RECENT NEWS

There is a lot to think about when we are working. We need to be sure that we are doing the job to the best of our abilities: quality, efficiency, and safely. Often we are focused on the task and presume that other people around us are aware of how and what we are doing.. However, this is not always the case. It is easy to assume that, because we understand our job very well, other people have the same knowledge. This is seldom the case. It can help to know what types of pe

Last month we discussed reasonably practicable steps. The Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 talks a lot about doing what is reasonably practicable. It requires that an organisation does what any other organisation would be expected to reasonably do. Let’s look at an example which can be quite common in the transport industry – overloading. Firstly, we will assume that the transport operator does not want to have overloaded vehicles. Consider what are the ways the vehicles ca

The Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 replaced serious harm with notifiable events. The actions we take are the same: look after the people, freeze the scene, and call WorkSafe NZ as soon as possible. However, the definition has been causing a lot of confusion. A notifiable event means any of the following events that arise as a result of work: • the death of a person; or • a notifiable injury or illness; or • a notifiable incident. (Your health and safety manual should c

Safeguard magazine (May/June 2016) outlined the workplace death toll from January to the end of April 2016. This has been confirmed by WorkSafe NZ but does not include road, air or maritime deaths. These are counted under different categories. So far there have been 19 workplace fatalities. Nineteen people who are not going home to their families. Families and friends of 19 people who will always have a gap in their lives. Who are they? They are all men, although two are chil