Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Training

Health and safety training is good for business. Providing health and safety training is good for business because:

Health and safety training is a sound investment: The money you spend on health and safety training saves money in the long term. A workplace that is not healthy and safe may have to face insurance claims, medical bills, higher insurance premiums, replacement labour costs and lost productive time.

Health and safety training is not optional: The law states that as an employer you are responsible for providing health and safety information and training to your employees.

Health and safety training is responsible: Training reduces the risk of pain and injury at work.

OHS training in the workplace.

To organise a successful OHS training, there is three key information that organisations should consider when implementing: 

1 - Health and safety skills and knowledge at work

First, the employer is responsible for ensuring that a new employee or trainee is given induction training and has the skills and knowledge to work safely. Induction training must include providing health and safety information such as hazards at work, how to interpret safety signs and information n how to work safely and use equipment safely, fire and emergency procedures, first aid procedures, who to report incidents or accidents to, who to discuss safety issues with, and how to get involved in health and safety. 

Second, conducting a health and safety training needs analysis will help ensure that the people in your organisation get the type of training they need. It will enable you to ensure that the training is relevant to the job and the changing needs of the workplace.

A training needs analysis involves analysing all aspects of work, including the work environment, the actual jobs people do, and each person's skills and knowledge at work. Once this information is collected, then you can start to plan what training your organisation needs.

Moreover, identifying health and safety responsibilities in the workplace plays an important role in handling health and safety problem.

2 - What to expect from a good health and safety training program

A competency-based training program should generate the following special features:

• The outcomes to be achieved as a result of training are stated clearly.
• The skills and knowledge that a person already has been recognised.
• The trainer is flexible about where, when and how training takes place.
• The trainer checks that learning has taken place by assessing each person doing the training.
• The trainer keeps records of all training undertaken and what each person achieves.

3 - Select a good health and safety trainer

A good trainer recognises that learners have different learning styles and come to training with different experience and knowledge levels. Also, a good trainer seeks to make training relevant and meaningful and to encourage learning. You can expect a health and safety trainer to have a knowledge and understanding of and experience in:

• the relevant health and safety legislation in your State or Territory as well as regulations, standards and codes of practice that affect your industry
• the hazard identification, risk assessment and risk control approach to health and safety training
• contemporary OHS management approaches
• specific health and safety issues in your industry
• the competency-based approach to training and assessment
• training and assessment skills - in particular, how to encourage adults to learn and how to use various techniques for training.

Thus, to ensure that you get good value from the money you spend on health and safety training, the three key points discussed above is what you need to take into account. 

Necessary personal values when working in teams

Working in a professional IN role, there are some values that you should have and demonstrate to your organisation. In this post, I will give you crucial values and how I demonstrated to Navitas Professional Service that I have worked for 6 months. Let’s go!

Deliver Promises

This value is not generated by your words; it is what you have done to what you committed. The value presents not only to customers but also works on your commitments with your department, organisation. It includes tasks done on time, what satisfied customers correctly, what completed as expected, especially how it has done with your endeavour. Within my IT department, I always complete tasks allocated on time, keep my promises and commitments to my colleagues and managers, customers. Because of delivering promises, I now have a good relationship with all colleagues. 

Clear Communication

Working in a multi-cultural company, there may occur misunderstandings during communication because of the cultural differences of employees. Thus, a clear way of communication is the first right thing that you have to adopt. To understand how you should speak, act clearly, research on your colleagues’ and managers’ cultures plays a significant role that helps you to avoid unexpected conflicts at work. As I have worked for my current organisation since last year, I have done much in researching and understanding my team members’ cultures in both verbal and non-verbal communication, such as eye contact, hands gestures. As a result, I always to a clear way to communicate with my colleagues to avoid misunderstanding that can cause conflicts.

Innovate

The development of technology has significantly changed people life in all aspects, such as education, business, entertainment, etc. How to keep up-to-date things and integrate them at work is more important than ever. Thus, innovation must be displayed in the way you work and the tools you are using to achieve the organisation’s goals. Working as a Web developer, I always update new technologies, learn more modern programming languages that support me in web development and design, such as Python, React Native. Also, providing new ideas and creating new products is what I have done during working at Navitas. 

Embrace Change

Most people scare changes for many reasons, such as lack of knowledge, lack of experience, or even laziness, satisfied with the current situations. However, the world is changing day by day, and if we keep stable our status, it means that we are backward. We should always be ready to take opportunities for changes and development. The only way to develop is to solve and overcome the problems and embrace the changes. In my current situation at work, I am aware of changes that will improve my skills and experience. I accept and go along with the changes by learning and experiencing new technologies and cutting-edge programming languages. 

Respect

Respect is a meaningful feature that helps you can overcome most barriers in communicating and accomplish personal and organisational goals. Respecting people also means that respect you. Therefore, you should always remember that the way you act and treat people is also what you will get from them. I am a humble person when communicating. I respect all my colleagues and upper leaders in not only their personalities but also their cultures. Consequently, I get the same from my team members and the manager. 

Collaborate

If you work within a team, you should be a good team player. To do that, you have to understand the power of collaboration. If you want to go faster, you should go alone. In contrast, if you want to go further, we should go together. An organisation always wants to develop sustainably; thus, it needs people who have good collaboration skill to contribute to its development. At my work, I always present as a good player in the team when supporting, cooperating and working with members effectively and efficiently. That is the only way for me to enhance myself and to build good relationships with my colleagues.

Body Cardio Scale - Get through your heart

There are Five Cool Inventions You Can Buy on Amazon; and my favourite one is the Body Cardio Scale. 

People tend to care about their health by exercising and diet every day; thus, checking weight is inevitable. Normal weight scale just displays to you only your weight, and that’s it. With the Body Cardio Scale, it’s more than just weighing. We will get a comprehensive picture of your health in just one step: Body Cardio provides highly accurate weight and BMI plus body fat and water percentage, muscle and bone mass. Plus, check-in with cardiovascular health via heart rate.

While people focus on weight, full body composition helps you know what goes into that number to pinpoint your efforts, such as bone mass, weight, fat mass, muscle mass, water.

Moreover, we can track, visualize and improve our health by setting goals in the app. Then, Health Mate coaches you with tips, encourages and helps you reach your objectives. 

Every weigh-in appears in the Health Mate app automatically, via WiFi or Bluetooth sync. With your weight, body composition, and heart health history, you can see what works, reinforce positive behaviours and stay focused on the big picture.

At only 0.7 inches thick with a solid aluminium base, Body Cardio has no feet to adjust, making it the thinnest, most stable scale available. Thanks to its design, Body Cardio works equally well on any surface, from a hard floor to a thick carpet.

Up to 8 users can ben recognized automatically, and each will have their data independently synced to their Health Mate profile. Furthermore, this Scale will provide a daily local weather forecast and display the previous day’s step (if you use a Withings activity tracker or the app’s built-in tracker). 

 

The defender: an integrated tool of technology and safety

 There’s nothing new with multi-tasking technology nowadays. My iPhone is combined with a camera, email, calendar, notes, and many applications that assist me in my personal life, social networking, and work. But this new crowd-funded self-defence took takes technology to the next generation. 

Pepper spray but more advanced because sometimes you just need a camera with your mace along with a direct line to emergency services. The Defender is what you need for personal self-protection. When activated, the tool acts as all three in one little package, including taking a criminal photo, sound an alarm, and releasing pepper spray to the attacker once. Let’s have a look at some features of this innovative tool. 

• Connect to iOS or Android app via Bluetooth and features an integrated camera to capture the assailant’s picture.
• Immediately your location and the picture are sent to the proper authorities.
• The 24/7 monitoring service confirms that help is on the way. 
• The small but mighty speaker attracts attention to your situation.
• Defender includes the highest concentration of pepper spray provided to law enforcement, for self-defence and medical alerts. Defender protects with one push of a button.
• Defender bridges the gap between technology and personal safety.

 

Finally, it’s suggested that everyone should have one along with when you go outside in cases that you need to protect yourself first before others help to come. 

Innovative leaders

Authors: Van Y Pham & Ran Wei

Leadership plays an important role in organisations. Thus, how to know the qualities of an innovative leader with useful steps to innovation is a good point for us to discuss. Let's take a look at the following:

Three qualities of an innovative leader

1 - Innovative leader is about a pervasive mindset, not a schedule person.

Innovation isn't something you can schedule.  Let's meet in the conference room on Tuesday at three and be innovative. That might result in great brainstorming sessions, but true innovation doesn't work that way.  It's a pervasive mindset that seeps into all of our thoughts and attitudes.  Innovative leaders are willing to look at everything through a fresh lens even if that means unlearning some things, letting go, and trying something new.  Nothing is off the table.  

2 - Innovative leaders think in the future tense.

Next, innovation leaders feel comfortable thinking in the future tense.  They allow the strategic and imaginative sides of their brains to dance.  And that gives them a clear vision of what could be in a year, in five years, in 10.  It's creative thinking grounded in corporate objectives.

3 - Innovative leaders focus on the opportunity.

Innovative leaders also know how to focus on an opportunity represented by a new idea without getting bogged down in the details right away.  For instance, managers often have a practical side that automatically jumps in when they consider a different approach.  That won't work with our budget, or with our deadline, or our resources.  Whatever it is, the logistical challenges tend to trump the potential gains.  Innovative leaders know how to temporarily quiet that practical side while they explore the options.  They can process the opportunity at a higher level.

 

Six steps to innovation

 

Step 1: Carve your mental space.

Give yourself mental space to consider innovative ideas.  Read, ask questions.  Think about issues beyond the current deadline.  Challenge yourself to push the boundaries. 

Step 2: Repurpose proven concepts.

Then work to become the person in your organization who champions innovation and leads to big changes.  Don't put pressure on yourself to create something completely, totally never seen before.  Remember that some of the most impactful innovations emerge from repurposing or reusing proven strategies, methodologies, and solutions.

Step 3: Tolerate more risk.

Tolerate more risk and be persistent.  Allow yourself to think beyond the usual parameters to come up with unexpected ideas.  Recognize that not all of them will work and be okay with that.  Make adjustments, keep trying.  Failure could be just one step away from the next great success.  

Step 4: Share information.

Share and optimize information.  Gather as much information as you can and try to connect the dots in unusual ways.  Share what you're doing with other colleagues and learn from their successes and mistakes. Open lines of communication and ongoing information exchange will be valuable in spurring inventive thoughts.

Step 5: Link innovative ideas to projects.

Make sure your product changes or new processes align with the goals and brand positioning of your organization.  Would this idea help build awareness?  Increase market share and revenue?  Expand customer loyalty.  Make sure your great ideas are rooted in business benefits.

Step 6: Be persuasive.

Be persuasive in presenting your ideas.  Emphasizing those business benefits is the key.  Never force or push your concepts but present them with enthusiasm and conviction.  Pitch them in a way that shows how the ideas could positively impact the company goals.

Five steps to guide your decision making

 

Step 1: Consider a broad range of possibilities

Leaders consider a wide range of possibilities based on their broad perspective. If they've worked to position themselves as thought leaders, they are armed with the depth of knowledge that gives them a real edge.

 

Step 2: Analyse the impact of decisions

Leaders think carefully about the impact of their decisions on the company, the bottom line, the customers, the employees, even the competitors.  What's the immediate impact?  What are the long-term implications and consequences?

 

Step 3: Know when to act and when to pause

Leaders are decisive and courageous in their decision-making, but they also know when to strategically pause if a delay provides an advantage. Sometimes there's a genius in waiting.  For new information, for a competitor's announcement, for a technological advance.  That pause could prove to be priceless.

 

Step 4: Use structured models to guide thinking

Leaders use a structured process or model to guide their thoughts, such as Cost-benefit analysis, Risk analysis, Decision trees. And we will talk about these tools in the next slide.

 

Step 5: Have the discipline to think through alternatives from a strategic scope.

Prepare a plan B is also a good way for the leader reacts to the change that may happen during the process of implementing plan A. 

Three structured models to guide your thinking

 

1 - Cost-benefit analysis

Cost-benefit analysis is probably the most popular.  It helps you to assess the financial feasibility of a potential choice or initiative you are considering.  It all comes down to the bottom line.  Does this choice make sense in dollars and cents?  

 

2 - Risk analysis

Risk analysis gives you a structured approach for assessing potential challenges or threats involved with making a particular choice.  This can help you calculate the probability of the negative outcome, and the estimated cost to remediate or manage the problem. 

 

3 - Decision trees

 Decision matrix analysis or decision trees are another way to bring together all the disparate factors involved in your decision in a reliable and rigorous way.

 

Why a person can not transit from a manager position to a leader position

The main reason why he was being passed over for the director position is that he did as a doer, not a driver. This means he does up-to-date training and certifications, answers questions for his team, works with vendors and technicians, goes to some meetings and writes reports. Those things are not for a leader. It’s just the manager’s tasks. Thus, if he wants to get the leadership position, he should speak up more, showcase how much he knows about the industry, share some insights or innovative ideas for the future; look for opportunity and shine them in a different light. 

Don’t judge a book by its cover!

 

The motto is about the insight of a person, not the outside look. With the same meaning, recruiters not only hundred per cent focus on your resume, but they also want to see how you fought to get the same point with other persons from a lower background.

In her TED talk video, Regina Hartley mentioned two types of characteristics, including “the Silver Spoon” and “the Scrapper”. The Silver Spoon is the one who had advantages and was destined for success while the Scrapper had to fight against tremendous odds to obtain the same point. 

We do not refuse the Silver Spoon, but if you were born with a whole life set toward success, how will you handle the tough situations? Working is not as easy as eating. You will meet a lot of problems that you have not even seen before, and the main feature of your ability is how you deal with the issues that not impact organisation and stakeholders’ benefits. By contrast, the Scrapper had lots of experience dealing with many tough circumstances and hard times to overcome their own difficulties. Starting with a lower level of background and lack of knowledge is not the problem to the Scrappers because they got the real experience and already solved many concerns. 

Thus, between the Silver Spoon and the Scrapper, Regina will choose the Scrapper for the position, and I agree with her.

4 core values shape organisation culture and inspire employees

 

Having core values help your company ensure each of your employees working towards the same general goal and share a bigger purpose. There are 6 following core values that your business should have to shape the organisation culture and motivate employees to work effectively and efficiently. 

1. Integrity

The word is defined as the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles. Integrity is more than something that sounds catchy in a marketing piece. When you, your employees and your business atc with integrity, some interesting things begin to happen. There are some benefits of integrity: stronger reputation, employee satisfaction, better quality, clearer focus, stronger results.

2. Commitment

Commitment dedicates to the success of your customers, partners, employees and shareholders. A commitment can shape and adjust employees, for example, to work as much as their competence to get jobs done in effective ways. It also obligates people to do something that stated to satisfy not only the customer's needs but also others related. Last, commitment is like a promise to dedicate and contribute to an organisation. 

3. Humility

Humility can be a core value that encourages self-development. Personally, being humility. Means always acknowledge the weakness of myself and the strength of others, which is an essential step of improvement. For example, a humble person can discover what his/her colleagues can do. However, they cannot, and it will become the experience and motivation that drive them to do better in their jobs.

4. Innovation

Innovation means to challenge new things and willing to change. An innovative company will catch the trend and become more competitive, and employees can be more creative in their works. For example, innovation encourages people to discover new things that no one or a few people have done in the same industry, and this will help the company to catch the trend and gain more advantage in competition with other companies.

Van Y Pham, Rupinder Kaur and Guo Guo