Industrial manslaughter offence introduced in New South Wales
On 20 June 2024, the New South Wales Parliament passed legislation to include a new criminal offence of industrial manslaughter under work health and safety legislation.
Read more...Every year, employers expend time and money planning, developing and implementing learning and development programs for the year ahead. Indeed, the development of a corporate training calendar is one of the most important human resource functions in any organisation.
Corporate training needs
Conducting a skills assessment for current employees will assist to identify gaps in knowledge and highlight where resources, such as training, are needed to meet those identified gaps. This is a process that should at least be conducted on a yearly basis as the needs of the workforce and the needs of the organisation may change from year to year.
“Living” learning and development
Learning and Development programs should be reviewed and evaluated on regular basis in respect of course content and method of delivery in order to assess the currency of content and effectiveness. For example, new courses may be available while online training courses may need to be updated for new legislation or further, an organisation may find that employees respond better to face-to-face delivery rather than completing training online and alone.
In the area of safety, this is particularly important as new Codes of Practice may be introduced or updated which in turn trigger new training requirements for the organisation.
Learning and development is not a case of simply rolling out the same program year after year, employers need to ensure the programs are ‘living’ elements of the business that adapt and change as laws, employees and the business changes.
Record keeping
Keeping a record of past training is important for a business to ensure that certificates, licences and other qualifications are kept up to date and also assists to identify whether “refresher” training is required.
This record keeping can play a vital part in being able to defend workers compensation claims, negligence claims, investigations by the relevant workplace safety regulatory body (for example SafeWork NSW), and/or discrimination claims (where an employer can be held vicariously liable for employee’s unlawful conduct in some situations).
What to do next
Coming up to the end of another financial year is a good time to make time to review Learning and Development programs and recording keeping methods – don’t wait for an incident or a difficult situation arising from a training failure – it is better to be proactive rather than reactive.
Information provided in this blog is not legal advice and should not be relied upon as such. Workplace Law does not accept liability for any loss or damage arising from reliance on the content of this blog, or from links on this website to any external website. Where applicable, liability is limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation.
