#SafeWork Month: For everyone’s safety, work safely
Queensland Teachers' Journal, Vol 128 No 7, 29 September 2023, page no. 15
October is National Safe Work Month – a time to commit to building a safe and healthy workplace. Being healthy and safe means being free from physical and psychosocial harm.
National SafeWork Month sets out to encourage organisations and individuals to prioritise safety in their workplaces and reduce the number of work-related injuries, illness, and fatalities.
The “object” section of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Qld) s3 (2) states that: “regard must be had to the principle that workers and other persons should be given the highest level of protection against harm to their health, safety and welfare from hazards and risks arising from work or from particular substances or plant as is reasonably practicable.”
Ensuring an active safety lens in our schools and TAFEs delivers on this principle and makes a difference when moving from compliance to a proactive safety culture. Just as effective teaching practice is based on working collaboratively with colleagues, work health and safety (WHS) is absolutely a team sport.
Setting up workplace team cultures which, from time to time, encourage risk assessments to be worked through together, drawing on the team’s knowledge and experience, creates a safe system of work. In the school and TAFE context, collaborating on a curriculum activity risk assessment (CARA) transforms it from a semi-compliance document into the living breathing process it was designed to be.
The Department of Education’s Managing Risks in School Curriculum Activities Procedure (2023) is underpinned by both the Education (General Provisions) Act 2066 (Qld) and associated regulation and the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Qld) and associated regulation and codes of practices.
The procedure provides risk assessment and risk management processes to support:
- implementing a schoolwide CARA process
- planning curriculum activities and assessing foreseeable risks.
- documenting CARA records
- approving CARA records
- conducting curriculum activities
- reviewing curriculum activities.
Safety is never meant to be led and managed in an echo chamber. What we know or ought to reasonably know about hazards and risks is better explored with others. Fresh perspectives should be applied in a similar way to how teachers engage in moderation processes. The collaboration is geared towards improving knowledge, deepening understandings, and honing skills and judgement-making. Timetabled collaboration time for risk management discussions will mean that a teacher working on a specific assessment will know they have a brains trust of colleagues, including other staff, that they can explore their specific assessment with.
This collaboration would grow a shared safety culture and could be part of the “program of training” (which includes the annual induction/refresher CARA training and annual school specific CARA training) that the department charges the principal with putting in place for all staff responsible for the planning and/or delivery of curriculum activities. The program of training is clearly expected to go further than the annual mandatory all staff training (MAST) induction/refresher CARA training.
Thinking about teachers working in isolation and connecting with colleagues in a similar faculty at another workplace once or twice a year to talk safety would ensure that the safety of students, staff, and others is explored through fresh eyes. Another strategy that could enliven a learning-centred safety culture would be 10-minute safety check-ins at the first staff or curriculum team meetings of each term.
We engage in and lead safety because it is the right thing to do. Leading a solid safety culture that embeds time for collaborative practice also mitigates the risk of potential prosecution of workers under the Act. In the end, safety culture goes beyond compliance and is about working safely for everyone’s safety.