Our OHS and WHS Consultation Services
WHS Audits and Gap Analysis
A workplace health and safety management system is a set of policies, procedures, and plans put in place to minimise the risk of employee injury and illness from workplace operations. Your people, the nature of the work they carry out, and WHS legislation change rapidly, so it's important to regularly check for any gaps in your management system.
Our safety consultants conduct audits and gap analysis to ensure your business is complying with current WHS/OHS legislation and providing a safe work environment. Our WHS audits can be tailored to suit your workplace – whether you’re looking for a simple fine tune of your safety compliance via an online appointment, or a fully comprehensive on-site review to check for any gaps in the management of your workplace health and safety.
Through on-site reviews, our workplace safety consultants can assess the specific WHS needs of a business and provide a report on the support required.
Our Safety Audits and Gap Analysis benefit Australian workplaces by:
- Ensuring gaps in WHS compliance are not overlooked, reducing risks to employees and the likelihood of prosecution and fines.
- Making sure your safety management system is evolving and continually improving using feedback.
- Integrating reports with other management systems.
- Providing more informed decision-making, strengthening corporate culture and demonstrating due diligence.
- Providing peace of mind that your workplace complies with WHS legislation and regulations.
Safety Management System Development
Our WHS consultants in Australia can provide end-to-end support to fully manage your workplace health and safety policies, procedures and plans, or simply help you to get a part of your safety program up and running.
We can integrate our services into your existing business operations to enhance your existing systems – whether you use a paper-based safety program, or a digital solution. For those wanting to move to a fully automated safety management system, our WHS consultants can also work with businesses, small and large, to onboard them with WHS Compliance Management Software – AltiusWHS.
Our focus is on ensuring legislative compliance and providing a safer working environment for employees, with expertise that benefits your business by:
- Ensuring compliance with WHS legislation and regulations.
- Managing the contents of safety documentation within the system.
- Making sure your management system is effective in protecting people from harm and minimising claims.
- Checking the system includes mechanisms to continually improve using feedback.
- Helping businesses to integrate their WHS system with other management systems.
- Developing a system that strengthens corporate culture and demonstrates due diligence.
Workplace Ergonomic Assessments
Our physiotherapists, occupational therapists and exercise physiologists deliver tailored ergonomics training to groups or individuals across Australia, through face-to-face or telehealth sessions. Training aims to create a better match between your employees, the work they perform and the equipment they use. Based on sound ergonomic principles, we teach employees optimal positions in which to complete their work tasks.
Employees involved in lifting, pushing, pulling, and carrying as part of their work are trained in correct manual task handling - focusing on correct postures, positioning and breathing. For office workers, we cover safe work postures, appropriate working angles of the upper limbs, sitting positions, viewing angles, optimal workstation layout and how to make basic ergonomic adjustments to workstations.
Our ergonomics education:
- Explores the duration of work, balancing the physical and mental demands of tasks, the importance of stretch breaks and regular posture variation.
- Examines ergonomics principles and how they apply to individual working arrangements such as hot desking. We always allow time for discussion on ergonomic issues specific to each workplace.
- Can cover the advantages, disadvantages and management of standing desks.
- Fosters an ergonomics ethos at all levels of an organisation.
Job Task Analysis
A Job Task Analysis provides critical information for recruitment, performance management, rehabilitation, and vocational redirection. We examine the genuine occupational demands of a role, including the physical, psychological, cognitive and functional demands required of any occupation and cover specific training opportunities and pre-employment screening.
A Job Task Analysis reveals the minimal abilities required of an individual to safely, consistently and efficiently perform either specific job tasks, or a complete occupation.
Job Task Analyses benefit organisations by:
- Providing a solid foundation for human resources, work health and safety and return to work functions.
- Building employee confidence through transparent and clear role expectations and performance measures.
- Improving recruitment practice through clinically benchmarked Pre-Employment Functional Assessments (PEFAs).
- Benchmarking relevant skills and competencies.
- Supporting the management of workplace injuries, assisting planning, and communication with all stakeholders.
- Enabling a collaborative, empowering approach to the return to work process by providing consistent and objective performance requirements.
- Identifying risk exposure allowing for task, personnel, or equipment modification.
- Providing a basis for training, induction and development of new team members and for the development of a suitable duties dictionary to communicate and provide a safe return to work.
Pre-employment Functional Assessments
Altius Group Pre-employment Screening and Medical Assessments (PEFAs) are a valuable part of the recruitment process and help build a solid foundation for a productive and healthy workforce. A PEFA provides valuable insight into an individual’s physical capacity to safely meet the functional demands of a job before they start work. We use robust, objective assessment tools, including a detailed medical questionnaire, thorough musculoskeletal screening, and physical testing with functional assessment components, all tailored to the role's inherent requirements.
Depending on the role and work environment, additional services may be incorporated into a PEFA, including audiometry tests; drug and alcohol screening; spirometry testing; job specific functional assessments; pre-employment medical assessments; mental health assessments and resilience and cope scale assessments.
Our pre-employment screening and medical assessments:
- Ensure candidates are well-matched with the demands of a position.
- Form the basis of a robust front-line risk management strategy.
- Control the frequency and cost of injuries in the workplace.
- Increase staff retention and support workplace productivity.
- Clarify an individual’s medical history and determine the impact of past or current conditions on their capacity to carry out a job before they start work.
- Provide candidates with an understanding of what a role entails and educate them on safe work practices before they commence work.
- Improve an organisation’s safety culture and reputation by establishing clear expectations around health, safety and work capacity.
- Identify previously undetected health issues that may, with suggested management strategies, improve long-term health outcomes for individuals and organisations.
- Address specific physical or health concerns relative to an organisation’s work environment.
Drug and Alcohol Testing
Our certified consultants administer efficient and accurate on-site drug and alcohol screening tests to minimise the health and safety risks posed by recreational drug use. We conduct either oral or urine drug and alcohol testing in accordance with Australian Standards.
We perform saliva drug device testing, simply and discreetly, ensuring confidentiality, with results available in minutes. We can also arrange for the drug and alcohol screening to be conducted by way of chain-of-custody testing at an accredited pathology centre. These results can then be relied on for medical or legal purposes. We also assist workplaces to develop and review their Drug and Alcohol Policy.
Outsourcing drug and alcohol testing:
- Covers all aspects of a drug-testing program, from the policy, to collection, analysis, and reporting, saving you in set-up and equipment costs, as well as employee time.
- Allows testing to be conducted at random, after an incident or accident, on suspicion of drugs or abuse, or as part of a return to work program.
- Provides quick, reliable results.
- Minimises risks to employee health and safety.
- Ensures tests are carried out in accordance with Australian Standards.
Health Assessments
Our health checks identify individual and workplace-related health issues or barriers, to help you provide the right employee wellbeing solutions for your team. Health checks also enable us to measure the impacts of wellbeing programs.
Carried out by qualified medical and allied health professionals, our tailored screening options include General health screening; Blood pressure; BMI; Cardiovascular fitness; Cholesterol; Blood glucose; Waist circumference and exercise and sleep habits.
Health checks can also be customised to include:
- Other health metrics: Audiometry screening; Spirometry and vision screening.
- Lifestyle screening: Stress; Alcohol consumption; Physical activity; Smoking and nutrition.
- Musculoskeletal screening: Flexibility; Strength; Physiotherapy-based musculoskeletal screening.
- Psychological screening: Stress; Anxiety and depression.
Psychosocial Risk Assessment
Businesses have a primary duty to safeguard their employees against psychosocial risk. Psychosocial hazards are aspects of work and situations that may cause a stress response, which in turn can lead to psychological or physical harm. They may include such factors as role overload, poor support from managers, remote or isolated work, exposure to traumatic events or workplace violence, bullying and harassment.
Altius Group will conduct an assessment that is focused on identifying and evaluating psychological hazards and risks within the workplace, and report on the findings or areas recommended for continual improvement. Our team of WHS experts, organisational psychologists, and allied health professionals provide an integrated approach to identifying psychosocial risk and providing tailored solutions to address the source of the risk.
When organisations manage psychosocial hazards proactively:
- They can reap the benefits of employee engagement and morale, improved performance and productivity and a reduction in worker turnover.
- They’ll comply with WHS regulations and successfully navigate workplace inspections by WHS regulatory bodies (such as Safe Work Australia).
- It reassures employees that your organisation’s WHS policies and procedures have their best interests at heart.
- Claims associated with work-related mental health conditions will be reduced.
Manual Task Program
With over a third of workplace injuries associated with manual tasks, we guide employees through best practices for lifting, carrying, pushing, pulling, or holding a load, object or person. To ensure our education helps to protect an employee’s fitness for work, we tailor training to cover duties specific to each workplace.
Our allied health professionals assess the physical demands unique to each role and each workplace, then tailor training to cover the impact of duties specific to each work situation, with particular attention paid to impacts on employee musculoskeletal functioning. Our Manual Task Program aims to empower employees to take responsibility for their own safety and physical wellbeing, covering:
- Manual task risk factors include forceful exertions, awkward and static postures, vibration, repetition, and duration.
- The importance of risk assessments in relation to lifting, lowering, pushing, pulling, carrying, moving, holding, or restraining any person, animal or thing.
- Safe methods of lifting, pushing, pulling and carrying - focusing on correct postures, positioning and breathing.
- Risk factors for workplace-specific issues such as Carpel Tunnel Syndrome, Occupational Overuse Syndrome and shoulder injuries.
- The importance of stretching, strengthening, sleep and diet to injury prevention.
- A discussion of manual task practises specific to your work environment.
Fitness for Work (FFW) Assessment – Physical
A Fitness for Work/Duty Assessment is an assessment conducted to determine if an individual is physically capable of performing specific job duties safely and effectively. It is predominantly used for non-work-related injuries where employers need additional information to determine if an individual can perform the requirements of the role.
The assessment considers various factors, such as:
- medical history
- current health status
- medication use
- any relevant job demands or safety requirements
The goal is to ensure that individuals are fit to perform their job duties without posing a risk to themselves, their colleagues, or the general public.
If you’re looking for Fitness for Work (FFW) or Fitness for Duty assessment for psychological injuries, you can see it on this page.
