National Safe Work Month - October 2023
Since 2009, Safe Work Australia has led a national campaign each October to build community awareness and knowledge of work health and safety. National Safe Work Month is hugely popular and provides a great platform to promote WHS and encourage everyone to work towards healthier, safer workplaces.
Each year, Safe Work Australia selects a theme for the month. This year the overarching theme is "For everyone’s safety, work safely" - encouraging everyone to make health and safety in the workplace a priority. There's also weekly themes:
- Week 1 (1-8 October)– Working together to manage risks at work
- Week 2 (9-15 October)– Working together to protect workers’ mental health
- Week 3 (16-22 October) – Working together to support all workers
- Week 4 (23-31 October) – Working together to ensure a safe and healthy workplace
While October seems like a long way off, Safe Work Australia are encouraging all sorts of businesses to download their campaign kit now so you can start preparing to take part, including logos, posters, video call backgrounds, social artwork and email signatures.
They will also be running the SafeTea campaign, which encourages workers at all levels to contribute to the safety conversation over a morning break - identify, assess, control, review.Test Your Emergency Alert System
What process do you currently use to notify personnel of an evacuation or nurse call (medical) emergency? Do you have evacuation sirens installed? How are those evacuation sirens triggered? Who do you notify if a worker has a medical episode or is injured? How do you notify them?
If you're not using a smart system, or your system is old, consider a Vanguard Wireless emergency alert system. They're easy to retrofit, simple to use, and take very little time to manage and maintain. Once an evacuation or nurse call alert is triggered, all the relevant personnel are notified so they can coordinate a response in conjunction with the workplace emergency plan. Close the loop on your workplace safety by making sure that if there is a safety issue, you and your team can quickly alert the right people who can respond accordingly.
Join National Safe Work Month 2023
Start planning your work health and safety activities for October by joining National Safe Work Month. To participate, follow these steps:
- Go to the National Safe Work Month website and download resources from their campaign kit to customise and share at your workplace.
- Follow Safe Work Australia on social media to keep up to date on new campaign materials and for National Safe Work Month updates.
- Subscribe to their mailing list and select ‘National Safe Work Month’ to keep up to date with the latest news and resources.
- Use the hashtags #SafeWorkMonth on social media, and #SafeTea if you are running a SafeTea event.
For more information and resources, go to the National Safe Work Month website.