Victorian Immigrant and Refugee Women's Coalition - Assignment Example

Name: Tutor: Title: Risk Management Case Report Course: Date: Victorian Immigrant and Refugee Women’s Coalition (VIRWC) case study Exclusive summary Many hotel workplaces have hazards which put employees at risk of injuries to their health. Therefore, health and safety should be managed in a more systematic manner. Luxury and mid-scale hotels in Melbourne are faced with deep and sustained crisis, arising from poor employment relationships between the management and room attendants. Most room attendants work efficiently to make the hotel rooms clean and hygienic to create conducive environments for guests. However, room attendants are forced to survive on poverty wages due to low payments on dangerous and oppressive workloads. The impossible workloads and poor safety standards have increased the injury rate among the workers, full-time employees working in the hotels. It is in this respect that appropriate Occupational Health and Safety risk management approaches are considered as remedies to control the risks of turnover due poverty wages to room attendants, poor hygienic standards that cause injuries among the attendants. The report identifies the existing risks in Melbourne hotels and critical analysis is made on them based on the theories of likelihood and consequences, ALARP Principle and Hierarchy of Controls, why management of risks can be complex and compromising, the importance of the human side of risk management, how using scenarios can be used as important exercises for preventing risk situations and the role of demography and culture as the possible high-level risk management to control fatal accident. Question1: List the risks identified in the case study, critically analyzing them using theories of likelihood and consequence, ALARP Principle and Hierarchy of Controls The two critical risks confronting hotels in Melbourne include the enormous workforce turnover which is identified to be at 50 percent per annum. As a result, hotels incur about $10,000 to cater for each new acquired to fill the positions left vacant. Another huge risk affecting Melbourne hotels is deteriorating hygiene standards as a result of extreme workloads. Hotel attendants face dangerous and oppressive workloads yet they are expected to clean a room within a short period of time after every guest’s check out, a process involving various steps. This makes hotel attendants stressed up due to increased workload. It has also been reported that most of the room attendants are forced to work for long periods of unpaid overtime. Therefore, the impossible workloads in addition to insufficient safety standards, have exceedingly contributed to an injury rate of about 52 percent among the full time workers. The injured workers are time again bulled, while others are scared to claim for Work Cover (VIRWC 2010). The turnover risk is most likely to accelerate, and thus becoming costly as the economic recovery of Australia gathers pace. As a consequence of poor hygiene, a number of guest through their iPhones as well as the social networking sites are sharing the hotel horror information across the globe. Furthermore, hotels risk huge damage which is inflicted to their brands and the existing customer relationships failure to address the crisis (Hopkins 2009). Due to the hospitality industry’s sustained prosperity and bullish economic state, the poverty wages of most room attendants are not easy to justify. Since hotels take advantage of room attendants’ fear to bully them into submission, there is a likelihood of their pay docked, attendants be threatened with dismissal in case they dare reject to stay back or work for free. It is apparent that international student as well as other immigrant workers in the hotels is vulnerable to the risk of intimidation (VIRWC 2010). As low as reasonably practicable (ALARP) is a level of risk that can only be lowered more by increasing the expenditure on resources in regard to the disproportionate nature of the consequential decrement of risk. In this regard, the ALARP (“As Low As Reasonably Practical”) principle becomes important in determining how best to minimize the risk of dangerous and oppressive workloads that cause the enormous workforce turnover exposures to within tolerable levels. The ALARP Principle ALARP promotes the risk management review, where the intent is to achieve acceptable risk levels. Based on the ALARP principle, the risk of dangerous and oppressive workloads that the room attendants in Melbourne luxurious hotels face should be reduced further to a broadly acceptable level or negligible risk (Manuele & Main 2002). This can be achieved by increasing the hotel attendants’ salary from the poverty wages they get to a more considerable wage to enable them meet most of their needs, and thus reducing workforce turnover. Several depictions of the principle of ALARP originate from an inverted triangle, indicating that the impact of a risk is much greater at the top, but as it reduced further its impact becomes much less at the bottom. The requirements for human risks to be ALARP are important and applicable to all activities undertaken within the framework of Health and Safety at workplaces Act. Therefore, it is critical for the human resource managers in the Melbourne hotels meet the requirements of ALARP apply the necessary measures so as reduce the dangerous and oppressive workloads as well as enormous workforce risks before they become reasonably costly (ALARP Principle 2004). Based on Worksite Analysis, it is important that a hazard identification as well as analysis system be implemented so as to systematically identify the major and unforeseen safety and the health hazards. This will involve the evaluation of risks, prioritization and recommendation of the appropriate methods to control the existing hazards to an acceptable or considerable level of risk. Melbourne’s management priorities as well as cost/benefit analysis should ultimately be used to determine how the dangerous and oppressive workloads and enormous workforce risks are to be prioritized for mitigation (Manuele 2008). Why management of risks can be complex and compromising with economic requirements As the commonly faced risks are dealt with, new and less noticeable hazards emerge and gain prominence. A safety culture, therefore, becomes a special case of an organizational culture where safety takes special place within the concerns of individuals who work for that particularly organization. This implies that safety always takes a considerable place in the culture of an organization, and thus the development of safety culture. However, organizations can only take safety sufficiently after going through certain stage of development that an organization creates a safety culture. Therefore, safety culture is safety plays a big and important role. Since safety is a complex incident, it is not easily added for a person to be safe (Neal, Griffin & Hart 2000). Some risks associated with certain activities, processes and practices of an organization are not tolerable at all which proves to be unacceptable. Consequently, any activity and process that increasingly cause risks falling in that category must be exempted unless the activity and processes the organization is involved in can be modified so as to reduce the level of risk for it to be considered tolerable. On the other hand, the introduction of control measures makes the residual risks to fall so low to the extent that additional measures must be applied so as to reduce them more. This creates the likelihood of control measures to be disgustingly uneven to the risk reduction success, though they should as well be monitored for fear that the risks change re-occur over time (Ridley & Channing 2003). It is also worthy to mention that the cost of managing risk needs to be proportionate with the benefits achieved. However, in some incidents the risk cannot be prevented, though contingency plans must be put in place, for example, cyclones as reflected in the graphical illustration below. Question 2: Discuss the importance of the human side of risk management Many workplaces have different hazards which expose employees at the risk of injury or cause harm to health. Therefore, the human side of risk management plays a great role in the occupational health and safety management of employees. It is an integral way of implementing occupational health and safety because it involves the identification and assessment of risks caused by hazards, developing appropriate actions to minimize or mitigate the risks. This implies that improving health and safety call for attention to the evaluation as well as management of risks. Today, effective health and safety management involves viewing human factors as key system components with the potential to either cause or save and dangerous system conditions as technical components. Focusing on to the human factors clearly indicates that highly reliable organizations can easily identify and control potential hazards prior to their manifestation as accidents. Measuring the safety conditions through the alleged leading indicators, for instance, safety culture and safety climate is one way of achieving this is. Tomas et.al (1999), examined that safety culture and safety climate are distinct indicators from the lagging’ indicators of safety like accidents. They provide insight into the situation of safety without necessarily involving retrospective analyzes of the negative safety outcomes. Based on the organizational culture perspective, Reason (1997) identified five key components of safety culture as, informed culture, reporting culture, learning culture, just culture, and flexible culture. Health and Safety risk management at work regulations 1999 is an endorsed Code of Practice and Guidance which states that many duty holders as well as others involved in the Occupational Health and Safety (OHS), must emulate HSE’s approach to plan and develop the control measures that should be inaugurated so as to address hazards at workplaces. Therefore, Occupational Health and Safety Acts are important because they foster hygienic conditions at workplaces under the code of duty of care. Effective implementation of the duty of care code ensures that planning for the prevention of accidents, injuries as well as illnesses at workplace is enhanced. The employer’s duty of care is an important approach to human side risks management because it applies to all people within the workplace, under which visitors and contractors are included. It is the responsibility of employers, therefore, to ensure that the entire ‘reasonably practicable’ measures are taken into consideration to control the risk of injury that occurs in the workplace (Manuele 2003). It is important to argue that successful risk assessment provides many advantages. For example, a well-defined evaluation of risks at the workplaces creates a rational basis for the development of safe practices and behavior which should be played by the employees. On the other hand, institutional managers depend on a well-defined evaluation of risks to develop clear targets to both injury-prevention and the exposure-prevention programs. However, for regulators as well as other oversight bodies, a clearly-defined assessment of risks enables in setting the workplace health and safety standards so as to monitor compliance to the human side risk management standards without making case-by-case judgments (Manuele 2003). Question 3 What other risks can be identified in marketing, finance and administration side of the case? Internal risks identified in marketing, finance and administration include damage to reputation due to bad restaurant review, failure to attain food hygiene standards as well as subsequent compulsory shut down of business, failure of the computer systems causing loss of reservation records and business interruption caused by storm, building damage (Zimolong 1997). Which of these risks in the clerical department could flow-on to risks in the safety area? Failure of the computer systems causing loss of reservation records and business interruption caused by storm, building damage risks within the clerical department could addressed under the risks in the safety area by undertaking occupational or administrative safety measures to avoid loss of huge data or information required by the company and to enable business continuity. Question 4 Discuss why using scenarios as effective exercises for preventing risk situations. List five likely scenarios that could be used in predicting and avoiding risk in the context of the case study. Case scenarios are significant because they are designed to enable the managers or employers think about their company’s potential risk factors. Therefore, the management decides on which risks might affect the company and its personnel. Based on these scenario risks assessments, the management decides how best to mitigate the identified risks by use of prevention measures designed to operate within the resources and the workplace (O’Leary 2004). Awareness and Preparedness for Emergencies at Local Level (APELL) is a good scenario which can be used in Melbourne hotels for bringing people, basically company staff and room attendants, representatives from the nearby communities and local authorities to work in collaboration to enable effective communication about risks as well as plan for their emergency response. There is need to identify possible accidents, along with probability of their occurrence and likelihood consequences. This will enable scenarios such as Awareness and Preparedness for Emergencies at Local Level to be developed and set priorities for planning purposes. It is important that the management define and pursue clear risk reduction options, evaluating the risks and hazards that could lead to emergency situations within the community as well as define measures for risk reduction (Perry & Lindell 2007). Question 5 Detail, (discrimination) prevention and contingency plans which should be developed to deal with a possible high-level risk such as a major fatal accident Major fatal accident is an example of a possible high-level risk which can be prevented by developing safety policies and procedures, providing staff training programs and insurance coverage as well as developing PP crisis plan. Contingency plans which should be developed to deal with such a situation include implementing crisis management plan and providing accurate information to the media (Guidelines for Integrating Process Safety Management, 2003). Bibliography ALARP Principle, 2004, Risk Management Guidelines Companion to AS/NZ 4360, Standards Australia, p75. Guidelines for Integrating Process Safety Management, 2003, Safety, Health and Quality, New York: Center for Chemical Process Safety, American Institute of Chemical Engineers. Hopkins, P., 2009, Melbourne hotel occupancy steady, The Age. Manuele, F.A., 2008, Advanced safety management: Focusing on Z10 and serious injury prevention. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Manuele, F.A., 2003, On the practice of safety (3rd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Manuele, F.A. & Main, B., 2002, On acceptable risk. Occupational Hazards. Retrieved March 19, 2010, from, Neal, A., Griffin, M. A., & Hart, P. M., 2000, The impact of organizational climate on safety climate and individual behavior. Safety Science, 34, 99-109. O’Leary, M. (Ed.). 2004, A Community Approach to Disaster Preparedness. New York, NY: iUniverse, Incorporated. Perry, R.W., & Lindell, M.K., 2007, Emergency Planning. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons. Ridley, J., & Channing, J. (Eds.) 2003, Safety at work (6th ed.). Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. Tomas, J. M., Melia, J.L., & Oliver, A.M., 1999, A cross validation of a structural equation model of accidents: organizational and psychological variables as predictors of work safety. Work and Stress, 13(1), 49-58. Victorian Immigrant and Refugee Women’s Coalition/Liquor, 2010, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union, Melbourne Hotel Room Attendants Focus Group, VIRWC/LHMU. Zimolong, B., 1997, Occupational risk management. In G. Salvendy (Ed), Handbook of Human Factors and Ergonomics (pp. 989-1020). New York: Wiley. Read More