• Make a Safe Workplace Overview
• Manage health and Safety
  • Safety of Contractors and Visitors
  • Visitors to Farms
  • Children in the Workplace
  • First Aid Kits
• Make a H&S plan
  • Implementing Your Plan
  • Employee Participation
• Manage Hazards
  • Monitor Employee Health
  • More on health monitoring
  • Personal Protective Equipment
  • Getting staff to wear safety gear
  • Fatigue, Drugs and Alcohol
  • Sample Drug and Alcohol Policy
  • Workplace Fatigue
• Manage Staff Safely
  • Employee Responsibilities
  • Employee Capability Levels
  • Seven Steps for Training
  • Sample Health and Safety Policy
• Investigate Incidents

Monitor Employee Health

You may have some health hazards in your workplace that you can’t eliminate or isolate, such as dust, chemical fumes, noise or vibration. You have a duty to minimise your employees’ exposure to these risks and to monitor the impact on their health.

This page explains your responsibilities both to your employees and the environment. If you are using the Hazard Management Register this part will help you complete the ‘monitor employee health section’ (columns 15 to 19).

What you must do

• Provide full training and information for employees on the hazard, the controls and the health issues arising from exposure.
• Provide the right personal protective equipment and ensure it’s used correctly.
• Determine appropriate health tests and measure if employees are being affected by the exposure. For example, hearing tests, discomfort surveys and blood testing.
• Take all practicable steps to get employees’ consent to health monitoring. If an employee refuses health monitoring, you need to decide if the employee should be removed from the high-risk task or area.
• Give employees copies of their health monitoring results.

What you could do

• Discuss what monitoring is required with a qualified occupational health professional.
• Meet with your key staff to evaluate the effectiveness of personal protective equipment and how to calculate the exposure to significant hazards.
• Include health monitoring in your employment agreements and business rules so employees understand right from the start that it’s a job requirement.
• Consider also the wider issues of health hazards. Hazards such as dust or noise can affect the health of people close to your workplace. Releasing chemical fumes into the air or chemicals into the ground or waterways can both affect people and degrade the environment.