The Occupational Health and Safety Act: Online Resources Recommendations
Well this is it – the top 4 resources online in South Africa that gives an overview of the Occupational Health and Safety Act. We will update and write another post from time to time as when other good recommendations come along. But for our first post we have chosen articles from HR Pulse, Labour Guide, Skills Portal and MyWage. We hope that these sources give you a better understanding of the Occupational Health and Safety Act. Click on the titles of each article to go directly to the source.
1. Rights and responsibilities of the Occupational Health and Safety Act –
Written for Human Resources practitioners in mind the widely respected HR Pulse magazine published “Rights and responsibilities of the Occupational Health and Safety Act” written by Rhys Evans. The article gives a short and sharp overview about the importance of compliance to the Occupational Health and Safety Act.
A quote from the article demonstrates that no one (organisation) is exempt and underscores the importance of protecting workers whilst at work:
“Compliance with the OHS Act is mandatory for all organisations, and particularly those in hazardous industries including mining, manufacturing, transport and construction.”
2. Labour Guide: Summary of the OHS Act
Labour Guide provides a very useful resource and presents its summary in a table format. We like that writer Tinus Boschoff points out that:
“The Occupational Health and Safety Act are supported by subordinate legislation, Regulations and Codes of Practice, which give practical guidelines on how to manage health and safety issues.”
3. Skills Portal: Understanding the Occupational Health and Safety Act – OHS Act –
The OHS Compliance Group really likes the layout of this Skills Portal article as it lays out very pertinent questions that make the content accessible to the non-technical reader.
- Does the employee have any say in the matter?
- What is a Safety Inspection?
- What power do safety inspectors have?
- What must the employer do to ensure that the work environment is safe and without risk to the health of his or her workers?
- To ensure that these duties are complied with, the employer must:
The article is well laid out and gives a very easy to understand overview of the Occupational Health and Safety Act.
4. MyWage: Health and Safety in South Africa
The MyWage website also follows a question and answer format and provides a logical yet easy to understand summary of the Occupational Health and Safety Act. For contextual reading the article immediately introduces important questions that any safety practitioners would need to answer with confidence.
Some of the questions are:
- Who does the OHSA cover?
- What are the workers’ duties?
- What are the employer’s duties?
- Can a worker be punished for complaining about safety conditions?
The criteria we chose to pick these articles were:
- Credible source
- Easy to understand language
- Good easy-to-follow formatting
- Short and to the point
We believe that anyone interested in the Health and Safety sector should read these articles because it will give them a good understanding of the South African Occupational Health and Safety Act.