Abstract
This project is a survey of occupational health and safety within an Australian hospitality organization. The survey seeks to assess understanding/awareness and knowledge of the occupational health and safety concepts of risk management (the combined process of risk/hazard identification, assessment and control) and occupational health and safety consultation.
The project seeks to assess any underlying relationship between employee understanding and awareness of these safety related concepts with safety performance data, participation rates and organizational/safety climate.
The approach with the literature review was to review the key concepts and theoretical foundations of occupational health and safety legislation (as described above), education and training related duty(s) of care, industry safety performance measures, commonly used occupational health and safety management systems and qualitative and quantitative research into the effects such systems and concepts have on safety performance, participation and climate. These findings were then compared and contrasted with hospitality industry safety performance data, safety and organizational climate surveys and training and education trends within the industry.
The projects findings will provide guidance to the hospitality industry in maximizing its limited training and education resources, by targeting specific conceptual areas of safety for formal training, whilst relying on more informal approaches such as learning on the job, mentoring and experience for more occupationally specific hazards/risks. The transferrable nature of these skills will greatly improve productivity, improve OH&S compliance, reduce the costs associated with employee training and reduce workplace incidents.