In a recent news alert sent out in February, WA’s WorkSafe Mines Safety department reminded employers to carefully assess the validity of compliance documentation. This alert was triggered after WA’s mining industry discovered fraudulent certificates and falsified training credentials in the sector, with these cases referred to the Western Australian Police.
Worker documentation fraud is surprisingly prevalent in today's highly regulated workforce and the responsibility to detect and prevent it now falls on the employer. Australian legislation now states that not knowing a worker has provided a fake certification is not a sufficient defence strategy if you are prosecuted. This is cemented by the recent introduction of Industrial Manslaughter laws that seek to ensure culpable employers are responsible for workers' deaths.
Is there a solution?
Without systematically reviewing all qualifications and licences, your organisation and personnel are likely to be exposed to unnecessary risks of hazards and serious safety incidents. Here at MyPass, we encourage formalising your compliance documentation verification process to ensure instances of fraud are not uncovered when it's too late.
Technology already exists to reduce the risk of compliance documentation fraud by empowering workers to be accountable for the ongoing upkeep of their credentials in a centralised and shareable passport. What this means is their passport becomes a ‘single source of truth’, with their certificates verified once and then shared from the source multiple times. This existing cloud-based system also links with registered training organisations where workers receive expiry notifications to book and complete online training within the same platform.
What do we think?
MyPass recently delivered a webinar on the hidden risk of worker qualification fraud, detailing a simple yet systematic approach to removing risk exposure and the costly consequences of a safety incident, along with recent examples of fraudulent documents.
If you’d like to learn more about this issue, including the genuine risk of fraud in workplace documentation, how to recognise fake worker documents and how to apply a business process to protect your workforce, then watch our webinar to learn vital strategies to reduce your risk.
