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THE GOVERNMENT has introduced major changes to New Zealand’s health and safety workplace legislation to address the country’s poor workplace safety history.

The mix and weightings of positive incentives and deterrents combined with low levels of inspection and prosecution have contrib-uted to high levels of non-compliance.

WorkSafe set up to tackle challenge

WorkSafe New Zealand has been established to tackle New Zealand’s unacceptably high rate of workplace deaths and injuries. Its func-tions include:

● providing guidance on workplace health and safety ● setting standards and developing codes of practice under health and safety in employment (HSE) legislation

● monitoring and enforcing compliance with HSE legislation ● promoting education and training on workplace HSE

● collecting, analysing and publishing workplace HSE statistics.The goal is to foster a New Zealand culture that recognises health and safety is not a burden.

The reality is that business owners and managers will need to take a far more strategic look at health and safety – it can no longer be considered a compliance cost or something that can be delegated.

Instead, it needs to be seen as an investment in good business practice, improved productivity, reliability and an engaged workforce.

Need to be proactive

There will be far greater onus on directors, business owners and management. They will be expected to exercise proactive due diligence to ensure their business is meeting stringent health and safety obligations. Failure to comply will result in significantly tougher penalties.

For construction businesses, it means that the lead of the contracting chain – the construction firm – needs to ensure that principal contractors, contractors and subcontractors are properly selected and managed via the contract and other appropriate instru-ments, such as compliance guides.

They must ensure as much as reasonably practicable the health and safety of not only employees but also contractors who are engaged or caused to be engaged.

It will be necessary to regularly assess, record and review hazards – that is, any potential or actual source of harm whether the process, the location, a situation, equipment or a person’s behaviour.

Departments/Business matters

By Julie Rowlands, Manager, Staples Rodway Human Resources, Taranaki

Building a healthy and safe workplace

Business owners need to get savvy about health and safety following moves by the government to reduce workplace fatality and serious

injury rates by 25% by 2020.

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Questions to ask

To develop your health and safety strategies, you need to think about the culture of your business and the way things are done:

● Do you have a strong and honest reporting culture? ● Do you care about ensuring your workers safety? Do they care? ● Are all employees committed to their own safe practices and will they report unsafe acts?

● Is there clear engagement and participation? ● Is there effective risk and hazard management? ● Is there strong, visible leadership in health and safety in the business? ● Do identified safety improvements get attention? ● Are incidents investigated rigorously and are actions taken? ● Are there measurable goals? ● Do you have the right people with the authority, the right skills and motivation for managing health and safety?

Putting staff through health and safety training or merely having a good health and safety system will not be enough. An employer

needs to be seen to be giving employees reasonable opportunities to develop and improve health and safety at work.

Things to do

Now is the time to start building a mature safety culture: ● Review and assess the current culture against your commitment to health and safety.

● Build and develop your company culture to reflect the vision and values of the business, including the drive for a strong safety culture.

● Develop skilled and motivated leaders who reinforce a strong health and safety culture and deliver against key performance indicators.

● Build mutual and individual accountability within the business. ● Fully integrate health and safety management systems into the business.

● Understand the legislation and its impact on your business. For more This is intended as general advice only. Contact your advisor or

Staples Rodway if you have any specific questions about these topics.