RECENT NEWS

Most people don't wake up one morning and decide they need a health and safety consultant. More often, there's a question sitting in the back of their mind. Perhaps a client has asked for documentation you're not entirely confident about. Maybe you've recently experienced an incident and want to know if anything needs to change. Or perhaps you've inherited a system and aren't sure whether it's still fit for purpose. These situations are common, particularly for small and medi

A lot of workplace health and safety conversations focus on obvious hazards. We talk about moving machinery, working at height, hazardous substances, vehicles, noise, and other risks that are easy to see. Those hazards deserve attention, but they are often not the things that catch experienced workers off guard. Sometimes the biggest risk is familiarity. When you've performed the same task hundreds of times, it's natural to become comfortable with it. You know the process, un

If someone asked to see your health and safety policy tomorrow, would you be confident it's still relevant? Most businesses have one. It's often one of the first documents created when developing a health and safety system. The problem is that once it's written, it can easily be forgotten. Your business changes. New workers join the team. Contractors come and go. Equipment is replaced. Services expand. Risks evolve. Meanwhile, the policy sitting in the folder may still descri

Most people don't think much about machinery guards. They're just... there. Until one isn't. It's easy to trust a machine that's been doing the same job for years without incident. A conveyor runs smoothly. A saw starts when it should. A PTO shaft spins exactly as expected. The trouble is that machinery only needs one missing guard, one damaged component, or one missed check for things to go badly wrong. A recent WorkSafe prosecution involving an unguarded PTO shaft serves a

Many businesses have a health and safety system. The real question is: does anyone actually use it? It's surprisingly common to find organisations with well-written policies, detailed procedures, and neatly organised folders of health and safety documentation that rarely leave the shelf. The documents exist, but they don't influence the way work is carried out day-to-day. When this happens, workplace health and safety becomes a paperwork exercise rather than a practical tool

What Effective Workplace Health and Safety Communication Looks Like Instead "Use common sense." "Be careful." Most of us have heard these phrases at work. Many of us have probably said them ourselves. The trouble is that while they sound sensible, they are not particularly effective workplace health and safety controls. When we rely on common sense or tell workers to "be careful", we leave a lot open to interpretation. What seems obvious to one person may be completely unfami