1.1 Work Health and Safety

This Standard Operating Procedure communicates the health and safety responsibilities of volunteers, staff and third parties to ensure a safe and healthy environment for everyone.

Overview

All volunteers and staff must perform their tasks safely and follow SLS policies, procedures, and established work practices.

All volunteers and staff are required to meet their responsibilities under the Work Health and Safety Act 2012.

Each Surf Life Saving Club (SLSC) has its own Work Health and Safety (WHS) obligations towards its members. Under the WHS Act, each SLSC is considered to be Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking (PCBU) and as such has a duty to ensure the health and safety of ‘workers’ and ‘others’ at their Club. This includes providing safe systems of work, ensuring the safe use of plant and structures, providing adequate facilities and training, monitoring workplace conditions, and consulting with workers on health and safety matters. The PCBU must take all reasonably practicable steps to minimize risks to health and safety.

The principles in this Procedures, and the guidelines within the following Procedures, offer recommended standards to ensure consistency across our Surf Life Saving community.

Procedure

Identification of Hazards

SLSSA uses hazard identification and risk management to assess health and safety risks, plan controls, and authorise lifesaving activities. Due to the varied and unpredictable nature of SLSSA’s tasks, identifying hazards is crucial to anticipating risks.

Hazard Management

Hazard management is a process involving:

• Identifying hazards,
• Assessing risks,
• Controlling risks,
• Evaluating results, and
• Reviewing the process regularly or when changes occur.

Lifesavers are well-placed to identify hazards due to their experience. They should actively look for and report unsafe conditions and actions.

Lifesavers should use the S.A.F.E.R. principle:

• Spot the hazard
• Assess the risks
• Fix the problem
• Evaluate the results
• Review the process

This approach is central to SLSSA’s safety strategy and is crucial for ensuring the health and safety of all members.

Duty of Rescue

When a lifesaving or lifeguarding service is provided, team members on duty have a certain level of responsibility to beachgoers. Although lifesavers and lifeguards do not have an automatic duty to rescue individuals, there are guiding principles that must be considered during any incident:

• Is there a risk of unnecessary danger to the rescuer?
• Are the necessary skills available to perform the rescue?
• Is the required equipment available?
• Is the person in need of help actively asking for assistance?
• Is it foreseeable that the individual will require help?
• Is it reasonable to render assistance?

Should someone in the water find themselves in difficulty, patrols are to consider their own safety and ensure they are not exposing themselves to an unacceptable level of risk. The State Operations Centre should be advised immediately of a person in difficulty who the patrol doesn’t assess as safe to rescue.

Incident Reporting

Member injuries must be reported to the State Operations Centre by phone. Refer to SOP 12.1 – State Operations Centre (SOC) – SURFCOM.

Member details must be added as per SOP 13.2 – Operations App (Recording an Incident)..

References

• Work Health and Safety Act 2012
• Work Health and Safety Regulations 2012
• How to manage work health and safety risks Code of Practice June 2020
• Guidelines for Safer Surf Clubs v4 May 2020, Chapter 1 – An introduction to Health & Safety
• Guidelines for Safer Surf Clubs v4 May 2020, Chapter 2 – Risk Management Process and Club Safety Inspections