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horticulture australia logo Ensuring safety in your nursery
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Is your production or retail nursery business safe for you, your employees and your visitors? All Australian businesses are under increasing scrutiny to ensure a safe workplace. Nursery businesses are no exception.

This Nursery Paper provides useful workplace health and safety tips and a simple test you can use to assess health and safety standards in your business and highlight areas you need to address.

Most production nurseries and retail garden centres in Australia are small to medium sized businesses.

However, employees of a small business don’t automatically understand their occupational health and safety obligations. And being a small business doesn’t mean you don’t need written occupational health and safety procedures.

The way to prevent injury and ill health at the workplace, and avoid breaching strict new occupational health and safety regulations, is for all businesses to have an effective health and safety policy and program in place. This should include a clearly defined set of written safety roles and responsibilities.

Australian Workplace Statistics
Each year incidents in Australian workplaces result in:

These figures alone demand better workplace safety.

A “no accident or injury” attitude is key
Safe practices and a safety conscious attitude by both staff and managers is the best protection against workplace accidents.

To help you assess the safety status of your business, answer the following questions, highlighting what’s missing and determining where you need to improve.

By completing this audit at least once a year, you can monitor your workplace health and safety performance to ensure you’re always improving.

Safety self-audit questions

1. Do you have an Occupational Health & Safety (OH&S) policy? Yes  No 
2. Do you have an OH&S program to put your OH&S policy into practice? Yes  No 
3. Do all job descriptions contain OH&S responsibilities and duties? Yes  No 

There are four easy steps to ensure responsibility for health and safety in the workplace:

A. Allocate responsibility for each OH&S activity to a particular position.
B. Tell each person who is responsible.
C. Monitor if the responsibilities are carried out.
D. Write the responsibilities and accountabilities into duty statements.

4. Have all workplace hazards, safety problems and risks been identified, assessed and documented? Yes  No 
5. Have procedures to control these risks been documented and employees consulted? Yes  No 
6. Is there a system for keeping health and safety records and is it maintained? Yes  No 
7. Are work safe procedures or methods written? Yes  No 
8. Is there Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) for all hazardous materials? Yes  No 
9. Are monthly safety checks conducted? Yes  No 

Involving employees in safety is essential. Clear and open communication between management and employees will encourage support from the whole team in safety activities. And involving employees in developing safety rules will mean they’re more likely to follow them.

10. Are all employees consulted on health and safety issues when new purchases are being considered? Yes  No 
11. Are all employees consulted on health and safety issues when changes are made to work practices? Yes  No 
12. Are all employees consulted on health and safety issues when changes are made to the layout of the nursery? Yes  No 
13. Are all employees consulted when hazards are controlled? Yes  No 

In New South Wales, regulations state that people as well as companies can be fined for breaches of the OH&S Act. This means employees, supervisors and managers. For example, the maximum fine for an employee not wearing a mask is $4,125, with the employer’s maximum fine being $41,250.

14. Is information on OH&S available to all employees (for example, MSDS’s) and explained to those in direct contact with the hazard? Yes  No 
15. Have all employees had their OH&S responsibilities and duties explained to them? Yes  No 
16. Do all employees know the dangers and hazards of their job? Yes  No 
17. Have you tested employees on their understanding of all the safety requirements of their job and the workplace? Yes  No 
18. Have the employees been told that their safety comes before production? Yes  No 
19. Are employees regularly consulted on OH&S issues and is a process in place to deal with issues raised? Yes  No 

Monthly staff meetings with health and safety as a regular agenda item and distributing minutes from those meetings will improve occupational health and safety in the workplace. Verbal instruction may be misunderstood or forgotten. Written policies and procedures can clearly and permanently describe requirements and actions.

20. Have all supervisors been provided with necessary instructions? Yes  No 
21. Have all supervisors, managers and owners been provided with appropriate training? Yes  No 
22. Do supervisors train employees on safe working practices? Yes  No 
23. Do supervisors actually supervise and advise employees of hazards? Yes  No 
24. Do all employees use safety equipment correctly? Yes  No 
25. Are employees encouraged to report all hazards, and are these reports documented? Yes  No 

We are all expected to know the law. Ignorance is not an acceptable excuse, just as it won’t get you off a driving offence.

26. Do you know your obligations under your relevant workplace health and safety regulations and duty of care requirements? Yes  No 
27. Do you have sufficient workers compensation insurance? Yes  No 
28. Are safe systems of work provided in your nursery? Yes  No 
29. Is your workplace and equipment maintained in good condition? Yes  No 
30. Have responsibilities been allocated for carrying out OH&S in your nursery? Yes  No 

An OH&S program can ensure that hazards in the workplace are dealt with in a systematic manner, rather than in response to crisis.

31. Have the risks been prioritised to assess those with greatest impact on health and safety? Yes  No 
32. Is health and safety included in all existing procedures? Yes  No 
33. Are all procedures reviewed regularly, particularly when there are changes in the workplace? Yes  No 

An OH&S program is a planned set of activities needed to make your workplace and business safe. It should be designed especially for your conditions. Putting your OH&S policy into practice is essential – or else it’s just a useless piece of paper.  An OH&S program should protect your business, employees, customers and your personal liability as an employer, owner, manager or supervisor. It is about reducing costs due to work-caused injury and illness.

34. Have procedures been developed for fire and other emergencies? Yes  No 
35. Are first aid equipment and procedures provided and incidents reported? Yes  No 
36. Is personal protective clothing and equipment available, used and maintained? Yes  No 
37. Are procedures written for labelling, storage and use of hazardous substances? Yes  No 
38. Are maintenance and service requirements for plant and equipment written and carried out? Yes  No 
39. Are appropriate procedures in place for manual handling? Yes  No 

Before you introduce a new procedure, test it thoroughly, write clear instructions and make sure everyone affected by the new procedure understands it.

40. Are OH&S policies and procedures explained to new employees? Yes  No 
41. Are regular checks completed to remind employees of the relevant policies and procedures for their work? Yes  No 
42. Are all contractors made aware of relevant OH&S policies and procedures? Yes  No 

Every nursery needs to keep records for:

These records can also protect you from legal liability by providing proof that you have and are applying safe procedures.

43. Is information on accidents and injuries recorded and kept? Yes  No 
44. Is a hazardous substances register kept and regularly updated? Yes  No 
45. Are regular evacuation drills carried out and are they recorded? Yes  No 

Employees must get proper instruction and training.

46. Have OH&S training needs been assessed? Yes  No 
47. Is induction training provided for all new and current employees? Yes  No 
48. Is workplace training carried out on specific hazards, controls and work procedures? Yes  No 
49. Is external expert training required in any area? Yes  No 
50. How can you measure the success of the training? Yes  No 

If you have answered, “Yes” to all these questions, you are in excellent OH&S shape! If you have some or a lot of “No’s”, you have work to do!
 

The bottom line 
Workplace health and safety involves:
  • defined roles and responsibilities,

  • relevant safety information being on-hand,

  • demonstrated understanding of policies and procedures,

  • documentation,

  • training,

  • regular maintenance; and

  • common sense.


 

 

How safe is your workplace?

Acknowledgements 
This Nursery Paper was written by Ron Widman, Occupational Health & Safety Officer with Nursery & Garden Industry NSW & ACT.

© NGIA Ltd 2003

While every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of contents, Nursery & Garden Industry Australia Limited accepts no liability for the information.

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