What Can the Yellow Wiggle Tell Us About First Aid Training?

Heart attacks are one of Australia’s biggest killers. Every year, around 34,000 Australians and New Zealanders suffer a heart attack outside of hospital. Without the assistance of a trained and qualified first aid officer, cardiac arrests frequently turn deadly – in fact, only one in ten victims of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests survive. Would you know what to do if someone at work suffered a heart attack? Is there someone in your workplace that’s trained to help? Maybe you remember a [...]

Does Australia Lead the Way in Safety Management?

What does ISO 45001 say about Australia's Safety Management? Since 2001, Australia and New Zealand have used the AS/NZS 4801 Occupational health and safety management systems as the premier WHS Standard. The majority of Australian businesses that had WHS Certification were certified to this standard, with a minority certified to OHSAS 18001, originally a British standard but used in many countries. All this has changed with the adoption of ISO 45001:2018, which is now the accepted WHS standard worldwide, and [...]

ISO 45001 is finally here! Now what?

ISO 45001 is the new Occupational Health and Safety Management Standard. If you're not sure what the changes are and how to implement them, take a look at GrowEQ's plain English answers to commonly asked questions.

New Online Register Making Life Easier

A new online register of high risk work, asbestos and demolition licence holders, as well as general construction induction training card holders, will go live on 29 January 2018 in NSW. So it will be easier for your business to regularly check the validity of your worker's licences, using a single portal.

October 2015 – National Safe Work Month

Last year 188 workers were killed at work. National Safe Work Month in October 2015 focuses on addressing health and safety issues in the workplace with the theme ‘Be safe. Be healthy. Because…’ It's deliberately left open so you can add your own reasons.

Is there a Business Case for Work Health & Safety?

In the world of work health and safety, the business case is often confused with the related question of making an economic justification for the public good. Certainly the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 makes it clear that organisations are responsible for the safety of people they do not employ such as visitors and pedestrians, for example, but the public good argument does not provide a business case for private investment in WHS. The business case seeks to establish [...]

Training for Profitability

Training helps to turn the theory of quality and safety into reality. Effective training should be a fundamental part of a company’s management system as it can help prevent many quality, safety and environmental problems from ever occurring.  Dare I say it – training even improves profitability. Some Facts A study by the American Management Association found that companies that INCREASED their training after changes to their business reported: 63% higher productivity. 69% higher profits. 74% higher quality. In contrast, [...]

You’re Only as Safe as Your Contractors

You can have the best WHS management system in the world. You can have an incident investigation system that drills down to the root cause and takes the corrective actions required to prevent it happening again.  You can have an executive management team that takes work, health and safety very seriously. You can have the best in-house training in the country.  BUT, if your contractors don’t effectively manage the safety of their workers it could all be for nothing. One [...]

The Tossers in the Office

I was on a plane the other day. It was the end of a hard week and I just wanted to switch off and get home.  The guy next to me wanted to get home too I’m sure, but he certainly didn’t want to switch off! We started to chat, me grudgingly, he happily. It turned out to be one of the best conversations I have ever had with someone about work, health and safety and it went something like [...]