Occupational Health and Safety for a Home Depot Store Branch The safety and good health of all employee within any organization is the highest priority for any sensible administration. Indeed, apart from being the legal requirement in most nations, it is the moral duty for the management since only a healthy workforce is capable of producing good results and also reduces the number of absenteeism due to ill health or injuries sustained at work. The safety of the employees also reduces unnecessary costs that the organization may incur in the form of legal suits that may emanate from the avoidable injuries and health hazards.

A home depot holds a lot of merchandise, ranging from the food stuff to the building chemicals, cleaning agents and hardware. There are also continued construction and repair works that go on within and around the store that I manage. All these have their own ways of endangering the lives of the employees within the store and those involved in the construction outside the store. The store in discussion hosts customers in their hundreds each day and the number can go to thousands during festive seasons. All these people who relate to the store in one way or the other must be protected as the OHS regulations outline, these are some of the ways that as a manage of the store I will ensure the OHS/WHS is effectively implemented and followed for the safety of each individual.

The department will ensure that all new employees have a soft copy of the WHS as well as emergency response procedures that will help in informing them and guiding them on what is required of them to avoid emergencies and what they need to do in cases of emergency. Since matters of safety at workplaces are continuous, there will be safety workshops and emergency response drills twice each year to help the employees in my department as the floor manager to refresh their memory on the safety procedures and the eminent danger that a lapse in guard may cause them and others around them. There will also be clearly visible boards around each entrance and exit attached to the wall on the basic safety procedures that need to be observed by the people within the store particularly regarding fire, dangerous chemicals and physical injuries within the store. This will in effect increase the access to the tenets of safety to all team members. The workshops on OHS and WHS will be conducted by safety consulting firms to be sure that the employees get the latest and the accurate information on the safety regulations.

As part of the internal mechanism to keep safety as a priority, there will be a small team formed with a representative from each department to ensure that the hazards that are within the department are reported and noted down. Each member of the department will then be notified of the hazard and the ways to avoid the hazards. This will not only act as away of regularly updating the members on the safety and potential hazards but will also be a channel through which each member of the department can ask safety measures questions as well as contribute to the overall safety of the store through the departmental representative. Each member however will have the direct access to the manager.

In the event that an emergency happens the response will be immediate with representatives from each department coming together to evaluate the extent of the hazard and as the internal safety team resolve on how best to handle the hazard. If the hazard is of significant threat it will then need to be reported to the relevant safety personnel within the region for quick action for instance if it is fire, gas chemical, biological threats and such like.

There will be need to have a quick and effective mode of communication among all the team members. The email system and the phone number database will be adopted as the most effective way of communicating in details any OHS/WHS issues that may arise from time to time. The use of short messages to personal phones of each team member will be effective in updating them on urgent matters that need their attention yet the email will be mostly for comprehensive topics on the issues concerning safety within the store. It will also be convenient for updating the members on the feedback about questions they might have raised or pending matters concerning security.

The departmental representatives will undergo extensive training on matters concerning safety and health within workplace setting such as our store. This...

These representatives will work directly with the manager to ensure matters they raise are effectively handled to a conclusive end. Upon reporting of any hazardous event by the team, there will be a prompt action taken to dispatch the right personnel to clear the hazard if the hazard can be handled internally. If the hazard is of a nature that needs specialized equipment and knowledge like chemical contamination, chemical spills, bomb threats among many others, they the local authorities concerned will be immediately called by the manager and the area cordoned off until such a time that the hazard shall have been effectively handed by the agency.
Since the store will need to know the levels of preparedness both in terms of the training and the necessary equipment for handling hazards, there will be an annual security audits that will be conducted within the entire store by a specialized team from a reliable consultancy firm. The report, once handed to the manage, he will organize meetings with the team from all the departments in different times and brief them of the areas that were found to be inadequate and from there take steps to inform the management to effectively correct the inadequacies.

The equipment concerned with safety of the store will be kept at strategic points where the team members can easily access and sue them in the event that emergencies arise. All team members will be comprehensively trained to handle the equipment and an appointed company dealing with safety equipment will be contracted to regularly service them.

The issue of safety spans from the technical training of the team members, to the basic knowledge that the customers are equipped with and the condition of the safety equipment. If the right procedures for handling hazards are followed, there will be minimal effects of hazardous events incase any happens.

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Hazards in selected rooms at the workplace

Shower/Toilet

Some of the areas highlighted as possible hazardous places are the hygiene, the chemicals use in the shower and toilet, the shower ventilation, the floor and the toilets and showers too. In my workplace, the first hazard comes from the hygiene since there is no separation of the categories of waste and any sharps will most likely end up with the disposable tissue which is not right. The soaps used in the shower are not of the recommended standard but just average home soaps from the stores hence the danger of passing on germs. In the toilets, there are no proper signage and the recommended disposable seat covers have never been considered the risk of transfer of diseases among employees. The taps are another hazard area since there are no auto-taps and germs can easily be transferred among the employees. The ventilation of the shower is also not effective since there are no extractor fans hence when the showers get busy, especially when many people shower at the end of the day, it becomes misty within the shower room.

At my workplace, the WHS regulations and codes of practices are often followed effectively for instance the WHS requires that the injury of an employee is recorded and first aid is administered to the injured person alongside the right care after the first aid. The injured person also needs to be helped to recover at work by finding suitable employment or duties that he can carry out. This needs to be done in conjunction with the doctor handling the injured person and the insurer (NSW Government, 2016). These are basic requirements that goes a long way in not only saving the employee from pain but also from apathy in the life after the injury, these are followed among others at my workplace.

PCBU and the duty of a PCBU

A PCBU is an acronym for Person Conducting Business or undertaking and under the new WHS in Australia, it refers to individuals, businesses or organizations that conduct business. These include the private and public companies, partnerships, local government councils, universities among other entities. One or an entity does not need to be an employer to be classified as a PCBU, you may be a PCBU yet not classified as an employer, for instance sole traders who are PCBU but are not employers. The PCBU are required by law to put in place…