HSC Business Services (VET) cheat sheet

WHS duty of care: a PCBU must ensure health and safety so far as reasonably practicable; workers must take reasonable care for their own and others' safety and follow lawful instructions.

Hierarchy of risk control (highest to lowest): eliminate the hazard, substitute, isolate, engineer, administer, then use PPE as the last line of defence.

Manual handling risk factors: repetition, force, awkward posture, vibration, duration and rest breaks; assess load, path and task before lifting.

Incident reporting sequence: make the area safe, provide first aid, notify supervisor, record in the incident register, then investigate causes.

Confidentiality rule: personal and client information is collected only for a stated purpose, stored securely, and disclosed only with consent or legal requirement.

Communication model: sender encodes a message, a channel carries it, the receiver decodes it, and feedback confirms understanding; noise disrupts any stage.

Active listening behaviours: paraphrase to confirm meaning, ask open questions, note non-verbal cues, and avoid interrupting the speaker.

Equal employment opportunity: selection and promotion decisions must rest on job-related merit criteria, not on age, sex, race, disability or carer status.

SMART goals: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound; each goal needs a stated measure and deadline to be verifiable.

Prioritisation rule: rank tasks by urgency and importance; schedule high-importance tasks into peak-energy periods and batch routine low-risk tasks.

Customer service recovery steps: acknowledge the problem, apologise for the experience, resolve or escalate, then follow up to confirm satisfaction.

Telephone standard: answer within about three rings, greet with business name and your name, confirm the caller's need, and summarise agreed actions.

Records management: file documents using the organisation's classification system, apply version control, and retain records for the period set by policy or law.

Petty cash and invoicing: every transaction needs a source document (receipt or invoice), an approval, and an entry reconciled against the balance.

Meeting procedure: circulate an agenda beforehand, record decisions and action items in minutes, and assign each action an owner and due date.

Sustainability in the office: reduce consumption first, reuse where possible, recycle correctly, and track energy or waste data to show improvement.