Implement and Monitor Work, Health and Safety Practices
Paper Due Date
Project I Guide for Work, Health and Safety Practices
The foundation of the Queensland Reef Hotels and the success of the organization as the marketplace for quality and service lies in the core values of the company, which include the philosophy of “Our employees are our customers”, integrity and honesty. The philosophy of Queensland Reef Hotels embraces the belief that by taking care of our employees we will build a culture, which ensures loyalty and long-term relationships with all the stakeholders.
This guide addresses three critical areas of this care: Work Environment, Health and Safety (WHS) Practices, applied internally and in the relationships with our stakeholders and clients.
Our goals, translated in measurable targets incude the following:
80% of the fitness and gym facilities are always available for the employees;
Healthy Nutrition program aims at 100% elimination of fried elements and fast-foods in employee cafeteria;
Make avaialble for every employee and ensure 75% use of the relaxation room, where employees can destress, rest and nap.
Provide trimestral emergency and general safety training for all the staff in three Hotel facilities;
Provide Yearly Certified Engineering and Maintanance training for all the level employees;
Diversity and emotional intelligence training available to all the staff in Virtual Learning Space (VLC) with the target of 89% completion of the training among regular and 100% among management personnel.
The organization ensures to provide the needed infrastructure and support the employees in their endeavors to contribute and “live” WHS standards. WHS Culture is the key to success and it is important that all our people find the answers to their doubts about How this culture is promoted? How Can I contribute and be heard? Who is responsible for what area? This Guide was created to answer these questions.
What External Regulations Apply?
All the pracices and programs, implemented by QRH are in compliance with the major regulations and frameworks within the National Policy and Laws for WHS in Australia. The regulations, which will apply for the WHS representatives include Safety Representatives and Safety Committee Regulations as well as WHS Regulations on National and Local Levels.
What are The Internal Actions, involving Representatievs?
Work Enviroment
Queensland Reef Hotels aims at creating open and innovative work enviroment, where employees are encourages to contribute towards improvement of the WHS practices and behavior as well as recognize the role of each individual in building collective safe work environment. While management and supervisor level employees are the key ambassadors of such behavior, delegation of responsibility and the awareness are central to success of our endeavors. Representatives should consult employees on WHS practices and QRH created several programs and projects to ensure that WHS thinking is integral to work environment.
Innovation Laboratory is the VLC platform, which allows and encourages employees to share, discuss and work on their ideas and suggestions. The performance management system enables 7% of the work time to be dedicated to such activities for each of the employees and the access to the platform is available at the relaxation room, business meeting rooms, internet access corner as well as through the smartphone QRH Innovation Laboratory application. Importantly, we respect the privacy and choices of our people, allowing you to choose whether you prefer to remain anonimous or disclose the authorship of your ideas and recommendations.
Brainstorming Workshops take place every three months and build an opportunity for two or three departments to participate in fun and learning activities open-air, where employees can learn about the safety and security standards of the hotel, learn basic procedures about Health, Emergency and Fist aid in a form of team games and competitions.
Mentoring and Coaching sessions are available with your direct supervisor and we encourage both of you to schedule at least one monthly meeting to discuss your personal progress, work environment and other topics, which concern you on a daily basis. These topic can include, but not limited, to professional career goals, personal learning, health and family challenges, work environment and relationships and others.
Health Practices
Health is critical for our thinking and WHS programs. Takin into account that QRH positions itself as a high level quality and service hotel, offering our clients the best from the lodging market in the country, we recognize that this offer starts with our people. The collective capabilities and knowledge built by combining the expertise and experience of each of the team members makes tremendous contribution to the Health Regulation and Fascilitation of Healthy lifestyle for our people. Employees need to be consulted on their understanding of health and expectations. The role of WHS representative is to offer ways and tools to built in this philosophy into your work place. That said, the QRH hotels offers special Health Insurance Plan for all the employees and their families. Additionally, on-site doctor is always available to attend all level staff in case of emergency or upon appointment. Our canteen offers daily meals as part of the benefits for the employees and the menu is signed and prepared by a team of nutritionists to ensure the accurate intake of all the elements, critical for our health. Finally, resting facilities, gym and relaxation options aimed at reducing the levels of stress, increasing the capacity of individuals to rest and benefit from their breaks. Importantly, each employee has a right for 20 minutes extention for the interval time in case of planned physical exercise activities. Gym and fitness rooms are also available to the employees outside of the working hours.
All these facilities and projects are open and available for all the employees and we encourage healthy lifestyle by promoting internal competitions in tennis, squash and “monthly gym challenge”, outside of the partcipation in the Wellness Challenge, organized by the city.
Safety Practices
Safety is built upon the specific knowledge and practices, which are implemented and followed by all the empoyees in the hotel. To ensure that we are prepared for the situations of emergency and uncertainty and can bring in confidence and safe environment to our client, QRH establishes the range of required trainings for:
Emergency and General Safety Measures training for all the staff in three Hotel facilities;
Provide Yearly Certified Engineering and Maintanance training for all the level employees;
More specific Safety Manuals are available for all departments and outlining the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for fire, emergency evacuation, front desk operations, Food and Beverage service, housekeeping, Engineering and Maintanance and others. These documents outline the specific routine repetititve activities and can be found at the front desk, sent out in electronic format by our Human Resource Team or requested from department heads.
WHS Committee and Functions
WHS Committee is comprised of five individuals, four of which are selected on rotation basis from the Department Heads and one Senior Manager. To ensure the objectivity and avoid silo thinking in the Committee, it is recommended that the selection process involves planning for personal and professional diversity and brings in 12 months rotation policy to this group. The Committee comprised of individuals from different units , functions and resonsibility levels will widen the scope of their long-term view and create healthy debate, driving high standards of the WHS in the organization. WHS Committee is responsible for monitoring the effectiveness of the WHS programs and policies in place.
Benefits of the WHS Program
The creation of this multifaceted WHS program and culture demonstrated over time significant increase in WHS awareness amng the employees. Additionally, internal employee survey outlines the higher level of satisfaction of employees with the work place and information flow on vertical and horizonal levels in the company.
Based on the WHS Committee reporting, the number of Medically Treated Injury Frequency Rate (MTIFR) and Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR) accidents have reduced by 45% over the period of 6 months.
Project II: Action Plan
The purpose of this document is to discuss and analyse the positive and negative impact of the Information Technology in Tourism and Travel industry on various areas of an organization in the industry.The discusison will involve hazards and risks in WHS, Risk control and monitoring methods, action planning for non-compliance with WHS practices, timeframe and training.
Relevant Hazards
WHS Standards and risks are very diverse. Some of most recent concenrs of the contemporary companies in the sector include the Technology and Information management sectors. To better understand that scope of these risks, it is important to look at them from the perspective of Work environment, Health and Safety in isolation.
Security is one of the major parts of the risk assessment for the organization. There are numerous risks in this area, ranging from the data accuracy and relizbility of demand forecasting and planning technology tools to the information transfer security, capacity in terms of cloud computing (UNWTO 4-5). Some of more specific risks can be presented by the fraud in payment methods, especially, when employees are working with external partners and online reservations, cyber crime attacks on guest and hotel network and the lack of internal awareness about such threat (Inversini and Schegg 131-140).
Risk Control Methods
The risk control methods are included in the following three documents:
WHS Planning Guidelines;
WHS Committee Action Plan;
WHS Management System Guidelines.
The risk control methodology is based upon the 9 step hierarchy of preferences, including the elimination, substitute, isolate, use engineering, minimise and rearrage as the first types of acceptable response to the hazards. Additionally, the company establishes safe work practices, such as restrictions of access to the information, the privacy and user security policies, emergency management procedures, raising awareness sessions for IT hazards among regular staff, among others.
While WHS Committee is overall responsible for the development of specific actions within each of the methods, the involvement of department heads is critical to bring in the knowledge about specific hazards and link strategic and tactical levels in the developed risk control mechanisms. In order to address the risks, each of the sectors under WHS should apply specific risk management strategy and action plans, involving representatives within the departmnts to deliver on these risk management mechanisms.
Non-Compliance Policies
The organizations in the sector are controlled by national and local WHS laws and regulations and the non-compliance with the demands of the Safety and Health Act can result in financial fines and even limitations and restrictions of operations of the facilities. National Non-Compliance policies aim at:
Providing advice and information on the dutries of employer;
Monitoring and Enforcing compliance with WHS regulations;
Fostering Cooperative environment for WHS practices;
Conducting the Defending proceedings under WHS Laws.
The scope of compliance review includes the WHS procedures, documents and Committee and the frequency of this review is linked to the release of each of the reports, presented in the below section of this report. The corrective actions are prepared for each of the elements and monitored by the WHS Committee and representatives in each of the organizational departments.
In the situations, where the non-compliant behaivor was identified should be addressed immediately. The correcitve actions should be taken within 72 hours, including the ommuniation to the individual or group about the compliance issues, development of training and mentoring plan, if applicable and monitoring and reporting schedule, developed with direct supervisor.
Monitoring the Performance
Implementing the practices and programs is the first step in achieving the success. At the same time, the motitoring and control over the effectiveness of WHS Guidelines depends on the ability to measure and improve the performance. The performance indicators are outlined in the WHS Planning guide developed by WHS Committee and avaiable for all the middle and senior management staff. The control tools include:Proactive indicators:
Training course average performance rates of employees;
Participation rate in voluntary programs;
The percentage of safe work procedures approved;
Performance towards zero accident policy;
Average compliance rate comparison across the industry.
Additionally, more specific outcome indicators build on WHS audit, such as Lost-time injuries rate, medical treated injury frequency and others.
Training Needs
There is a clear need for training for each new employee in the organization for the following:
Information Security and basic WHS procedures;
Relevant Legislation and Complinace Mechanisms;
IT Risks and Action Plans;
SOPs use and application.
Such training should be conducted within the first week of employee in the organization. Additionally, the company should ensure to provide specific training for each of the department representatives for WHS and for IT sector specifically and the collective workshops to raise ht eawareness of the employees about specific IT-related risks and procedures for risk addressing mechanisms. This training should be conducted on the regular basis, based on the feedback of WHS Committee and the analysis of the training needs.
Reporting
The audit and monitoring will be presented in WHS Report format on a bi-monthly basis and will be incorporated in the general internal audit under Risk and Compliance Committee on bi-annual basis. More specific outline of the reporting mechanism is presented in the table below:
Roles and Expectations
The main body, responsible for the implementation and monitoring of the WHS procedures is the WHS Committee, which will be selected on an annual basis with two non-executive members, appointed with the same frequency. The role of non-executiev members is to address and resolve the potential internal conflict of interest in the committee and fascilitate the decision-making process and compliance with the timeframes.
Additonally, it is expected that the control and delivery of WHS targets will be delegated to representatives across the organization. The tentative structure is the following:
Responsibility Chart
The above chart is built to give an idea of who employees can address with regards to each of the eleemnts of WHS Guide. It is important to remember that there is a number of SOP procedures and manuals, which are available to you to demonstrate and etach the behaviors in particular situations and functions, which create heathy and safe work environment.
Works Cited
Rutherford, Denney & O´Fallon Michael. Hotel Management and Operations. 4th Edition. Hoboken: John Willey and Sons. 2007. Print.
UNWTO. AM Reports. Technology in Tourism. UNWTO. Web 3 June 2011, http://floripaconvention.com.br/MyFiles/unwtodigitalresources_volume1_techtourism_eng.pdf
Inversini, Alessandro and Schegg, Roland. Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2016: Proceedings of the International Conference in Bilbao. New York: Springer Publishing. 2016. Print.
