Safety Reps

HSRs who work under the ACT's OHS legislation should have a look at the ACT OHS Commissioner's resources for HSRs.

Commonwealth HSRs may want to have a look at Comcare's resource page for HSRs.

Discussion Forum

Adequate resources for HSRs?

It would be interesting to hear HSRs views on whether there are adequate resources available to them for them to do their job. For example - do they have adequate access to advice when they have an…

Tagged: resources, HSR

Started by Mark McCabe Jun. 3, 2009.

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Comment by Nikki Broers on August 4, 2009 at 3:49pm: Yeah, it woul be great having a group here, problem is I'm not currently able to invite people to join as I don't know who the other HSR's are! I have contacted our HR team and apparently they are in the process of compiling a register of HSR's, Fire Wardens, First Aid Officers and Workstation Assessors but I have a feeling it could be a while in the making.

The guy I spoke to did seem interested in the idea of setting up a communication forum once the register is sorted. I sent him the link to this one and he's going to raise it with the right people at his end.

Comment by Mark McCabe on July 30, 2009 at 4:36pm: You could set up a group here in the Safety Forum and invite the other HSRs in your dept. to join that Group. Ask your HR Manager or OHS Manager for a list of who the other HSRs are if you don't already know

Then you could post issues you identify to that group's page and/or discuss internal issues you become aware of in total privacy while at the same time retaining a bit of a history of issues and responses. Only invited members would be able to see the Group's discussions etc. if you set it up as a Private Group. Even I as moderator can't see its internal workings.

If you want to try that just click on the Group tab along the top of the Forum and take it from there - or try the help text.

Comment by Nikki Broers on July 30, 2009 at 3:45pm: I work in a State Government department and aside from the initial HSR training I have had very little guidance on any aspect of my role. I'm lucky in that the people in my workgroup are all quite proactive about OHS issues, there is rarely anything of major concern found during inspections.

Hoever, I do feel that we need some form of communication between the HSR's across the whole department. I'm sure there are common issues we all face and it seems silly to have one person from each workgroup hunting for the same things and not sharing information. For example, the line of sight from our kitchen entrance is quite poor and people nearly walk into each other carrying hot drinks etc. We have investigated putting in convex mirrors but the cost is prohibitive for just one or two. If it was found to be a common issue on all 7 floors of the building, surely we could get a better deal for everyone. But apart from two other HSR's on my floor I have no idea who has this responsibility in other areas of the department. There doesn't seem to be a register or email group set up for us and my attempts at setting one up have fallen on deaf ears. It's really rather frustrating!

Comment by Terry Greaves on July 22, 2009 at 10:09am: Unfortantly, I would suggest that most HSR's are full time employees in an unrelated field, and are HSR's as a legal requirement in the workplace, the role takes a very poor second place and is not taken very seriously by fellow staff members.
How do others handle this situtation in their work place.
(I work for a not-for-profit and there is no spare money to be proactive although management have acted upon areas that I have raised).