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About Us : Occupational Health & Safety
AfMA Policy Statement: Occupational Health & Safety
It is AƒMA's firm belief that it is a fundamental right for all to work in a healthy and safe environment. While it is understood that every eventuality can never be catered for there is a valid assumption that all that can reasonably be done to reduce risk of disease or injury should be done.
Responsibility under the law to provide a safe workplace environment is defined as a management function. However, safety is and should be a collective responsibility. The health and safety of all employees in any organisation is a matter of importance and concern to both employers and employees.
Legislation invariably places obligations on insurers, employers and employees to co-operate with pro-active management measures to ensure the effectiveness of the injury management process.
A safe workplace includes the motor vehicle whether large or small, tool of trade or salary packaged, salary sacrificed or novated. If it is supplied by the organisation or used in any way for business purposes the organisation has a responsibility.
This responsibility usually assigned to the fleet manager is to ensure that any such vehicle is both fit for its purpose, is properly maintained, has adequately trained operators and is not open to abuse of any kind.
The need to adopt a risk minimisation approach to managing occupational health and safety is self-evident. AƒMA is committed to encouraging best practice in fleet safety and will continue: -
-To encourage best practice and continuous improvement by promoting a total approach to safety;
- Its program for the collection and dissemination of safety related information;
- The inclusion in its conference and seminar programs of fleet health and safety topics;
- AƒMA's safety benchmarking program;
- AƒMA's annual Fleet Safety Award;
- The development of expertise and experience, and the dissemination of knowledge of safe practices through its Peer Networking program.
The scope of responsibility is expanding all the time. Liability is now implied not only in legislation relating to Occupational Heath and Safety but also in directors and managers liability provisions. Directors and managers are required to exercise "due diligence and reasonable care".
Due diligence means taking care, it means taking every reasonable precaution to protect the health, safety and welfare of the workforce.
For example Victorian occupational health and safety legislation reflects the non-delegable common law duty of an employer to ensure a safe workplace .
Whether a company has acted reasonably will depend on all the circumstances and therefore requires consideration of the following: -
- Severity of the risk;
- State of knowledge about the risk and ways of addressing it;
- Availability of ways to remove or reduce that risk;
- Cost of removing or instigating that risk;
- Care that was exercised in engaging contractors.
Today directors and managers will be judged not on the knowledge they have but what knowledge they should have in line with the responsibilities of the position they hold in the organisation.
The need for data A most important feature of safety responsibility is the state of knowledge about the risk and ways of addressing it. To meet their legal requirements organisations need to have a set of clearly defined procedures in place for the assessment of skills, the provision of training, the ongoing monitoring and management of safety in respect to the fleet.
Benchmarking AƒMA's Safety Benchmarking program established in 1997 is a source of important data in fleet safety. Participants are able to evaluate their performance in specific areas against a series of fleets and industry benchmarks. This confidential program benchmarks participants' results against a range of fleets as a whole and in classified industry groups on benchmarks such as: -
- Accident rate (per 100 vehicles);
- Average cost;
- Cost per vehicle;
- Accident cost per million kilometres;
- Number of accidents per million kilometres;
- Driver at fault percentage.
Regular performance comparisons reveal areas where individual organisations do not match defined benchmarks or best practice. There is the opportunity for organisations to learn and implement initiatives that others have used in making substantial improvements and savings.
Driver assessment
The coverage of road transport by the extension of a variety of health and safety regulations has progressed over recent years. Driver assessments are one part of the process of protecting vehicle operators from accidents. Driver assessment is part of the process of proving that drivers are serious about health and safety and show due diligence in the implementation of safe systems of work.
It follows that with every assessment there is an outcome of a defined training needs analysis. AƒMA supports formal driver education as an important part of any fleet accident reduction program. Driving education conducted by well-established companies now include attitude, defensive driving, risk taking behaviour and its effect on safety.
The driving test is a minimum legal standard. It does not necessarily mean that once someone has passed their test they are a good driver. Once the vehicle leaves the company premises managers have very little, or no, control over the decisions made by the driver. Assessment and training helps to make sure that the right person is behind the wheel, with the right attitude, and who will make the right decisions.
AƒMA will continue to promote driver safety in fleet operations and will assist where possible its members to meet the challenges of achieving best practice in fleet safety.
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