Ensuring compliance with policies and procedures

Under health and safety legislation in all jurisdictions, workers are obligated to:

• Comply with lawful instructions given by their employer requiring their compliance with the business’ safety management system and relevant legislation, as far as reasonably practicable; and
• Cooperate with any reasonable policy or procedure about which the worker has been informed relating to workplace health and safety
  
  

This is when you need the proper practices in place to not only protect the other employees but also yourself as a manager and the business.

Policy

A policy is the documented principles, objectives, obligations, and commitments that guide health and safety decision-making within your business.

Each employee needs to have a copy of this, so they know the business's correct operational requirements for them.

Procedure

Procedures are the documented processes that guide safe working practices in your business. They set out step-by-step instructions on how a job or task should be conducted safely. Then if a worker fails to comply with your safety management system, including policies or procedures, you can take steps to manage the underperformance or discipline the worker for non-compliance.

Never forget that it is your responsibility to ensure that your workers are trained and competent in your policies and procedures.

Examples:

John is a forklift driver.

Part of the safe operating procedure is to complete a daily pre-start checklist of the forklift, but John often fails to do this.

John’s manager has discussed the matter with him, but he continues to ignore the direction.

It is likely that John’s non-compliance will need to be handled with formal performance management or discipline.

Jim is a good worker, but one day he forgets to wear a hard hat on site, which is a requirement specified in the safe operating procedure.

When instructed to do so by his manager, Jim immediately complies with the direction.

Your policies should be legally binding (i.e. they form part of an employment contract).

You also need to ensure your disciplinary procedures are flexible enough to provide you with sufficient discretion when dealing with a performance issue.

Otherwise, you may be bound to follow the same disciplinary process each time, e.g. giving a set number of warnings prior to dismissing a worker despite the seriousness of the underperformance.

Caution

If there is no evidence that your workers have been trained and are competent in following your policies and procedures.

Any workplace injury or illness arising from a policy breach – will create liability for your officers and your business, but not for the workers involved.

Important to Note

If a worker has a performance issue, then deal with it immediately.

This is especially important when the performance issue is resulting in safety risks.

Don’t wait for their next performance appraisal before you raise the problem with them.

When deciding how to respond to unsatisfactory work performance, take the following factors into account:

• How serious or significant the poor performance is, e.g. whether it exposes other workers to health and safety risks
• Behaviour engaged in by other workers has been tolerated or condoned by your business in the past
• The worker’s performance history, i.e. any previous record of incidents that may have been brought to the worker’s attention at the time they occurred
• How your business has dealt with similar issues in the past, i.e. whether similar
• The worker’s personal circumstances, including their length of service
• Whether any personal issues may be affecting their work performance, such as:
• Relationship issues, poor health, a drug, alcohol or gambling addiction, caring for an ill or injured family member, financial problems, and mental health issues

Case Study

In Lakhan v Bustech Group, the Fair Work Commission (FWC) ordered Bustech to pay its employees $20,000 compensation after it unfairly summarily dismissed Mr. Lakhan for alleged continuing performance issues.

Although the Commission found that Bustech had legitimate reasons for dismissing Mr. Lakhan for performance reasons over the preceding 6-month period,

it had failed to take any genuine steps to implement a performance improvement plan (either formally or informally) that would have allowed Mr. Lakhan to address the performance issues to the required standard.

Additionally, there had been no prior warnings that employment termination was a likely outcome if his performance did not improve and there was no opportunity for Mr Lakhan to respond.