October is National Safe Work Month, and in New South Wales (NSW) an Australian-first toolkit has been released for the labour hire industry as part of the jurisdiction’s ‘Safe Work Month’, which has a theme this year of ‘Protecting Workers At Risk’. The toolkit includes a worker guide and a self-assessment checklist for businesses, intended to improve the safety of labour hire workers. The toolkit is intended to help reduce the rates of serious injuries and incidents by providing businesses with a baseline of work health and safety expectations relating to the use of labour hire workers.

“Workers in labour hire are estimated to represent more than 3% of the NSW workforce, and while it is critical business have the opportunity for flexibility, it is imperative all precautions are taken on safety,” said SafeWork NSW Director of Compliance and Dispute Resolution Tony Williams said. “Labour hire workers can find themselves working in different businesses where known hazards are variable. They are also are likely to be more reluctant to speak out due to fear of not securing further work.

“These workers are typically found in construction, agriculture, manufacturing and health and aged care, and we have translated this kit into four languages, ensuring workers from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds have access to the information,” Williams said. “The kit is made up of a number of resources, including a self-assessment checklist for labour hire businesses, a checklist to ensure the suitability of the host business and an induction checklist for aged-care agency workers.”

The toolkit forms part of SafeWork NSW’s October program, which will also include a Mentally Healthy Workplaces Ambassador forum, and inspectors in regional NSW visiting manufacturers and suppliers of agriculture equipment and machinery. “SafeWork NSW is not an organisation who only appear at your workplace after an incident,” Williams said. “Our inspectors undertake around 34,000 workplace visits to NSW businesses every year to help improve workplace safety.”

The labour hire toolkit is available here, via the SafeWork NSW website. As part of its October program, NSW has also released a ‘Workplace Pulse Check’ tool to support Mental Health Month, which is available here.

Resources for National Safe Work Month — with its theme of ‘think safe. work safe. be safe.’ — are available here, via the Safe Work Australia website.

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