Volunteer health and safety for community service organisations

Protect volunteer health and safety

Employees and volunteers are legally entitled to a healthy and safe working environment.

An employer must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that persons other than employees of the employer — which includes volunteers — are not exposed to risks to their health or safety at the work environment.

Managers of volunteers should be aware of health and safety obligations in the workplace.

Community service organisations with employees have obligations to protect the health and safety of both employees and volunteers under the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (OHS Act). Self-employed persons and people with management or control of a workplace also have obligations to control health and safety risks.

Manage the health and safety of volunteers by providing volunteers with the same risk and safety assessments as employees.

As a duty holder, you must:

• eliminate risks to health and safety, so far as is reasonably practicable
• reduce risks to health and safety, so far as is reasonably practicable, if it is not reasonably practicable to eliminate the risks.

Include health and safety into work every day. This can help to:

• meet your legal obligations
• support your organisation’s reputation
• show that you are serious about health and safety
• show that you value the work and commitment of your volunteers
• have regular conversations with employees, contractors and volunteers about health and safety matters
• regularly review risk controls and work processes to ensure everyone is aware of safety matters and controls are working as expected
• ensure everyone, whether they are a volunteer or employee, is given the training, support and information to know how to do their job safely.

Consulting your volunteers

Involve volunteers in health and safety planning and decisions.

Your volunteers have valuable knowledge and experience they can contribute to the management of health and safety. Make sure they have a reasonable opportunity to contribute to the improvement of health and safety at your organisation.

Employers must consult with employees and health and safety representatives, where present, when identifying hazards and risks and implementing controls to eliminate or, where not reasonably practicable to do so, minimise them.

Consulting with volunteers is not a legal duty under the OHS Act, but it is good practice and will help you better manage health and safety.

Consultation includes actively seeking the views of your volunteers about health and safety matters and taking those views into account when making decisions.

Encourage volunteers to raise health and safety issues to help prevent illness and injuries.

You could involve your volunteers by:

• holding regular meetings that focus on health and safety
• making health and safety a standing item at staff meetings
• including health and safety information in regular newsletters.

Incident notification

As an employer or self-employed person, you must:

• notify WorkSafe immediately when you become aware that a notifiable incident has occurred at a workplace under your management and control — report an incident by calling 13 23 60
• provide written notification within 48 hours
• keep a copy of the written notification for at least 5 years
• preserve the incident site until an inspector arrives or directs otherwise.

An incident site may only be disturbed for the purpose of protecting health and safety of a person, aiding an injured person or taking essential action to make the site safe or prevent further incidents from happening.

An employer must notify WorkSafe immediately after becoming aware of an incident that results in the death or serious injury of a person, including volunteers.

Serious injuries include those that require:

• medical treatment within 48 hours of exposure to a substance
• immediate treatment in hospital as an in-patient
• immediate medical treatment for the following
• amputation
• serious head or eye injuries
• separation of skin from underlying tissue, for example, de-gloving or scalping
• electric shock
• spinal injury
• loss of bodily functions
• serious laceration.

You must also notify WorkSafe about certain incidents that expose people to a serious risk to their health and safety coming from an immediate or imminent exposure to:

• uncontrolled escape, spillage or leakage of any substance, including dangerous goods within the meaning of the Dangerous Goods Act 1985
• an implosion, explosion or fire
• electric shock
• the fall or release from height of any plant, substance or thing
• the collapse, overturning, failure or malfunction of, or damage to any plant, including plant in relation to a mine
  • prescribed by the regulations, or
  • the design of which must be registered in accordance with the regulations, or
• the collapse or partial collapse of a building or structure
• the collapse or failure of an excavation or mine or of any shoring supporting an excavation or mine
• the inrush of water, mud or gas in workings in a mine, underground excavation or tunnel
• the interruption of the main system of ventilation in a mine, underground excavation or tunnel
• any other event or circumstance prescribed by the Regulations
• an incident started by the illness of a person, being an illness prescribed by the regulations.

If you are unsure if an incident needs to be reported contact WorkSafe on 13 23 60.

Failure to report an incident to WorkSafe is an offence under the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 and may result in prosecution.

Find more information about notifiable incidents on the WorkSafe website.

Take a systematic approach

Manage health and safety in an organized way to help protect your volunteers and to help meet your legal obligations.

Remove or control the health and safety risks at your workplace.

This process is called health and safety risk assessment and control and should be done in consultation with your volunteers and employees.

Follow the 5-step process:

Think about the hazards and risks

Think about all hazards and risks when doing risk assessments. Talk to your volunteers and employees about the hazards and risks they know about. Take action to eliminate or reduce the risk of injury and illness, so far as reasonably practicable (see Definitions).

Make sure your risk-assessment process is comprehensive. Explore new ideas and ways of doing things. For example, transporting clients in specially designed taxis instead of using volunteers’ vehicles.

Consider if volunteers have different or higher levels of risk than your employees. For example, risks to volunteers may be different because of their age, the language they speak or the level of experience each volunteer brings to the task.

When recruiting volunteers, make sure their skills and experience are suited to the work they will do — or they or other volunteers, employees and clients may be put at risk.

Information, instruction, training and supervision

Employers must provide the necessary information, instruction, training or supervision to enable employees to do their work in a way that is safe and without risks to health.

Volunteers who do not have enough experience to do their work safely need to be supervised by an experienced person.

Provide volunteers with information, instruction and training on the safe use of any object, substance, equipment or machinery they will use for their work. This will help reduce the risk of volunteers injuring themselves or others.

Volunteers may be using equipment, tools and ways of working that are new to them or different to what they are used to.

Help volunteers be aware of the importance of health and safety before they begin work.

Before volunteers start work, you should explain:

• health and safety procedures, including instructions for equipment they will be using and security arrangements if they are away from the organisation
• emergency procedures, location of emergency exits and where emergency equipment is kept
• tasks and boundaries of their role
• any risks they may face
• who to talk to if they have any health and safety concerns and how to report any health and safety incidents and hazards
• what situations they should remove themselves from
• arrangements for debriefing or counselling after an incident or other traumatic circumstance
• results of any safety tests or monitoring you are aware of.

Provide volunteers with a written statement setting out their role and responsibilities. Remember to think about the language, culture and literacy needs of your volunteers. Consider providing important information and instruction in alternate formats like video and infographics to assist users who better learn this way.

Emergencies and first aid

Your organisation needs to have a plan to deal with emergencies. The plan should include measures for eliminating or reducing the risk of emergencies.

The emergency plan should include:

• the map location of high-risk areas
• fire escape routes and exits
• staff responsible for carrying out emergency procedures
• how to protect service users from external threats. For example, a ‘lock down’ plan in childcare services.
• procedures for training volunteers
• information on keeping training records
• emergency evacuation procedures including for people with limited mobility, clients, contractors and other people needing evacuation
• information on fire equipment testing and maintenance.

It is important to provide first aid facilities for the needs of injured or ill volunteers and employees.

As a minimum, you should provide first aid kits, including in vehicles.

You may need to have trained first aid officers and first aid rooms.

Injuries and illnesses in community services

The following information lists injuries and illnesses — and their possible causes — that can result from jobs that volunteers do for community service organisations.

Driving a vehicle

Learn more about how to control risks associated with work-related driving on the WorkSafe website.

Learn more about how to identify and control risks when working alone on the Worksafe website.

Example case studies

The following case studies are examples of possible hazards that a volunteer may experience at work.

Possible risks are listed and suggested risk controls are offered as a guide to help protect the health and safety of volunteers.

The suggested risk controls are not a substitute for carrying out a risk assessment and determining the most appropriate control measures for your organisation in consultation with volunteers and employees.

Support injured volunteers return to work

If a volunteer is injured or becomes ill at work, it is essential to their recovery that you keep in touch and encourage and support their return to work.

Your volunteers return to work can restore their self-confidence and also help them get back into their social and community networks.

Your organisation benefits by retaining the volunteer’s skills and experience and avoids the costs of recruiting and training a new volunteer.

All contact with injured or ill volunteers should be made with sensitivity and not in a way that makes them feel pressured to return to work when they are not ready.

Legal responsibilities

If you employ paid staff, you have legal responsibilities to return an employee with a work-related injury or illness to work as soon as possible and prevent the injury happening again. This includes preparing:

• an occupational rehabilitation program
• individual return to work plan, and
• risk-management plan.

You should take the same steps to help volunteers return as soon as it is safe if they choose to do so, although it isn’t a legal requirement.

Compensation and insurance

Under the Workplace Injury Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2013 (the Act), a volunteer is 'a person who is acting on a voluntary basis (irrespective of whether the person receives out-of-pocket expenses)'.

Under the Act, most volunteers are not treated as employees for WorkSafe purposes and therefore will not have an entitlement to compensation if injured while performing voluntary work. Employers may need to consider separate insurance cover for volunteers in order to safeguard against possible legal, financial and reputational consequences.

Make sure your insurance covers your employees and volunteers in case of a work-related injury, illness or death.

Under legislation, volunteers assisting government agencies are entitled to compensation in accordance with the Accident Compensation Act 1985 if injured while carrying out specified duties.

For more information on which government agency volunteers may have an entitlement to compensation, view WorkSafe’s Volunteers.

Entitlement to provisional payments

Eligible Victorian volunteers may also be able to access early treatment and support while they await the outcome of their mental injury claim. This support is called provisional payments.