The people in your workplace

Knowing who’s who in your workplace is much easier if you’re working in a small business.

If your company is bigger, it’s sometimes a bit harder to get information about who’s who and who does what. But it’s very important to know. People depend on each other to get the job done.

You need to have information about:

• who makes decisions about production and processes
• who you get information from about holiday and sickness leave
• who to report an accident or injury to
• who to talk with if there’s a problem
• who to report defects to
• who to see if you need to do some training
• who to talk to if you have a good idea to make the job easier or safer.

Your job

If you’ve been in your job for a long time, you probably do it fairly automatically and don’t realise how much information is needed to the job well and safely.

The information you need to know about your job includes:

• Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), work instructions, instructions for using equipment and specifications
• quality assurance, hygiene and sanitation and safety procedures.

The information you need comes from many different sources and in many different ways:

• talk
• writing
• photos/pictures/diagrams
• symbols
• numbers
• colour coding
• graphs and charts
• sign language and hand signals
• body language.

In one day you might get information from:

• an induction manual
• the personal hygiene SOP
• a telephone call from someone in load out
• the ‘days lost’ graph on the safety notice board
• tags, labels, brands or stamps
• work instruction
• a meeting.