6 Workplace Safety & Prevention Services
Tourism & Hospitality: Closing the Loop: Setting Up a Health & Safety System in Your Small Business
some of it, You Have to Do
It's true. Some of what you'll be working
through in this guide comes straight out of
the legislation. That doesn't mean you need
to use legal language to meet the intent of
the law. Use the language of your workplace,
in words that are meaningful to you and
your employees. Bigger words don't make
better policies.
about workplace Health & safety
Legislation
Laws are designed to establish the minimum
standards for working safely. By conforming
to these standards, you are complying with
the law. The thing with the law is that it can't
anticipate everything that can or might
happen in your workplace — that's your job.
They call that due diligence. It's up to you to
know the hazards that are particular to your
workplace or way of working, identify ways
of controlling those hazards and share this
information with employees.
a Few words about the Internal
Responsibility system
Embedded in the legislation is the concept
of the Internal Responsibility System. At
its core, it means that we're all responsible
for health and safety in our workplaces; it
means that we're all looking out for one
another. It means that our goal, whether we
say it out loud or not, is to go home safe…
every time.
Having a health & safety representative
(or joint health and safety committee) in
your workplace is one way that the internal
responsibility system is formalized in your
workplace. It's also there in less formal (but
no less important) ways — every time you
say "be careful" or "let me help you with
that" or "we have a new piece of equipment,
let me show you how to use it" — that's the
internal responsibility system in action.
