SEARCH RESULTS

Last week I was asked to meet with an organisation to talk about providing health and safety support to them. This happens frequently, which is just as well, or I wouldn’t have a business. Why am I writing about this meeting – what was different about it? The difference is that I had first spoken to them a few years ago. Three years ago, we had almost the same conversation. I told them what Safewise could do to support them and they talked about being able to do it themselves. That was the option they chose. At the time they considered doing it themselves was a cost-effective way to develop and run their health and safety system. There is nothing wrong with developing your own health and safety system. It can be more cost-effective, and it can work very well. There is a lot of information available to assist organisations to do this. You can download the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, and you can download templates and forms. You can even download an entire hazard risk register. What you can’t download is experience, time and knowledge. This organisation had written a reasonably good health and safety system. It was very long and had confused some aspects of the old Health and Safety in Employment Act and the current Health and Safety at Work Act, but overall it was adequate. What wasn’t adequate was the implementation of the system. The person charged with running health and safety had it tacked onto the end of an already full role. This person had limited knowledge of health and safety and didn’t really know how to drive it, how to excite people about it, how to make it part of the way they work. Using a consultant can help in all these areas. A good consultant should be able to work with you to help you get the best outcome for your organisation. Maybe they write the system, maybe they provide training, maybe they are a back-up to what you are doing. A good consultant should have qualifications, experience and belong to a health and safety organisation, such as the NZ Institute of Safety Management (NZISM), and, preferably, be on the Health and Safety Association of NZ (HASANZ) register. They should also be someone you connect with. Go it alone or use a professional – it’s your choice. Remember that a robust, well-implemented health and safety system will save you downtime from injuries or damage. It will ensure you have a plan to stop things going wrong, but will also have a plan for managing the things that do go wrong. How can Safewise help? We work with organisations that need more health and safety knowledge, or more time, than they have in-house. For more information, check the website.

This is one of the most frequent statements I hear: health and safety is just common sense. But is this true? WorkSafe New Zealand put out a media release recently about a driver who was watering a track. He was travelling at low speed. He allowed two young boys, around 10 years old, to climb on and over the tanker truck as it was moving along. One of the boys fell off and was badly injured. No doubt the driver thought the kids were just having an adventure, and how bad could it be if they fell off when he was driving slowly. Unfortunately, he, and the boy found out. I admit that I have done things that, in hindsight, probably were not well thought through, as I am sure we all have. WorkSafe said that we need to look at all hazards and risks, not just the obvious ones. Research shows that people are aware of the biggest hazards but they are often injured by the small hazards they don’t even think about. For instance, electricity workers suffer from sprained ankles because of the uneven ground they are walking on, but seldom from electric shock. In fact, uneven ground is often not identified as a hazard, despite it being a major cause of injury. Another example of a serious lack of common sense occurred on one of my client’s sites. The owner asked her contract cleaner to clean the rubber non-slip edging on her stairs. The cleaner presumably wanted them to shine so used silicone. This could have had serious consequences, but the cleaner didn’t think past the appearance of his work. Common sense is based on a person’s life experiences and learnings. There may be a collective common sense within a business among the workers who are trained and experienced. However, not everyone has the same level of understanding. Not everyone will be aware of the potential consequences of their actions. Stop, take the time to think about what you are doing, think about what could go wrong, think about the outcomes of your actions; often controlling a hazard will create another hazard. Think about other people and what they know, and what they probably don’t know. Health and safety isn’t about being the fun police. It’s about everyone going home at the end of the day. How can Safewise help? We work with organisations who need more health and safety knowledge, or more time, than they have in house. For more information, check the website.