Are your employees losing their hearing? Sometimes it’s difficult to tell..
Hearing loss can come on suddenly, or very slowly over time. The end result is the same, however, with your employee’s hearing damaged and a work cover claim on the way.
Hardly a good result for anyone, although it’s preventable with a range of measures, including workplace hearing tests.
Workplace hearing tests, how it all works
Contact & preparation
Let us know how many employees need workplace hearing tests, and we’ll determine how long the process will take. We have the only mobile screening clinic in NSW that’s equipped with two sound booths, so we can test your employees faster than anyone else. Or, if you have your own audiometric testing equipment, we can easily supply qualified health professionals to run the workplace hearing tests.
We’ll also schedule the appointments, and help organise the smooth running of the day, making it all incredibly easy for you.
Workplace hearing tests
Our team of health care professionals will arrive on the day and manually test your employees’ hearing with as little disruption to the working day as possible. We even offer a 24 hour service, if that suits your purpose.
Please be aware
If you decide to use another provider for this service, you should know that many use automatic testing equipment, operated by technicians as opposed to health care professionals. This may reduce your initial cost a little; however, the service is often not compliant with Aus/NZ standards, and you won’t receive any healthcare advice either.
Regulations & Compliance
Our workplace hearing tests are conducted in accordance with the requirements of the Work Health and Safety Regulation 2017 and SafeWork Australia – Managing Noise and Preventing Hearing Loss at Work: Code of Practice July 2020, which specifies the implementation of AS/NZS 1269.4:2014 Occupational Noise Management Part 4: Auditory assessment for the pure tone air conduction threshold tests.
Comprehensive reporting
Once all the workplace hearing tests are complete, we’ll prepare detailed reports tailored to your requirements. If you have previous years’ data, for example, we can include that to give you a comparison over time, and give you a full, global updated report of your company.
We’ll outline normal and abnormal reference ranges, and because we’re all health professionals we can deliver advice and recommendations for any employees with sub-standard hearing. We take age and pre-existing conditions into consideration during our review, which means not every abnormal result requires additional investigation.
We’ll talk you through the report, making sure you understand everything.
Your report will identify
- Every test an employee has had with us
- Employees who were absent on the day
- Normal & abnormal reference ranges
- Employees that are over the Whole Person Impairment (WPI) level for compensation
- Employees with over 6% hearing loss, who you may need to focus on
- Employees recommended for medical review with their GP, audiologist or for repeat or further testing
- Percentage loss statistics graph for the company.
We’ll also follow up to let you know when the next appointments need to be arranged, according to an agreed-upon schedule of regular tests.
Consistent testing for absent employees
For those who missed out, we’ll follow up with audiometric testing at our base location to ensure consistency of all your workplace hearing tests. These employees are then added to your report, completing the database of results.
Workplace hearing tests, pre-employment & exit assessments
We can also conduct workplace hearing tests before an employee starts working for you, providing a benchmark for future test results. This prevents you from being held accountable for hearing loss that may have occurred somewhere else. Exit assessments are also part of our service.
Workplace hearing tests, your obligations
If employees are exposed to noise above the recommended levels, then you have to provide hearing protection and an audiometric testing program. Workcover recommends new employees should be tested before starting at your workplace, or within 3 months of commencing their work, and on a regular basis every two years.
If you do provide hearing protection for your employees, Worksafe Australia recommends that their hearing is tested at least every two years.
