Online induction helps employers meet their Primary Duty under harmonised WHS legislation

Industry employment expert Julie McLoughlin, Director of OHS&HR Management Systems Pty Ltd, is well aware the difficulties that leisure industry employers face in ensuring all staff, contractors and volunteers are inducted and trained in relation to any hazards they may face at workplaces, and what suitable controls need to be in place.

Given the nature of many sectors of the leisure industry, compliance with these induction and training requirements can be difficult, given the industry has lots of casual staff, has a high turnover of staff and employs many short - term staff and contractors.

McLoughlin highlights the challenges many employers face when conducting induction and training relating to hazards:

• How do we get all of these people in a room together to induct them when they commence work at varying times and there is a constant procession of new starters?
• We may have managed to get a number of them together, but two of them were sick on the day, and a few started work the week after the induction. Back to the drawing board, we need another session.
• So we decide to make the inductions one-on-one. This starts off well, but eventually we find that the inductions drop off, as those allocated with the job of inducting are busy doing other things.
• Even if we manage to induct these people safely, our next problem is, do we have sufficient records? 

McLoughlin explains “employers need to be able to prove that they have provided the correct information, and that it has been understood by each worker.

“They also need records of completion.”

As a former Safety and Training Manager at both the Melbourne Cricket Club and Melbourne Racing Club over number of years, McLoughlin moved to manage compliance by introducing online inductions. She explains “online inductions make this process so much more manageable by taking the bulk of information and delivering it via an online learning format.

“Online inductions make the problems disappear.”

Through OHS&HR Management Systems, McLoughlin has developed an online safety induct product which uses ‘Moodle’ open-source software in order to make online inductions both simple and affordable.

Used throughout the tertiary education sector, Moodle was developed in Perth and is used throughout the world.

To learn how to develop an online induction, OHS&HR Management Systems is currently hosting a free one hour online course, to register, simply go to www.safetyinduct.com.au.

Click here to contact OHS&HR Management Systems Pty Ltd via their entry in the Australasian Leisure Management online Supplier Directory.

20th November 2012 - VENUE MANAGEMENT SCHOOL A ‘HUGE SUCCESS’