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What you have to do
You must choose to complete EITHER Case Study 1 and the accompanying
tasks OR Case Study 2 and the accompanying tasks.
You MUST complete one or the other in total. DO NOT complete both
scenarios. Your answer should be no more than around 1500 words in
length.
Task
Case Study 1
A major insurance company has merged with another company’s Call
Centre employing 120 personnel on a rotating three shift basis. The Call
Centre employees are evenly matched in numbers of men and women and
are located in the CBD of a major city. The Call Centre has been run down
in terms of equipment and support facilities before the merger. Generally
morale is poor and the turnover rate of staff per month is increasing.
A doctor, to whom employees were referred when injured or ill, retired two
months before the merger and there has not been a replacement.
(a) Write a policy for this organisation, clearly outlining the
organisation’s commitment to WHS and those responsible for
ensuring adherence.
(b) Explain under what circumstance an WHS management system
would be most appropriate for an organisation of this nature.
(c) Because the shifts comprise male and female operatives describe
what financial and human resources would be necessary to support a
viable WHS system covering the three shifts.
(d) A cleaner finds a syringe and an empty whisky bottle next to the bed
in the First Aid Room. Explain what procedures you would institute
to address alcohol and drug abuse within the Call Centre.
(e) Management has decided to refurbish the Call Centre with new
desks, chairs, monitors (computers), headsets and desk phones. All
sides of the Call Centre floor have floor-to-ceiling windows. The
ceiling has fluorescent strip lights. Air-conditioned air is ducted from
vents in the ceiling. The new design layout of the floor will mean
that some operators will be facing the windows while other operators
will be either directly under the strip light or the air-conditioning
vents.
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Identify hazards and describe the risk control measures you would
develop to maintain a safe work environment.
(f) Six months before the merger, operator absences had been increasing
on the three shifts. Some of the absences were related to workplace
illnesses and disease; others were attributable to everyday sickness.
Explain how you might address the absentee rate and explain what measures
you might take to maintain the Call Centre’s quality framework.
Case Study 2
Your friend works from home with their partner. In their office (which is a
converted small bedroom) they have a three telephones, two trestle tables,
two kitchen chairs, fax/phone, photocopier, desk lamps, filing cabinet, and
two computers, (monitor, keyboard, tower board, printer and scanner). Your
friend’s office would be best described as being too small for both of them
to operate efficiently. Both of them are constantly tripping over the power
leads and cables that lay around the office floor.
One Friday when you are visiting your friend you are told that they intend to
expand because both of them were experiencing difficulty managing the
increase in new business. Your friend’s intention is to hire about six people
from Centrelink or TAFE, on a full time and casual basis, to handle stock
ordering, accounts, sales and invoice processing while they (the owners)
concentrate on marketing and securing new business. Your friend states that
they are a bit short on cash to rent offices but has an idea to get around that
problem for the moment.
You are taken to the back veranda where your friend intends to set up the
new work area for the incoming employees. It is a large open veranda, made
of timber with fibro half walls and a colour bond (corrugated) roof. It looks
reasonable as a starting point, considering that it backs onto the kitchen and
dining room. The toilet is located in the garden shed about four metres from
the veranda’s back steps. There is an umbrella stand with umbrellas for
rainy days next to the stairs. Hand washing facilities are in the laundry,
which is adjacent to the veranda.
Your friend seems very excited when they tell you that for a few dollars
they can ‘slap’ some louvers in around the veranda to let a breeze through,
cover the rafters with some fibro, ‘slap’ some paint on the walls, put a few
mats on the glazed floor tiles to give it ‘a lived in feeling’ and everything
will be fine. Your friend intends to install a couple of power points by
running some cable from the kitchen floor power points to some new points
on the veranda wall. This installation will be done by your friend to save
time because they explain it’s not always easy to get trades people to do
small jobs.
In keeping the cost down your friend intends to fit-out, plan and design the
new area with trestles, like their own, and an assortment of chairs from the
local second-hand charity shop. Desk lamps will be provided for each
workstation and they, like the computer equipment, will be connected to
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© New South Wales, Department of Education and Training 2012, Version 5, 03/2012
power boards running across the floor from the power points on the veranda
walls. As a temporary measure extension phone leads will be run from the
existing office through the house to the veranda and will be placed on two of
the ‘desks’.
Since it’s late in the afternoon your friend invites you into the lounge room
to the bar where your friend and their partner usually have a few drinks to
celebrate the end of the week. Both enjoy a drink and they have been known
to ‘carry on’ well into the night. In fact, you heard that on one occasion
when a client was invited on a Friday for social drinks, the client was later
breathalysed. Found to be over the limit, the client was fined and lost their
driving license for six months. This unfortunate affair cost your friend the
loss of an esteemed client.
As you are leaving your friend confides in you that they have been doing
some reading on work health and safety issues for employees and
employers; because you are an WHS advisor to your company your friend
asks for your advice.
Your friend hands you a list of items that require clarification and direction.
The following is what your friend has asked you to do:
(a) Explain the purpose of a WHS TQM system and how it would
benefit the expanded business (that is, apply the TQM
model/approach to WHS activities).
(b) Describe how a risk management process might be built into a
business’s WHS employment procedures. Draft an induction form
for the new employees and explain how it should be conveyed to
those employees.
(c) Besides a WHS TQM approach (as mentioned above), describe two
other alternative WHS systems that are available for the
management of WHS for the organisation to consider.
(d) Because your friend considers they know all there is to know about
running the business and they don’t want outsiders interfering,
explain the purpose of consultation and describe how new
employees might participate in a consultative arrangement to help
the business.
(e) Identify hazards in the new workplace and explain what processes
should be put in place to make the new area free of hazards and risk
of injury and disease.
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Assessment checklist
I have:
 Included my name, student number, unit number, assessment number
 Answered all the questions
 Reviewed and spell checked my document
 Included a bibliography with correct Harvard referencing
 Saved a copy of the assessment on my own computer