KFC Australia clean workplace safety (OHS) record tarnished

A KFC outlet at Eastwood, South Australia has been convicted and fined over an incident in which a young worker suffered burns to nine per cent of his body.

The Industrial Court convicted the company over the incident, which was the company’s first work health and safety conviction, and imposed a penalty of $105,000 plus costs.

On 15 May 2015, while working as a cook, the 16-year-old worker suffered severe burns after stepping backwards and falling into a tank of hot oil which had been placed by another young worker on the floor behind him without warning him.

Following investigation by SafeWork SA, KFC was charged with offences under the Work Health and Safety Act 2012 (SA) for failure to provide a safe working environment free of tripping hazards, failing to maintain a safe system of work by failing to provide and maintain a working procedure for filtering hot oil and failing to provide adequate information, training and supervision for the tasks of filtering, changing, removing or cleaning oil from a cooker.

Magistrate Lieschke said although KFC had identified the hazard of hot surfaces, it had failed to specifically address the hazard of hot oil and where the used oil tanks should be placed once they had been removed from its cookers.

“As a result, a 17-year-old trainer, a necessarily inexperienced youth, was left to work out a system for performing the task and instructing new employees, in this instance as to an unsafe procedure,” he said.

“I accept that KFC did have a system of training that included some online learning, on-the-job training and skills assessment, together with general safety awareness instructions for trainers. However, the system was clearly deficient, as admitted.”

Magistrate Lieschke reduced the initial penalty of $175,000 fine because of KFC’s early guilty plea, and handed down a penalty of $105,000, and reparations of $15,000 paid to the victim.

SafeWork SA Acting Executive Director Dini Soulio said the case highlighted the need for business operators to identify foreseeable risks to health and safety and implement control measures to eliminate or minimise risks.

“When young workers are involved business operators should be particularly mindful of ensuring they are aware of the hazards and risks in the workplace and are trained in safe systems of work,” Mr Soulio said.

ISOsafe help business owners – call us today on 1300 789 132 to learn more about how our specialists can visit your food business to provide training and advice on work health and safety.

New OHS Regulations 2017

The new Victorian Occupational Health and Safety Regulations 2017 (OHS Regulations) and Equipment (Public Safety) Regulations 2017 (EPS Regulations) will commence on 18 June 2017. You can access both the current and future Regulations via the Victorian Legislation and Parliamentary Documents website. 

The new OHS Regulations 2017 are mainly the same. However, if you are in a workplace where asbestos is present; are a manufacturer or an importing supplier of hazardous substances or agricultural and veterinary chemicals; work in construction; or operate a mine or major hazard facility, you need to become aware of the changes. In most cases, compliance is required by 18 June 2017.

Most importantly, the new OHS Regulations 2017 maintain Victoria's already high safety standards. In some high risk areas, like asbestos removal work, they improve standards. The changes also deliver significant savings to Victorian businesses in the areas of high risk work licensing and record keeping for designers and manufacturers of plant.

For some changes, transitional arrangements apply to allow duty and licence holders time to become compliant with the updated regulatory requirements.

If you are affected by the changes, WorkSafe has prepared a range of information and support resources to help you identify what to do to stay compliant when the changes take effect on 18 June 2017, available through the links below.

ISOsafe can prepare the most up to date, tailor-made policies and forms for managing OHS in your workplace. Information and training for your staff about the new OHS and EPS Regulations 2017 is also available through ISOsafe. With staff placed locally across Victoria to help your business better comply with the regulatory changes contact us on 1300 789 132 or email us at enquiries@isosafe.com.au for a fast, free quote.
 

Fatal crash near Dubbo attributed to truck driver fatigue

A Police audit of trucking company, Redstar Transport, has so far revealed issues with insecure loads and driver fatigue. 
The investigations follow an earlier road collision incident involving one of the company’s B-doubles and a car, where two boys, aged nine and twelve, died.
Officers have been working with Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) as part of an investigation relating to safety breaches at Redstar depots at Yennora in Sydney and in Dubbo.
Assistant Commissioner Michael Corboy said all the trucks initially inspected had load issues.
One driver was issued with a field court attendance notice in relation to logbook entries.
"What we need to remember here is there were two children killed in a car accident in the early hours of the morning involving the B-double," Assistant Commissioner Corboy said.
"As a result of all fatal accidents involving trucks, we make sure that those companies involved have the right governance around operations."
The Assistant Commissioner said police were not impressed with the safety issues.
"We are very disappointed," he said.
"The company has been compliant with us, they have been working with us. But to have the amount of issues we have had with all the trucks and drivers this morning has been very disappointing."
Assistant Commissioner Corboy said the audit will help reduce and prevent similar incidents from happening on the nation's roads.
Don’t risk your trucking business’ reputation and costly penalties. We help businesses comply with workplace safety laws. Contact ISOsafe today on 1300 789 132.
 

Our best kept secrets to getting more value out of your ISO auditor

Organisations seeking certification of their ISO management system are required to undergo regular audits. After each audit cycle, it is important for top level management to review the auditor’s report and act on or commit to any recommendations – this will help the organisation keep with current best practices and ensure compliance with the requirements of the relevant standard.

ISOsafe Specialise in a range of ISO Certifications

ISO 9001

ISO 45001

ISO 14001

ISO 27001

And many more Standards

Another major factor to consider is whether your organisation’s ISO management system is living and breathing… In other words, is everyone complying with your documented policies and procedures? The auditor’s report will remain impartial, further, it will play a huge part of your systems long term success.

Part of the audit will be spent looking at how you are progressing to meet your business objectives. You can come away from your audit at the end with fresh knowledge of new objectives to aim for and how you can achieve these.

Do you have an external audit approaching? We can help your organisation achieve audit success; avoiding costly and time consuming failed external audits. Call ISOsafe today on 1300 789 132.

Are you fearing siloing in your rapidly growing business? Visual Management Boards might be the answer!

Visual management boards are communication tools in a lean environment. They give workers information at a glance. There are several types of visual management boards, including boards for continuous improvement, project status, safety notices, and point-of-use tools.

When developing a visual management board for any workplace, we need to focus on simplicity. Typically the focus is on depicting vital measurements/information and displaying them so that information is:

Consistent - all boards throughout the organisation are similar with minimal variation only as processes require it.

Easy to understand by all – all levels of the organisation use this system to get a quick sense of the performance of a production cell/line, team or department.

Visible from at least 40 feet – the use of colours is very helpful, here. Colours of green for hitting or exceeding a goal / target and red for a miss.

Metrics to consider for a visual management board include:

a. People – Safety (any injuries), absenteeism (who’s here so we know what to work with)

b. Quality – Scrap, defects and re-work

c. Schedule – On track or not

d. Cost – Usually productivity but could be efficiency as well

e. Environment – 5S, waste reduction, environmental impacts and aspects.

How do you determine what to show on your visual management boards? Let’s break it down in some logical steps. Think about an employee, guest, supplier or corporate visitor walking into your work environment to their respective “work” area. What information do they need to see? Of course, the answer depends on your industry and what is important at your work environment but let me present a few ideas that you can consider.

As we first walk into a work environment there should be some high-level data points that will help us understand what our company and site values are and how we are performing against them. Most businesses should focus on People, Quality, Environment, Schedule and Cost. Given that those things are important to most of us we would expect to see high-level indications of the workplace’s position on them. These indications should not be too data-intense at this level.

As we move through the work environment the level of information should become more focused and relevant to the functions occurring in that area. We can still have the high level indicators but we will usually make them specific to the production cell/line, team or department.

As we move to the functional level work areas we will see yet a deeper, more focused level of information posted on the visual management boards. This information will speak to the daily or weekly planned work for that function. It will also include information on tasks that have come up that were not planned. This information will be the focus of the shift meeting. The area leader will review this information with the area employees to ensure alignment on what work is to be done. Again, there will be additional information that is relevant to that area. This could be the status of the training objectives. In some cases it could be information about continuous improvement projects in that area.

Of course the most important thing about using a visual management board is how it’s used. A successful implementation would be when production teams use them effectively as a vehicle to understand gaps in performance and address these with actions to right the ship and achieve their targets. The board should be as user-specific as possible, meaning that the people responsible for the process line/cell, team or department are the same people actually maintaining the visual management boards. It tends to build a sense of emotion behind the numbers; think of having to colour red two or three days in a row and what emotions are felt with a supervisor or within a team.

So what should you do to create or improve your visual management process? Use value stream mapping to truly understand where your bottlenecks are. Engage all of your employees in continuous improvement to relieve those bottlenecks. Develop focused key performance indicators that help measure the results and use visual management boards to communicate and align your organisation.

To get help with your Visual Management System project contact us today on 1300 789 132.