People talk a lot about the work–life balance, but what does it mean? Life cannot be divided up into equal parcels of time, or commitment; half my life will be spent working and half my life will be my own. The world is not that simplistic. We all need to work, unless we are lucky enough to have won Lotto. Sometimes our work will dominate our lives. For me, this year has been a lot about work. Safewise has been busy with the demand created by the implementation of the Health

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

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 chi

Let’s talk about some of the urban myths that are being taken as the truth. There has been a lot of panic about the new Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, and it hasn’t been helped by the scaremongering tactics that are being employed by some people. Unfortunately, some of those people are so-called health and safety consultants. If you are intending to use a contractor you should check their skills, experience and qualifications. There are some people taking advantage of th