Mike Bennetts

Safety Leadership with Mike Bennetts CEO Z Energy

Communicating Safety and Gen Y with Eva Maria

Asbestos

How Large Businesses Will Improve Contractor Safety Performance  Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on itunes. [leadplayer_vid id=”51D92CE1249E2″]  0:51 What is the Business Leaders’ Health and Safety Forum? 1:47  Why was it established? 5:34 How will this Supply Chain project affect me? 12:10 What are the possible measures?  Quotable: “How CEO aim to influence other businesses through their supply chain” – Tony –  Click to Tweet “Improved safety performance will happen when contract work is treated as an extension of their business”- Tony – Click to Tweet This One  Tony: Gidday listeners, Tony Collins back with Julian Hughes who is the Executive Director of the Business Leaders’ Health and Safety Forum. I’ll ask Julian about the Forum in a moment and I’m sure he’ll correct me if I’m wrong. But basically to my mind the Forums is about working with CEO of major a business to influence and improve Health and Safety performance. And today we’ll talk about how this could affect you and your business. So, welcome Julian. Julian: Thank you, good to be here. Tony: So can you tell me a little bit about the Forum to kick this off. Julian: Well you’re right, the Forum was established with the intention of improving safety performance by engaging and improving the effectiveness of Senior leaders. And when you think of leaders in a business, the most important id the CEO or the equivalent whatever that role may be for a NZ based business. I guess our members are made up CEO, Managers Directors, General Managers and it really depends upon the company structure. But that’s essentially the idea, is that senior leaders have a huge role to play. They set the tone and can create positive safety cultures and we felt we could provide a mechanism and an avenue for them to improve their safety knowledge and understanding so that they can become more effective safety leaders themselves. Tony: Great, so why was the forum established. Julian: That’s an interesting idea in where did it come from. It’s origins were in 2009, and to give credit to the Ex-Minister of Labour, the Honorable Kate Wilkonson, she lead a number of discussion with CEO in that year, and essentially asked them a question, or two questions. One is our safety performance acceptable, and the short answer is no it’s not. And do CEO of New Zealand businesses have a role to play in improving that. And there were a couple of forums and meetings and at the end of it there was enough momentum and enough CEO who said of course we have a role to play. We’re not sure quite what that looks like but we have a role to play in improving that. So cut forward a year to June 2010 and the forum was officially launched. It was launched by the Prime Minister in Auckland and about 100 CEO of New Zealand businesses signed up to the forum’s pledge. So essentially they came together with a common vision of what they believe their role should be in leading Health and Safety in their businesses. Tony: And fast forward to 2013, I know there are a number of different work streams and projects underway, and the one I thought most relevant to talk about today is how the forum, which represents a number of large businesses, aim to encourage contractor or subcontractor to improve H&amp;S through the supply chain. Can you explain a little about this supply chain project and actually, what does the supply chain mean? Julian: I’ll just rewind slightly before I answer that. The key change that happened between 2010 and 2013 was that the forum set itself up as a membership organsiation, so we’re now a not-for-profit incorporated society and we have approximately 140 CEO who are our members. And that provides a slight change from 2010 where we have a revenue stream, which means we can now do some work. The work we are doing is some of those projects you described. So then to talk about the supply chain project. I guess the idea of the forum was to improve safety across the New Zealand economy. Not just for the forum members who sign up but there was a greater good concept, could CEO influence others to improve health and safety performance right across our economy. And there are a couple of ways we thought of how we can actually do that. One is to get every business leader in the country to sign up and I think we’d still welcome that approach. But we actually thought the way the forum could be most influential would be how could forum members influence other businesses through their supply chain.  So we signed up or we approach leaders from large New Zealand businesses, as opposed to small to medium sized, or those businesses that have a particular high risk. And then we said for you, you often interact with a lot of other companies, to manage your business. In some cases you purchase good and services or contract people in to work in some areas of your business. In some areas you actually contract out large chunks of it. So one of the concerns in that whole arrangement is if you contract out a piece of work or you bring contractors in and you delegate health and safety responsibilities, the concern is if those companies don’t share your values, views and approach to health and safety, then you won’t have great performance. So our view was could we get CEO to understand what it is, what are the things they need to do to ensure safety performance is not only important to their business but also important to all the business they interact with. So we use that concept of the supply chain. We’re using it in a reasonably broad sense but in many ways what we are talking about is the health and safety performance between a business and it’s contractors. Tony: What that means then if I am a business or a contractor supplying goods and services to a larger business. What does that mean for me? Julian: Well lots of businesses will already be experiencing what we are trying to promote in this space, and that is a company purchasing good and services puts in place an expectation of what they expect that company to be able to provide and they’ll often do that in the negotiation phase of tendering for a piece of work. They’ll potentially have requirements that companies will have to come up to. But there is also a range of other steps that we now know from research and experience that is required to ensure that it’s not only assessed prior to awarding the contract but there is an ongoing assessment and engagement with the contractor, to make sure the company contracting the work out is confident they company is maintaining the deal, basically, what they set up to start with.  And that is kind of a relatively easy concept to understand and there are some intricacies within that relationship and how you do that, which are not always easy to do. Clearly there is an understanding that they are separate companies and that there is a contractual arrangement between those companies and so there needs to be a level of understanding, particularly at the leadership level about how that relationship works. So what we want to uncover in our project is what are the leadership behaviours and leadership values that promote the best performance within that contracting environment. And we think there are some really fantastic examples out there that is happening and what we’re really trying to do in uncover those and then find out how people are going and then promote others to adopt those practices. Sort of like here’s the best practice model that we know works out there in the business and recommend you having a look at this model. Is that the sort of approach? Julian: Absolutely. I don’t think the forum will be getting into the approach of requiring businesses to do certain things, that are not the approach we’ve taken in the past. We’re really trying to expose what good practice looks like and then encourage people to pull down that and then adopt to make best sense for themselves. So for small to medium businesses and I guess I’ll make the point they are not going to see the forum suddenly changing anything in particular but there may be some changes in that relationship if they are working with members of the forum who adopt the approach the forum takes. But it will soon be in the relationship that they are used to. So you’re not going to suddenly have a third party or anyone playing any role in that process. But the forum will be trying to uncover best practice. And there are some really good examples and recently the forum hosted Lawrence Waterman who was in New Zealand for a range of engagements. We hosted him at a session at Sky City to talk particularly… Tony: Sorry, who is Lawrence Waterman? Julian: Lawrence was the head of Health and Safety for the Olympic Delivery Authority and they were the organisaiton charged I guess delivering the Olympic Games facilities in London.  And they’ve got a fantastic story to tell. It was the first Olympic build in modern times when no one was killed, in the construction phase. And they had an injury rate that was lower than the UK industry level. So they were working in a high risk, high-pressure environment and they did not kill anyone and they had a lower injury rate than the rest of the economy. Tony: I’ve heard Lawrence speak about that project and I think it was 300 million pounds of building per month, at the peak, and I love the stories that underline how that actually happened and how it was not just fatalities but a real commitment at the leadership level not to have any serious harm accidents as well. [listen to the serious harm legal interview] Julian: Well I think that’s the story and without trying to paraphrase Lawrence’s story and that’s one of the reasons we wanted to understand what they did because we’d heard this great story that was unfolding. And to cut to our example, Christchurch Rebuild in many ways has some parallels. It’s a very different type of project and arguably much more complex, but there are some principles that we thought the London build uncovered which were equally relevant in the Christchurch Rebuild and then clearly equally relevant in any contractual arrangement. And what was interesting about what Lawrence said was the leadership that was required to deliver that result was strong from day one and right the way the project. But it wasn’t just about the Directors or the CEO of the authority running around saying that they were committed to safety. It actually translated into real tangible things they did on a day to day to basis. So, we think there is plenty to learn from that and that’s why we hosted him and have got a project team and are looking at those things that happened in London, what’s potentially happening in Christchurch and what else the research and experience tells us works. Tony: Sure, so with this commitment of Directors and CEO to influencing the supply chain, the aim is to increase the performance of those contractors or businesses that potentially are supplying or working for them. Julian: Absolutely, so it’s to say we believe the mindset. If a business leader has a mindset that the work they contract out is an extension of their business, then we think suddenly we are in the right frame of mind, we are in the ball park. So, how would that translate, what would that mean? Well it might mean they measure safety performance of their own business, but they use the same measures to measure the safety performance of their contractors. And that’s not always the case. In some cases it is but it is not always the case. So, it’s not just about saying I’d like them to be good, there are some tangible things you might start doing. You’ll be asking them to report on those things. You might have ongoing engagement meetings with them, at a senior level, asking how they’re going, what they are doing. Anyhow, we’ve seen some fantastic examples of this. Mike Bennett’s who is the CEO of Z Energy hosted a peer learning event for the forum late last year. And one of the key stories was when they were rebranding from the Shell Service stations to the Z service stations. There was a period where they didn’t have any incidents, they didn’t have any injury but there was a period where they were concerned about how the contractors were working at height in a couple of projects that were going on. And because of those concerns Mike actually closed the contract down for a period of time until he was satisfied they could do that [satisfy concerns]. And that was a tough call; they were under lots of pressure to deliver in a certain timeframe. Stopping a project is never helpful to anyone, generally, but what that shows you is safety is absolutely, when talking about top priority, it was the top priority and as the leader of Z Energy he wanted to make sure he could do that work safely and the contractors are working safely. So that sends a very strong message and when they were satisfied things were back on track, the project started. And I don’t know the detail but by all accounts it sounds like they delivered on time and on budget and that the impact suddenly derail the project. In fact, it sent pretty strong messages about what was expected. Tony: Is there a timeline to the launch of this project or a gradual emphasis and agreement across Directors and CEO to aim to affect the supply chain. Julian: Well, we want to deliver things and we have delivered stuff to date. So we’ve delivered around a couple of other projects around what we believe safety leadership is and we’ve got assessment tolls around that. We’re in the process of developing a safety leadership development process for CEO so, we’re about doing stuff, nit just sitting around and talking about it. But I guess to answer your question, we see this as a rolling set of deliverables. It’s not going to be all suddenly delivered on one day. I think what we’ll try and establish up front is what are the key principles that CEO need to aspire to or have to ensure that health and safety performances are emphasized through their supply chain. We’ll then attempt to engage CEO to ensure that they are espousing to those principles or have those principles in place. We will then try and help them try to understand how they can deliver on those things. But ultimately where we won’t be, I should be careful, but my feeling is we won’t be saying, this is the way you have to do it. And everyone follows the same process. I don’t think that’s what we’re doing because I don’t think – I think that could be counter productive. You know, different businesses are at different stages, they have different ways of doing things, so what we want them to do is take a principled approach but then apply it within their business and how that makes best sense to them and their suppliers. So, I hope that answers your question and I think we’ve made some good progress to date. We are a little bit behind where we want to be. And I think we will be having a rolling set of deliverable actions between now and the middle of 2014. Tony: Is there anything else that you’d like to add on this or have I not asked you anything you’d like to add to the conversation? Julian: Just the fact that the forum presents a fantastic opportunity for New Zealand to improve Health and Safety performance but it is, at this stage, an opportunity. And we need to embrace it and do what we can with it. It certainly provides that opportunity for CEO to engage with other who are facing very similar challenges, share their knowledge, understand how they can improve. And how they can be part of the health and safety conversation. One of the concerns I guess I’ve had, as someone who has worked in this area for some time, is that the people that can often make the most or have the most influence about health and safety performance haven’t always actually been the people involved in the conversation and influencing outcomes. And so we think we have a role to play there as well. And we are particularly proud our involvement with the taskforce review and the fact that our Chair, Rob Jager was asked to Chair the Taskforce Review, and so suddenly we had a large significant review, often referred to as a once in a generation review of our health and safety system, which had input from people who are dealing with these issues on a daily basis. And who are providing strong leadership within their business. So, we think there is a role we can play in that space as well. But we are very encouraged by where we are so far, and like many things there is a long way for us to go. Tony: And Julian if people want to find out more about the Business Leader’s Health and Safety Forum, how do they go about doing that? Julian: We have a website www.zeroharm.org.nz so feel free to check that out. And feel free to give me a call or contact me on my email. My email address and phone number is on the website. So more then happy to chat with anyone about what we’re doing. I said at the start that the target audience was large or high-risk businesses. We don’t actually have a criteria. If there is someone out there who is running a business and wants to understand how they can get better, or are leading a business sorry and wants to get better, absolutely give me a call. There is no reason why you can’t be part of the forum. We have some of New Zealand’s largest businesses engaged and we have even have some reasonably smaller businesses involved as well. So there are no criteria, give us a call, we’ll welcome all comers at this stage. Tony: Great, thank you Julian for coming in and sharing your knowledge and might catch up with you another time. Julian: Thanks very much Tony, good to be here. Cheers   PS Sign Up to the newsletter to get latest updates when they are released.

<h1>How Large Businesses Will Improve Contractor Safety Performance</h1> <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/nz/podcast/safety-hub-workplace-health/id642104276" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank"></a> Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/nz/podcast/safety-hub-workplace-health/id642104276" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">itunes</a>. [leadplayer_vid id=”51D92CE1249E2″] <ul> <li>0:51 What is the Business Leaders’ Health and Safety Forum?</li> <li>1:47  Why was it established?</li> <li>5:34 How will this Supply Chain project affect me?</li> <li>12:10 What are the possible measures?</li> </ul> Quotable: “How CEO aim to influence other businesses through their supply chain” – Tony –  <a href="http://clicktotweet.com/j04xI" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Click to Tweet</a> “Improved safety performance will happen when contract work is treated as an extension of their business”- Tony – <a href="http://clicktotweet.com/0vA2p" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Click to Tweet This One</a> <a href="https://safetyhub.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Julian-Hughes.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> Tony: Gidday listeners, Tony Collins back with Julian Hughes who is the Executive Director of the Business Leaders’ Health and Safety Forum. I’ll ask Julian about the Forum in a moment and I’m sure he’ll correct me if I’m wrong. But basically to my mind the Forums is about working with CEO of major a business to influence and improve Health and Safety performance. And today we’ll talk about how this could affect you and your business. So, welcome Julian. Julian: Thank you, good to be here. Tony: So can you tell me a little bit about the Forum to kick this off. Julian: Well you’re right, the Forum was established with the intention of improving safety performance by engaging and improving the effectiveness of Senior leaders. And when you think of leaders in a business, the most important id the CEO or the equivalent whatever that role may be for a NZ based business. I guess our members are made up CEO, Managers Directors, General Managers and it really depends upon the company structure. But that’s essentially the idea, is that senior leaders have a huge role to play. They set the tone and can create positive safety cultures and we felt we could provide a mechanism and an avenue for them to improve their safety knowledge and understanding so that they can become more effective safety leaders themselves. Tony: Great, so why was the forum established. Julian: That’s an interesting idea in where did it come from. It’s origins were in 2009, and to give credit to the Ex-Minister of Labour, the Honorable Kate Wilkonson, she lead a number of discussion with CEO in that year, and essentially asked them a question, or two questions. One is our safety performance acceptable, and the short answer is no it’s not. And do CEO of New Zealand businesses have a role to play in improving that. And there were a couple of forums and meetings and at the end of it there was enough momentum and enough CEO who said of course we have a role to play. We’re not sure quite what that looks like but we have a role to play in improving that. So cut forward a year to June 2010 and the forum was officially launched. It was launched by the Prime Minister in Auckland and about 100 CEO of New Zealand businesses signed up to the forum’s pledge. So essentially they came together with a common vision of what they believe their role should be in leading Health and Safety in their businesses. Tony: And fast forward to 2013, I know there are a number of different work streams and projects underway, and the one I thought most relevant to talk about today is how the forum, which represents a number of large businesses, aim to encourage contractor or subcontractor to improve H&amp;S through the supply chain. Can you explain a little about this supply chain project and actually, what does the supply chain mean? Julian: I’ll just rewind slightly before I answer that. The key change that happened between 2010 and 2013 was that the forum set itself up as a membership organsiation, so we’re now a not-for-profit incorporated society and we have approximately 140 CEO who are our members. And that provides a slight change from 2010 where we have a revenue stream, which means we can now do some work. The work we are doing is some of those projects you described. So then to talk about the supply chain project. I guess the idea of the forum was to improve safety across the New Zealand economy. Not just for the forum members who sign up but there was a greater good concept, could CEO influence others to improve health and safety performance right across our economy. And there are a couple of ways we thought of how we can actually do that. One is to get every business leader in the country to sign up and I think we’d still welcome that approach. But we actually thought the way the forum could be most influential would be how could forum members influence other businesses through their supply chain.  So we signed up or we approach leaders from large New Zealand businesses, as opposed to small to medium sized, or those businesses that have a particular high risk. And then we said for you, you often interact with a lot of other companies, to manage your business. In some cases you purchase good and services or contract people in to work in some areas of your business. In some areas you actually contract out large chunks of it. So one of the concerns in that whole arrangement is if you contract out a piece of work or you bring contractors in and you delegate health and safety responsibilities, the concern is if those companies don’t share your values, views and approach to health and safety, then you won’t have great performance. So our view was could we get CEO to understand what it is, what are the things they need to do to ensure safety performance is not only important to their business but also important to all the business they interact with. So we use that concept of the supply chain. We’re using it in a reasonably broad sense but in many ways what we are talking about is the health and safety performance between a business and it’s contractors. Tony: What that means then if I am a business or a contractor supplying goods and services to a larger business. What does that mean for me? Julian: Well lots of businesses will already be experiencing what we are trying to promote in this space, and that is a company purchasing good and services puts in place an expectation of what they expect that company to be able to provide and they’ll often do that in the negotiation phase of tendering for a piece of work. They’ll potentially have requirements that companies will have to come up to. But there is also a range of other steps that we now know from research and experience that is required to ensure that it’s not only assessed prior to awarding the contract but there is an ongoing assessment and engagement with the contractor, to make sure the company contracting the work out is confident they company is maintaining the deal, basically, what they set up to start with.  And that is kind of a relatively easy concept to understand and there are some intricacies within that relationship and how you do that, which are not always easy to do. Clearly there is an understanding that they are separate companies and that there is a contractual arrangement between those companies and so there needs to be a level of understanding, particularly at the leadership level about how that relationship works. So what we want to uncover in our project is what are the leadership behaviours and leadership values that promote the best performance within that contracting environment. And we think there are some really fantastic examples out there that is happening and what we’re really trying to do in uncover those and then find out how people are going and then promote others to adopt those practices. Sort of like here’s the best practice model that we know works out there in the business and recommend you having a look at this model. Is that the sort of approach? Julian: Absolutely. I don’t think the forum will be getting into the approach of requiring businesses to do certain things, that are not the approach we’ve taken in the past. We’re really trying to expose what good practice looks like and then encourage people to pull down that and then adopt to make best sense for themselves. So for small to medium businesses and I guess I’ll make the point they are not going to see the forum suddenly changing anything in particular but there may be some changes in that relationship if they are working with members of the forum who adopt the approach the forum takes. But it will soon be in the relationship that they are used to. So you’re not going to suddenly have a third party or anyone playing any role in that process. But the forum will be trying to uncover best practice. And there are some really good examples and recently the forum hosted Lawrence Waterman who was in New Zealand for a range of engagements. We hosted him at a session at Sky City to talk particularly… Tony: Sorry, who is Lawrence Waterman? Julian: Lawrence was the head of Health and Safety for the Olympic Delivery Authority and they were the organisaiton charged I guess delivering the Olympic Games facilities in London.  And they’ve got a fantastic story to tell. It was the first Olympic build in modern times when no one was killed, in the construction phase. And they had an injury rate that was lower than the UK industry level. So they were working in a high risk, high-pressure environment and they did not kill anyone and they had a lower injury rate than the rest of the economy. Tony: I’ve heard Lawrence speak about that project and I think it was 300 million pounds of building per month, at the peak, and I love the stories that underline how that actually happened and how it was not just fatalities but a real commitment at the leadership level not to have any serious harm accidents as well. [listen to the <a href="https://safetyhub.co.nz/legislation/accident-investigation-and-critical-legal-advice/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">serious harm legal interview</a>] Julian: Well I think that’s the story and without trying to paraphrase Lawrence’s story and that’s one of the reasons we wanted to understand what they did because we’d heard this great story that was unfolding. And to cut to our example, Christchurch Rebuild in many ways has some parallels. It’s a very different type of project and arguably much more complex, but there are some principles that we thought the London build uncovered which were equally relevant in the Christchurch Rebuild and then clearly equally relevant in any contractual arrangement. And what was interesting about what Lawrence said was the leadership that was required to deliver that result was strong from day one and right the way the project. But it wasn’t just about the Directors or the CEO of the authority running around saying that they were committed to safety. It actually translated into real tangible things they did on a day to day to basis. So, we think there is plenty to learn from that and that’s why we hosted him and have got a project team and are looking at those things that happened in London, what’s potentially happening in Christchurch and what else the research and experience tells us works. Tony: Sure, so with this commitment of Directors and CEO to influencing the supply chain, the aim is to increase the performance of those contractors or businesses that potentially are supplying or working for them. Julian: Absolutely, so it’s to say we believe the mindset. If a business leader has a mindset that the work they contract out is an extension of their business, then we think suddenly we are in the right frame of mind, we are in the ball park. So, how would that translate, what would that mean? Well it might mean they measure safety performance of their own business, but they use the same measures to measure the safety performance of their contractors. And that’s not always the case. In some cases it is but it is not always the case. So, it’s not just about saying I’d like them to be good, there are some tangible things you might start doing. You’ll be asking them to report on those things. You might have ongoing engagement meetings with them, at a senior level, asking how they’re going, what they are doing. Anyhow, we’ve seen some fantastic examples of this. Mike Bennett’s who is the CEO of Z Energy hosted a peer learning event for the forum late last year. And one of the key stories was when they were rebranding from the Shell Service stations to the Z service stations. There was a period where they didn’t have any incidents, they didn’t have any injury but there was a period where they were concerned about how the contractors were working at height in a couple of projects that were going on. And because of those concerns Mike actually closed the contract down for a period of time until he was satisfied they could do that [satisfy concerns]. And that was a tough call; they were under lots of pressure to deliver in a certain timeframe. Stopping a project is never helpful to anyone, generally, but what that shows you is safety is absolutely, when talking about top priority, it was the top priority and as the leader of Z Energy he wanted to make sure he could do that work safely and the contractors are working safely. So that sends a very strong message and when they were satisfied things were back on track, the project started. And I don’t know the detail but by all accounts it sounds like they delivered on time and on budget and that the impact suddenly derail the project. In fact, it sent pretty strong messages about what was expected. Tony: Is there a timeline to the launch of this project or a gradual emphasis and agreement across Directors and CEO to aim to affect the supply chain. Julian: Well, we want to deliver things and we have delivered stuff to date. So we’ve delivered around a couple of other projects around what we believe safety leadership is and we’ve got assessment tolls around that. We’re in the process of developing a safety leadership development process for CEO so, we’re about doing stuff, nit just sitting around and talking about it. But I guess to answer your question, we see this as a rolling set of deliverables. It’s not going to be all suddenly delivered on one day. I think what we’ll try and establish up front is what are the key principles that CEO need to aspire to or have to ensure that health and safety performances are emphasized through their supply chain. We’ll then attempt to engage CEO to ensure that they are espousing to those principles or have those principles in place. We will then try and help them try to understand how they can deliver on those things. But ultimately where we won’t be, I should be careful, but my feeling is we won’t be saying, this is the way you have to do it. And everyone follows the same process. I don’t think that’s what we’re doing because I don’t think – I think that could be counter productive. You know, different businesses are at different stages, they have different ways of doing things, so what we want them to do is take a principled approach but then apply it within their business and how that makes best sense to them and their suppliers. So, I hope that answers your question and I think we’ve made some good progress to date. We are a little bit behind where we want to be. And I think we will be having a rolling set of deliverable actions between now and the middle of 2014. Tony: Is there anything else that you’d like to add on this or have I not asked you anything you’d like to add to the conversation? Julian: Just the fact that the forum presents a fantastic opportunity for New Zealand to improve Health and Safety performance but it is, at this stage, an opportunity. And we need to embrace it and do what we can with it. It certainly provides that opportunity for CEO to engage with other who are facing very similar challenges, share their knowledge, understand how they can improve. And how they can be part of the health and safety conversation. One of the concerns I guess I’ve had, as someone who has worked in this area for some time, is that the people that can often make the most or have the most influence about health and safety performance haven’t always actually been the people involved in the conversation and influencing outcomes. And so we think we have a role to play there as well. And we are particularly proud our involvement with the taskforce review and the fact that our Chair, Rob Jager was asked to Chair the Taskforce Review, and so suddenly we had a large significant review, often referred to as a once in a generation review of our health and safety system, which had input from people who are dealing with these issues on a daily basis. And who are providing strong leadership within their business. So, we think there is a role we can play in that space as well. But we are very encouraged by where we are so far, and like many things there is a long way for us to go. Tony: And Julian if people want to find out more about the Business Leader’s Health and Safety Forum, how do they go about doing that? Julian: We have a website <a href="http://www.zeroharm.org.nz" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.zeroharm.org.nz</a> so feel free to check that out. And feel free to give me a call or contact me on my email. My email address and phone number is on the website. So more then happy to chat with anyone about what we’re doing. I said at the start that the target audience was large or high-risk businesses. We don’t actually have a criteria. If there is someone out there who is running a business and wants to understand how they can get better, or are leading a business sorry and wants to get better, absolutely give me a call. There is no reason why you can’t be part of the forum. We have some of New Zealand’s largest businesses engaged and we have even have some reasonably smaller businesses involved as well. So there are no criteria, give us a call, we’ll welcome all comers at this stage. Tony: Great, thank you Julian for coming in and sharing your knowledge and might catch up with you another time. Julian: Thanks very much Tony, good to be here. Cheers PS <a href="https://safetyhub.co.nz/free-safety-video-training2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Sign Up to the newsletter</a> to get latest updates when they are released.

CEO Plan To Measure Contractor Safety Performance

Accident Investigation and Critical Legal Advice

Hazardous Chemical and Biological Tool  Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on itunes. [leadplayer_vid id=”51C1820B8F5EB”]  0:21 The URL for the hazardous materials database 2:57 Benefits of this database  Quotables: “A great online database so you can work out what could be dangerous in your workplace and your home” – Tony – Click to Tweet If you’ve ever struggled with getting information about chemical or biological hazards, then I have found a great online database so you can work out what could be dangerous in your workplace and your home, and what to do about it. If you are listening to the podcast I recommend you follow along with the website, which is called hazmap.nlm.nih.gov This is a great tool because by just selecting a few icons, you can drill down to the chemical that you may have in your home or workplace, but don’t know how to manage. The orgnsitions that have put this together are credible and the links of chemicals and other diseases are based on scientific evidence. What that means is you get a lot of brain power in the background with an easy to easy interface. Let’s do an example, starting with the home page., and I’ll click on High Risk Jobs. On then select alphabetically or by job type. So I’ll pretend I have business in farming, and then select  [Farming, Fishing and Forestry Workers, All Others]. The description is pretty obvious in this case but for other jobs, there are more detailed descriptions. It’s important there is minimal confusion here as the information below relates to the work described in this description, so have a wick read of the description to make sure you are looking at the right task! Now we can scroll down and look at the type of tasks in the job – [Handle infected animal carcasses or placental tissues] And now we find we are exposed to a number of pathogens which causes a number of diseases. So what, let say we want to find out about preventing these, and starting with Anthrax. And in this case we find another link to a great website and everything you wanted to know about Anthrax. What I like about this database of links is that they are linked to credible sources of information, all form the one place. You don’t need to navigate through Google and get all the opinions etc around the world – a one stop shop for chemical and biological information. Thus will really help you confirm or put in place hazard management procedures based upon quality information. If you know of any other tools please share in the comments below, Cheers.

<h1>Hazardous Chemical and Biological Tool</h1> <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/nz/podcast/safety-hub-workplace-health/id642104276" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank"></a> Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/nz/podcast/safety-hub-workplace-health/id642104276" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">itunes</a>. [leadplayer_vid id=”51C1820B8F5EB”] <ul> <li>0:21 The URL for the hazardous materials database</li> <li>2:57 Benefits of this database</li> </ul> Quotables: “A great online database so you can work out what could be dangerous in your workplace and your home” – Tony – <a href="http://clicktotweet.com/z3_Y1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Click to Tweet</a> If you’ve ever struggled with getting information about chemical or biological hazards, then I have found a great online database so you can work out what could be dangerous in your workplace and your home, and what to do about it. If you are listening to the podcast I recommend you follow along with the website, which is called <a href="http://hazmap.nlm.nih.gov" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">hazmap.nlm.nih.gov</a> <a href="https://safetyhub.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Chemical-Hazard-and-gas-Mask.png" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a>This is a great tool because by just selecting a few icons, you can drill down to the chemical that you may have in your home or workplace, but don’t know how to manage. The orgnsitions that have put this together are credible and the links of chemicals and other diseases are based on scientific evidence. What that means is you get a lot of brain power in the background with an easy to easy interface. Let’s do an example, starting with the home page., and I’ll click on High Risk Jobs. On then select alphabetically or by job type. So I’ll pretend I have business in farming, and then select  [Farming, Fishing and Forestry Workers, All Others]. The description is pretty obvious in this case but for other jobs, there are more detailed descriptions. It’s important there is minimal confusion here as the information below relates to the work described in this description, so have a wick read of the description to make sure you are looking at the right task! Now we can scroll down and look at the type of tasks in the job – [Handle infected animal carcasses or placental tissues] And now we find we are exposed to a number of pathogens which causes a number of diseases. So what, let say we want to find out about preventing these, and starting with Anthrax. And in this case we find another link to a great website and everything you wanted to know about Anthrax. What I like about this database of links is that they are linked to credible sources of information, all form the one place. You don’t need to navigate through Google and get all the opinions etc around the world – a one stop shop for chemical and biological information. Thus will really help you confirm or put in place hazard management procedures based upon quality information. If you know of any other tools please share in the comments below, Cheers.

Hazardous Chemical and Biological Tool

Rachel Lehen

Fatigue Risk Management Solutions with Rachel Lehen  Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on itunes.   0:25 Who is Rachel Lehen? 0:58 Why do businesses need to worry about fatigue? 2:20 What is fatigue? Is it the same as sleepiness or stress? 4:16 What you should do to manage fatigue 6:37 Alcohol comparison to fatigue levels 7:50 Circadian Rhythm 8:45 How do you design the perfect roster? 14:03 Microsleeps 14:41 The only way to reduce fatigue and risk 16:51 Sleep Napping 17:38 Educate Senior Management 18:14 Pajama Sleep Management 18:50 Sleep Debt and the Bank Loan 19:34 Obstructive Sleep Apnea 21:20 Rachel Lehen’s contact details  Quotables: “…The difference between being tired and fatigue” – Tony – Click to Tweet “…Pajama Management for workplace fatigue” – Tony – Tweet Me Tony: Hi Listeners. Today I have Rachel Lehen on the show talking about fatigue in the workplace. I met Rachel years ago and when I was thinking about Fatigue in the workplace I immediately thought of Rachel because she is really passionate about health and wellness and very focused on fatigue and she understands business. So Rachel is a perfect fit to offer great advice in this area. So Rachel, how are you doing? Rachel: Hi Tony, I’m good thanks, how are you? Tony: All Good!  Why do businesses need to worry about Fatigue? Rachel: There are a couple of different angles you can approach when you are looking at fatigue as a risk in the workplace. In the first instance, under the Health and Safety Act fatigue has been identified as a risk that companies need to mitigate.  As far as their obligations are concerned it makes sense that they have a sold policy and procedures that everybody can follow to better mitigate that risk.  This is from a business point of view but what we are really more concerned about is the fact that when you have tired staff , you have an increased risk of accidents and incidents. We know that when people are tired the rate of absenteeism goes up or what they call presenteeism, which basically means they are physically there but really their productivity is low. So it makes sense to mitigate this and introduce some strategies so that we can have a higher level of performance and safety out of our staff. Tony: Ok. You mentioned a level of tired there and I know this is a common thought. Can you explain the difference between being tired and fatigue? Are they the same thing? Rachel: Fatigue is more than just sleepiness.  It would be normal for us to have varying levels of alertness over a period of time or sleepiness for lots of reasons such as there is a new baby in the household and you’re not getting enough sleep or you’ve just come back from a holiday etc. so daytime sleepiness is something that we all experience. Fatigue is an ongoing level of sleep deprivation. If somebody is working long extended hours or working nightshift where their opportunity for restorative sleep is reduced then they are fatigued. With fatigue you start getting all of these other health symptoms as well. So often is looks like depression or stress. Often fatigue and stress exacerbate each other so if you are fatigued then you get stressed out because of course you’re thinking I must get more sleep, I must get more sleep… Tony: There’s nothing worse is there! Rachel: Exactly and you start watching the clock and wake up every half an hour going I need to get up!  So this really affects your ability to get good sleep so fatigue is more than just being sleepy and this is where the real risk is in regards to employee safety. Tony: I’m trying to think from a listener’s point of view here and they may be thinking what do I need to do about managing fatigue in my workplace. Rachel: The first thing is for an employer to understand how fatigue is actually affecting their business.  Maybe they haven’t already had an opportunity to look into it or start measuring it and including it in any sort of incident reports. Fatigue is often under-recognised so really the first thing a business needs to do is start to create some awareness around it and then start to measure it. So put in measures to identify what fatigue may be costing their business. For example if someone falls asleep at the wheel and crashes their truck we want to be able to attribute what does that cost back to the business and what does it cost. So once we measures what is costing the business we can continually measure and monitor and work out what is working. A lot of times the fatigue is not even recognized as the underlying cause of an accident and blame inattention or environmental factors but it is all about human factors and how humans beings when tired make poor choices and that can lead to higher levels of distraction and inattention. Tony: You and I met when I was in the Air Force and were looking at fatigue and were looking at the US Air Force and they had some modeling software to help plan operations or flights but I found it difficult to explain how fatigue can really affect your output and a really good model that you can probably add to, was that if someone woke up at 8am and worked until 2am in the morning, they were operating at the equivalent of driving while being illegally drunk. Is that right? Rachel: Yes, that’s absolutely right and that if you have been awake for 17 hours you have an impairment level of a blood alcohol level of .08 and if you have ever been so tired that you do feel drunk you’ll find you start bumping into things, tripping over things or can’t speak clearly just from being really tired so it has the same level of impairment on the CNS and its such a big a problem as compared to sending guys out to work having just been to the pub for a few drinks. Tony: Now the thing is people wont start at 8 in the morning and work until 2 in the morning, I know some will, will still be affected by shift cycles and so on. Rachel: Yes, we have a thing called the circadian rhythm which as human beings is just how we operate so we have periods of the day where we are more alert than other times and essentially we should be awake during the daytime and asleep during the night time and this is how it has been since day dot really and our body stays in tune with the rise and fall of the sun. So, when we are working when we should be sleeping than we have a whole other ball game as our body is working against how we should be operations. Tony: Ye, but the fact is people are going to have to work against those dips so for someone designing a roster, what should they be doing? Rachel: Well yes, the thing is there is no perfect roster and if I could invent the perfect roster I would make a lot of money and this is where it comes to the individual being educated and aware of how their body feels given the work they are doing. In an ideal world we should not have someone working at nighttime but that’s not the reality of it so we need to monitor and determine what fatigue looks like in your business. There is software and predictive levels of fatigue so you can out in a schedule form 8a-2am or whatever and the algorithm and predict levels of fatigue based upon prior sleep but these programs do not take into account is that we are all human beings and my ability to cope with shiftwork is different from you individual dispositions and also how hydrated are we, are you getting good food, exercising, are they on mediation what else is going on with them. That’s why a company can’t just get a piece of software which creates a roster you also have to empower the individual to take better responsibility for managing themselves through the shift. And my belief it is in the employer’s best interest to provide the information and awareness because at the end of the day its going to be their staff that will perform better because they understand how their body is performing. Tony: Great, I really like that predictive type of approach to working out your alertness level than your fatigue level. It’s probably the saying the same thing but this thinking is for forecasting and allows you to make a change today to influence how you could be feeling and the risk that you are posing to the business in the future. And it’s really important the company policy wrapped around this too isn’t it? Rachel: Yes, and it’s really important for the person looking after the schedule or roster design is aware of fatigue and the affects on the body as well. It has to come form the top and everybody needs to be engaged in the process and it’s really easy to sit in the office and say we need we need to work this schedule because we need to get from A to B in this period of time and I understand that, but it’s best that the person creating the model is aware of the impact on their staff. Tony: I have my own experience because I designed a 24/7, 365 days per year roster, and originally there were 2 people assigned to work this roster and I argued we needed more! But that was when I was in the Military and we had different cultures. We had the Air Force culture, Navy and Army culture and at any one time one of us was working the 5-person roster. My background was as a pilot and they way we managed fatigue while flying was you were allowed to go and have a sleep. People probably don’t want to hear that but it was a technique to be alert because people want people to be alert when they need to be alert. So while working on this roster I would say to my peers I am going to be sleeping at night and I would bring in my roll-bag and sleeping bag. But for the guys from the Army in particular that was, form their cultural mindset, because from their mindset, I was sleeping at my post. And I understand why they thought that but it was a really different cultural mindset around working this roster. I could never convince them and they could never convince me so I would nap during the night and I would be relatively fresh in the morning and they would be falling asleep at 8 in the morning, but they stayed awake! Rachel: The thing about being fatigued is that they may have gone ‘I’m awake’ but their brains are taking micro-sleeps so their eyes could be open, you can look like you are awake but you are actually asleep and that’s where the risk comes in. So if you were at war, lets day, and you have all these guys having these micro sleeps and then suddenly they need to be alert and make great decisions, they are absolutely not able to. And they will put other people at risk as a result of not being able to make good decisions. Power napping is one of the key strategies for mitigating the risk of fatigue. There is no other way other than getting sleep to reduce your sleep debt. Lots of people will look at using other things like stimulants, caffeine and drugs and all of those things. Even those campaigns on the road over long weekends and how to stay alert and the driver-reviver stops are great, as they raise awareness, however they don’t provide an opportunity for people to have a quite space. They say have a coffee, walk around your car have a hot-dog, whatever that’s actually only delaying the affects of fatigue by about 20 minutes but the best thing you can do is take the power naps. I work with a number of companies who have power napping as part of their procedure.  One company in particular allow their truck divers to take a power nap whenever they need it and the only criteria is that they alert their manager that they have pulled off the road into a safe place. They know how to power nap – they get into the passenger seat, take the keys out of the ignition and they time it. That is they key – to have it for no more than 20 minutes. So these guys are educated on how to power nap and it is making a significant difference to their business. Another business I worked with, prior to integrating this strategy, was having 5 human related errors every night. Nothing blew up, nothing too outrageous but enough to have an affect. So we set up napping stations and a napping log about how they felt prior to and after the nap and they went from 5 errors to zero errors. This was over a night shift and some would even have a 90 minute nap, which is a full sleep cycle, and as long as it is managed, and it’s not somebody sneaking off, which is a risk in itself, but if it is a managed nap then this is a key strategy I can recommend. Tony: So all of a sudden we have a business benefit because you are more effective if you are not making errors because one day that error could cost a lot of money or hurt somebody and who knows where it could go. Rachel: Absolutely, if you look at some of the large global disasters like the Exon Valdez or the Challenger or other catastrophic incidences that are related back to fatigue and people making bad decisions. Tony: So what I’ve got then is education is key and it really needs to start at the top end within a business and they need to be convinced the business benefit. Not only in terms of financial but risk to people and their resource and why they need to manage fatigue. And then the culture and I gave the example around the Army culture, and I understand why that culture exists, which comes back to education as well. If they can be convinced and told why you need to manage fatigue, and maybe there will be an Eureka moment. Rachel: hey Winston Churchill won the war and he power napped. In fact, he would sometimes go to meetings in his pajamas. Tony: [laugh] So we are advocating pajama management? Rachel: Some of the greatest people of their time used to power nap. It is not a long-term strategy but for a short-term technique it is fantastic. Tony: I really like the idea of a bank in which you take out a loan. And in this case if you are not getting enough sleep, you owe it back and if you don’t pay it back you will pay it back in another way. Rachel: That’s a great analogy. Tony: OK, is there anything else you wanted to mention or put another way, what were you hoping I would not ask about fatigue? Rachel: [laugh] Well, I’ll tell you something interesting we’re discovered over the last few years of talking to people in our workshops. One of the biggest things identified is sleep disorder called Obstructive Sleep Apnea(OSA).  As we have been going around, particularly with the demographic we have been talking too, these particular people have more of a sedentary job with long irregular hours with a reduced ability to exercise and eat well, these poor guys have a higher risk of having this condition. This is supported by international research in this field. So one of the things we’re passionate about is creating some awareness in this area. We know in the commercial transport sector that at least 25% and probably closer to 40% of this market have Obstructive Sleep Apnea. When you have OSA is mean your daytime sleepiness is elevated and that is where we start seeing all these traffic accidents. People having micro sleeps at the wheel and having head on collisions is quite typically what would happen. We think that OSA is something that people really need to pay attention to. That is a key strategy that someone can implement into his or her annual health checks. It is no different then checking for blood pressure, cholesterol, cardiovascular, diabetes and all these other things, we need to start looking at sleep disorders as well. Tony: There is a lot there and if people want to get hold of you to get more advice on managing fatigue, how do they go about doing that? Rachel: We’d love to talk to anybody as you can probably tell I can talk about this all day long but we have our website www.frms.co.nz and my name is Rachel so, rachel@frms.co.nz all the details are on our website Tony: Thanks Rachel for coming in. Rachel: Thanks Tony for having me!

<h1>Fatigue Risk Management Solutions with Rachel Lehen</h1> <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/nz/podcast/safety-hub-workplace-health/id642104276" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank"></a> Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/nz/podcast/safety-hub-workplace-health/id642104276" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">itunes</a>. <a href="https://safetyhub.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Rachel-Lehen.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <ul> <li>0:25 Who is Rachel Lehen?</li> <li>0:58 Why do businesses need to worry about fatigue?</li> <li>2:20 What is fatigue? Is it the same as sleepiness or stress?</li> <li>4:16 What you should do to manage fatigue</li> <li>6:37 Alcohol comparison to fatigue levels</li> <li>7:50 Circadian Rhythm</li> <li>8:45 How do you design the perfect roster?</li> <li>14:03 Microsleeps</li> <li>14:41 The only way to reduce fatigue and risk</li> <li>16:51 Sleep Napping</li> <li>17:38 Educate Senior Management</li> <li>18:14 Pajama Sleep Management</li> <li>18:50 Sleep Debt and the Bank Loan</li> <li>19:34 Obstructive Sleep Apnea</li> <li>21:20 Rachel Lehen’s contact details</li> </ul> Quotables: “…The difference between being tired and fatigue” – Tony – <a href="http://clicktotweet.com/nZ2j0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Click to Tweet</a> “…Pajama Management for workplace fatigue” – Tony – <a href="http://clicktotweet.com/iek89" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Tweet Me</a> Tony: Hi Listeners. Today I have Rachel Lehen on the show talking about fatigue in the workplace. I met Rachel years ago and when I was thinking about Fatigue in the workplace I immediately thought of Rachel because she is really passionate about health and wellness and very focused on fatigue and she understands business. So Rachel is a perfect fit to offer great advice in this area. So Rachel, how are you doing? Rachel: Hi Tony, I’m good thanks, how are you? Tony: All Good!  Why do businesses need to worry about Fatigue? Rachel: There are a couple of different angles you can approach when you are looking at fatigue as a risk in the workplace. In the first instance, under the Health and Safety Act fatigue has been identified as a risk that companies need to mitigate.  As far as their obligations are concerned it makes sense that they have a sold policy and procedures that everybody can follow to better mitigate that risk.  This is from a business point of view but what we are really more concerned about is the fact that when you have tired staff , you have an increased risk of accidents and incidents. We know that when people are tired the rate of absenteeism goes up or what they call presenteeism, which basically means they are physically there but really their productivity is low. So it makes sense to mitigate this and introduce some strategies so that we can have a higher level of performance and safety out of our staff. Tony: Ok. You mentioned a level of tired there and I know this is a common thought. Can you explain the difference between being tired and fatigue? Are they the same thing? Rachel: Fatigue is more than just sleepiness.  It would be normal for us to have varying levels of alertness over a period of time or sleepiness for lots of reasons such as there is a new baby in the household and you’re not getting enough sleep or you’ve just come back from a holiday etc. so daytime sleepiness is something that we all experience. Fatigue is an ongoing level of sleep deprivation. If somebody is working long extended hours or working nightshift where their opportunity for restorative sleep is reduced then they are fatigued. With fatigue you start getting all of these other health symptoms as well. So often is looks like depression or stress. Often fatigue and stress exacerbate each other so if you are fatigued then you get stressed out because of course you’re thinking I must get more sleep, I must get more sleep… Tony: There’s nothing worse is there! Rachel: Exactly and you start watching the clock and wake up every half an hour going I need to get up!  So this really affects your ability to get good sleep so fatigue is more than just being sleepy and this is where the real risk is in regards to employee safety. Tony: I’m trying to think from a listener’s point of view here and they may be thinking what do I need to do about managing fatigue in my workplace. Rachel: The first thing is for an employer to understand how fatigue is actually affecting their business.  Maybe they haven’t already had an opportunity to look into it or start measuring it and including it in any sort of incident reports. Fatigue is often under-recognised so really the first thing a business needs to do is start to create some awareness around it and then start to measure it. So put in measures to identify what fatigue may be costing their business. For example if someone falls asleep at the wheel and crashes their truck we want to be able to attribute what does that cost back to the business and what does it cost. So once we measures what is costing the business we can continually measure and monitor and work out what is working. A lot of times the fatigue is not even recognized as the underlying cause of an accident and blame inattention or environmental factors but it is all about human factors and how humans beings when tired make poor choices and that can lead to higher levels of distraction and inattention. Tony: You and I met when I was in the Air Force and were looking at fatigue and were looking at the US Air Force and they had some modeling software to help plan operations or flights but I found it difficult to explain how fatigue can really affect your output and a really good model that you can probably add to, was that if someone woke up at 8am and worked until 2am in the morning, they were operating at the equivalent of driving while being illegally drunk. Is that right? Rachel: Yes, that’s absolutely right and that if you have been awake for 17 hours you have an impairment level of a blood alcohol level of .08 and if you have ever been so tired that you do feel drunk you’ll find you start bumping into things, tripping over things or can’t speak clearly just from being really tired so it has the same level of impairment on the CNS and its such a big a problem as compared to sending guys out to work having just been to the pub for a few drinks. Tony: Now the thing is people wont start at 8 in the morning and work until 2 in the morning, I know some will, will still be affected by shift cycles and so on. Rachel: Yes, we have a thing called the circadian rhythm which as human beings is just how we operate so we have periods of the day where we are more alert than other times and essentially we should be awake during the daytime and asleep during the night time and this is how it has been since day dot really and our body stays in tune with the rise and fall of the sun. So, when we are working when we should be sleeping than we have a whole other ball game as our body is working against how we should be operations. Tony: Ye, but the fact is people are going to have to work against those dips so for someone designing a roster, what should they be doing? Rachel: Well yes, the thing is there is no perfect roster and if I could invent the perfect roster I would make a lot of money and this is where it comes to the individual being educated and aware of how their body feels given the work they are doing. In an ideal world we should not have someone working at nighttime but that’s not the reality of it so we need to monitor and determine what fatigue looks like in your business. There is software and predictive levels of fatigue so you can out in a schedule form 8a-2am or whatever and the algorithm and predict levels of fatigue based upon prior sleep but these programs do not take into account is that we are all human beings and my ability to cope with shiftwork is different from you individual dispositions and also how hydrated are we, are you getting good food, exercising, are they on mediation what else is going on with them. That’s why a company can’t just get a piece of software which creates a roster you also have to empower the individual to take better responsibility for managing themselves through the shift. And my belief it is in the employer’s best interest to provide the information and awareness because at the end of the day its going to be their staff that will perform better because they understand how their body is performing. Tony: Great, I really like that predictive type of approach to working out your alertness level than your fatigue level. It’s probably the saying the same thing but this thinking is for forecasting and allows you to make a change today to influence how you could be feeling and the risk that you are posing to the business in the future. And it’s really important the company policy wrapped around this too isn’t it? Rachel: Yes, and it’s really important for the person looking after the schedule or roster design is aware of fatigue and the affects on the body as well. It has to come form the top and everybody needs to be engaged in the process and it’s really easy to sit in the office and say we need we need to work this schedule because we need to get from A to B in this period of time and I understand that, but it’s best that the person creating the model is aware of the impact on their staff. Tony: I have my own experience because I designed a 24/7, 365 days per year roster, and originally there were 2 people assigned to work this roster and I argued we needed more! But that was when I was in the Military and we had different cultures. We had the Air Force culture, Navy and Army culture and at any one time one of us was working the 5-person roster. My background was as a pilot and they way we managed fatigue while flying was you were allowed to go and have a sleep. People probably don’t want to hear that but it was a technique to be alert because people want people to be alert when they need to be alert. So while working on this roster I would say to my peers I am going to be sleeping at night and I would bring in my roll-bag and sleeping bag. But for the guys from the Army in particular that was, form their cultural mindset, because from their mindset, I was sleeping at my post. And I understand why they thought that but it was a really different cultural mindset around working this roster. I could never convince them and they could never convince me so I would nap during the night and I would be relatively fresh in the morning and they would be falling asleep at 8 in the morning, but they stayed awake! Rachel: The thing about being fatigued is that they may have gone ‘I’m awake’ but their brains are taking micro-sleeps so their eyes could be open, you can look like you are awake but you are actually asleep and that’s where the risk comes in. So if you were at war, lets day, and you have all these guys having these micro sleeps and then suddenly they need to be alert and make great decisions, they are absolutely not able to. And they will put other people at risk as a result of not being able to make good decisions. Power napping is one of the key strategies for mitigating the risk of fatigue. There is no other way other than getting sleep to reduce your sleep debt. Lots of people will look at using other things like stimulants, caffeine and drugs and all of those things. Even those campaigns on the road over long weekends and how to stay alert and the driver-reviver stops are great, as they raise awareness, however they don’t provide an opportunity for people to have a quite space. They say have a coffee, walk around your car have a hot-dog, whatever that’s actually only delaying the affects of fatigue by about 20 minutes but the best thing you can do is take the power naps. I work with a number of companies who have power napping as part of their procedure.  One company in particular allow their truck divers to take a power nap whenever they need it and the only criteria is that they alert their manager that they have pulled off the road into a safe place. They know how to power nap – they get into the passenger seat, take the keys out of the ignition and they time it. That is they key – to have it for no more than 20 minutes. So these guys are educated on how to power nap and it is making a significant difference to their business. Another business I worked with, prior to integrating this strategy, was having 5 human related errors every night. Nothing blew up, nothing too outrageous but enough to have an affect. So we set up napping stations and a napping log about how they felt prior to and after the nap and they went from 5 errors to zero errors. This was over a night shift and some would even have a 90 minute nap, which is a full sleep cycle, and as long as it is managed, and it’s not somebody sneaking off, which is a risk in itself, but if it is a managed nap then this is a key strategy I can recommend. Tony: So all of a sudden we have a business benefit because you are more effective if you are not making errors because one day that error could cost a lot of money or hurt somebody and who knows where it could go. Rachel: Absolutely, if you look at some of the large global disasters like the Exon Valdez or the Challenger or other catastrophic incidences that are related back to fatigue and people making bad decisions. Tony: So what I’ve got then is education is key and it really needs to start at the top end within a business and they need to be convinced the business benefit. Not only in terms of financial but risk to people and their resource and why they need to manage fatigue. And then the culture and I gave the example around the Army culture, and I understand why that culture exists, which comes back to education as well. If they can be convinced and told why you need to manage fatigue, and maybe there will be an Eureka moment. Rachel: hey Winston Churchill won the war and he power napped. In fact, he would sometimes go to meetings in his pajamas. Tony: [laugh] So we are advocating pajama management? Rachel: Some of the greatest people of their time used to power nap. It is not a long-term strategy but for a short-term technique it is fantastic. Tony: I really like the idea of a bank in which you take out a loan. And in this case if you are not getting enough sleep, you owe it back and if you don’t pay it back you will pay it back in another way. Rachel: That’s a great analogy. Tony: OK, is there anything else you wanted to mention or put another way, what were you hoping I would not ask about fatigue? Rachel: [laugh] Well, I’ll tell you something interesting we’re discovered over the last few years of talking to people in our workshops. One of the biggest things identified is sleep disorder called Obstructive Sleep Apnea(OSA).  As we have been going around, particularly with the demographic we have been talking too, these particular people have more of a sedentary job with long irregular hours with a reduced ability to exercise and eat well, these poor guys have a higher risk of having this condition. This is supported by international research in this field. So one of the things we’re passionate about is creating some awareness in this area. We know in the commercial transport sector that at least 25% and probably closer to 40% of this market have Obstructive Sleep Apnea. When you have OSA is mean your daytime sleepiness is elevated and that is where we start seeing all these traffic accidents. People having micro sleeps at the wheel and having head on collisions is quite typically what would happen. We think that OSA is something that people really need to pay attention to. That is a key strategy that someone can implement into his or her annual health checks. It is no different then checking for blood pressure, cholesterol, cardiovascular, diabetes and all these other things, we need to start looking at sleep disorders as well. Tony: There is a lot there and if people want to get hold of you to get more advice on managing fatigue, how do they go about doing that? Rachel: We’d love to talk to anybody as you can probably tell I can talk about this all day long but we have our website <a href="http://www.frms.co.nz" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.frms.co.nz</a> and my name is Rachel so, rachel@frms.co.nz all the details are on <a href="http://www.frms.co.nz/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">our website</a> Tony: Thanks Rachel for coming in. Rachel: Thanks Tony for having me!

Fatigue Risk Management Solutions with Rachel Lehen

Worksafe New Zealand  Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on itunes. [leadplayer_vid id=”51B043A121897″]  0:14 Minister announces new agency name – Worksafe New Zealand 1:22 How will this affect your business? 2:20 How I can help you now  Quotables: “…Biggest NZ Workplace Safety Change in 21 Years, and what you can do about it” – Tony – Tweet-Share This One! “…Get latest updates on NZ safety and the new agency Worksafe New Zealand” – Tony – Click to Tweet Hi, Tony Collins with a quick update letting you know the new Government standalone H&amp;S agency has been named Worksafe New Zealand. At a recent national health and safety conference, the Minister announced the name of the new H&amp;S organisation – which will be called WorkSafe New Zealand. Now we’ve had the Pike River enquiry and a national taskforce on workplace Safety and one of the strong recommendations was to set up this new health and safety regulator. You will remember the old name of OSH, which was under the Department of Labour, which then moved into another organisaiton called MBIE. Workplace safety got buried in these Government organisaiton’s and we’ve seen that in the stats and how we have been performing poorly to overseas statistics. The name change signals a key change in NZ history around health and safety and Worksafe New Zealand will be up and running by the end of this year.  What does all this mean for you? There will be changes to the HSE Act and there is talk around moving away form a hazard management framework to a risk management framework. I need to be able to explain these changes and what this means for you. The regulator may have more powers, meaning they can move in and out of workplaces differently. Employees may or may not have the ability for more enforcement. My update today is to telegraph the changes to you and interpret them as they come. Worksafe New Zealand is not planned to open it’s doors until 01 Dec 2013, but the next 3-4months will be quite intensive and if you keep watching and listening, my aim is to help make the transition easier. And if you take action, you could gain a competitive advantage by being in front of these changes. All of which means you’ll also become more safe – which is my ultimate aim for you. This is Tony Collins and www.SafetyHub.co.nz

<h1>Worksafe New Zealand</h1> <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/nz/podcast/safety-hub-workplace-health/id642104276" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank"></a> Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/nz/podcast/safety-hub-workplace-health/id642104276" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">itunes</a>. [leadplayer_vid id=”51B043A121897″] <ul> <li>0:14 Minister announces new agency name – Worksafe New Zealand</li> <li>1:22 How will this affect your business?</li> <li>2:20 How I can help you now</li> </ul> Quotables: “…Biggest NZ Workplace Safety Change in 21 Years, and what you can do about it” – Tony – <a href="http://clicktotweet.com/zifPO" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Tweet-Share This One!</a> “…Get latest updates on NZ safety and the new agency Worksafe New Zealand” – Tony – <a href="http://clicktotweet.com/msvui" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Click to Tweet</a> Hi, Tony Collins with a quick update letting you know the new Government standalone H&amp;S agency has been named Worksafe New Zealand. At a recent national health and safety conference, the Minister announced the name of the new H&amp;S organisation – which will be called WorkSafe New Zealand. Now we’ve had the Pike River enquiry and a national taskforce on workplace Safety and one of the strong recommendations was to set up this new health and safety regulator. You will remember the old name of OSH, which was under the Department of Labour, which then moved into another organisaiton called MBIE. Workplace safety got buried in these Government organisaiton’s and we’ve seen that in the stats and how we have been performing poorly to overseas statistics. The name change signals a key change in NZ history around health and safety and Worksafe New Zealand will be up and running by the end of this year. <a href="https://safetyhub.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Worksafe-New-Zealand.png" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> What does all this mean for you? There will be changes to the HSE Act and there is talk around moving away form a hazard management framework to a risk management framework. I need to be able to explain these changes and what this means for you. The regulator may have more powers, meaning they can move in and out of workplaces differently. Employees may or may not have the ability for more enforcement. My update today is to telegraph the changes to you and interpret them as they come. Worksafe New Zealand is not planned to open it’s doors until 01 Dec 2013, but the next 3-4months will be quite intensive and if you <a href="https://safetyhub.co.nz/free-safety-video-training2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">keep watching and listening</a>, my aim is to help make the transition easier. And if you take action, you could gain a competitive advantage by being in front of these changes. All of which means you’ll also become more safe – which is my ultimate aim for you. This is Tony Collins and <a href="http://www.SafetyHub.co.nz" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.SafetyHub.co.nz</a>

Worksafe New Zealand

Running a Safety Management System  Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on itunes. [leadplayer_vid id=”51A5D1DAECB9D”]  0:19 A Safety Management System is… 0:38 An example of a working component 3:14 The Acid Test of a working Safety Management System  Quotables: “…the acid test for a working safety system” – Tony – Click to Tweet Tony Collins on Running your Safety Management System  People talk about a Workplace Safety Management System or SMS. There is nothing mystique about any safety system, and you don’t need the latest software to run a system. Even a word document can be your system. All we are trying to do is document a series of steps that lead to a certain outcome. The action, events and activities you plan and complete will turn your system on, and make it work. Here is an example. All system will have some reporting requirement. When a person is injured obviously you take care of the person and so on, as detailed in the free reporting chapter, but the point of reporting is that it leads to an investigation. You use the opportunity to learn from the incident. I have seen so many times companies that will fill in a reporting report, and th en the investigation will go something like ‘the widget has been replaced’. Why not have a step-by-step process, a series of questions or an investigation model that will help you learn from the event. I was talking to an overworked HR person and looking over a report, asking about the process. The person injured was not even asked for their thoughts on what went wrong. So I found this person and asked them what did they think the problem was. This guy knew how to fix the problem, and in fact had known for years. He was rather miffed at himself that he got caught out with a known problem and when I asked why hadn’t he already pointed out the problem, his response was ‘No one had ever asked’. So a reporting system could include a series of questions that force or remind you to talk to the employees. Good safety management is so often just better workplace management because if you create an environment where people will talk about safety, you will get a bunch of other business improvement ideas. So the acid test – could you hand over your safety system to a new employee and they would know what they need to do, without your there?

<h1>Running a Safety Management System</h1> <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/nz/podcast/safety-hub-workplace-health/id642104276" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank"></a> Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/nz/podcast/safety-hub-workplace-health/id642104276" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">itunes</a>. [leadplayer_vid id=”51A5D1DAECB9D”] <ul> <li>0:19 A Safety Management System is…</li> <li>0:38 An example of a working component</li> <li>3:14 The Acid Test of a working Safety Management System</li> </ul> Quotables: “…the acid test for a working safety system” – Tony – <a href="http://clicktotweet.com/X2Z0I" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Click to Tweet</a> Tony Collins on Running your Safety Management System People talk about a Workplace Safety Management System or SMS. There is nothing mystique about any safety system, and you don’t need the latest software to run a system. Even a word document can be your system. All we are trying to do is document a series of steps that lead to a certain outcome. The action, events and activities you plan and complete will turn your system on, and make it work. Here is an example. All system will have some reporting requirement. When a person is injured obviously you take care of the person and so on, as detailed in the free reporting chapter, but the point of reporting is that it leads to an investigation. You use the opportunity to learn from the incident. I have seen so many times companies that will fill in a reporting report, and th en the investigation will go something like ‘the widget has been replaced’. Why not have a step-by-step process, a series of questions or an investigation model that will help you learn from the event. I was talking to an overworked HR person and looking over a report, asking about the process. The person injured was not even asked for their thoughts on what went wrong. So I found this person and asked them what did they think the problem was. This guy knew how to fix the problem, and in fact had known for years. He was rather miffed at himself that he got caught out with a known problem and when I asked why hadn’t he already pointed out the problem, his response was ‘No one had ever asked’. So a reporting system could include a series of questions that force or remind you to talk to the employees. Good safety management is so often just better workplace management because if you create an environment where people will talk about safety, you will get a bunch of other business improvement ideas. So the acid test – could you hand over your safety system to a new employee and they would know what they need to do, without your there?

Running a Safety Management System

Noise Induced Hearing Loss  Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on itunes. [leadplayer_vid id=”51A348EE9E8A0″]  0:25 How to save money for real safety issues 0:44 When you don’t need to manage noise 2:33 Good rule to check for harmful noise levels 3:16 Actions in your workplace  Quotable: “…a quick test for a harmful level of workplace noise” – Tony – Click to Tweet Tony Collins here and today we’ll talk about Hearing loss or as it is also called, NIHL or Noise Induced Hearing Loss. As with anything that can hurt you in the workplace, including noise, we need to have a plan in place to minimise the chance of harm to you and your employees. I have found though that people can raise noise as a safety issue when it is not. For example, if there are machines running or background noise levels that are annoying, but are not actually harmful to the ears – you are not going to go deaf. The fact is, you do not need to mitigate the noise for safety reasons, if it is not harming people. The best example, I often see if people playing a radio loudly. It still may not be at a harmful level, but people make not like the music on the radio station. One person’s music is another person’s safety hazard. What you do have here is a management issue and need to work out how do I solve this so people can get on and enjoy their work. But how do you know how noisy it has to be before it becomes a problem and know if it will damage a persons hearing? I’m not going to give you the decibels ratings – you can look them up but they are only a number. The rule of thumb is if you have to shout from 1 meter in order to be heard, then you probably have a problem. Or any loud impact or banging noises, you may have a problem here. If you do have this situation, then you going to have to get in a technical expert who can analyze and document the noise amplitude and maybe even the frequency. So to put this into action, take a walk around your workplace using your ears as the first cut in identifying those areas that need further investigation. This is Tony Collins at Safetyhub.co.nz

<h1>Noise Induced Hearing Loss</h1> <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/nz/podcast/safety-hub-workplace-health/id642104276" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank"></a> Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/nz/podcast/safety-hub-workplace-health/id642104276" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">itunes</a>. [leadplayer_vid id=”51A348EE9E8A0″] <ul> <li>0:25 How to save money for real safety issues</li> <li>0:44 When you don’t need to manage noise</li> <li>2:33 Good rule to check for harmful noise levels</li> <li>3:16 Actions in your workplace</li> </ul> Quotable: “…a quick test for a harmful level of workplace noise” – Tony – <a href="http://clicktotweet.com/2nd3x" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Click to Tweet</a> Tony Collins here and today we’ll talk about Hearing loss or as it is also called, NIHL or Noise Induced Hearing Loss. As with anything that can hurt you in the workplace, including noise, we need to have a plan in place to minimise the chance of harm to you and your employees. I have found though that people can raise noise as a safety issue when it is not. For example, if there are machines running or background noise levels that are annoying, but are not actually harmful to the ears – you are not going to go deaf. <a href="https://safetyhub.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Noise-Induced-Hearing-Loss.png" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a>The fact is, you do not need to mitigate the noise for safety reasons, if it is not harming people. The best example, I often see if people playing a radio loudly. It still may not be at a harmful level, but people make not like the music on the radio station. One person’s music is another person’s safety hazard. What you do have here is a management issue and need to work out how do I solve this so people can get on and enjoy their work. But how do you know how noisy it has to be before it becomes a problem and know if it will damage a persons hearing? I’m not going to give you the decibels ratings – you can look them up but they are only a number. The rule of thumb is if you have to shout from 1 meter in order to be heard, then you probably have a problem. Or any loud impact or banging noises, you may have a problem here. If you do have this situation, then you going to have to get in a technical expert who can analyze and document the noise amplitude and maybe even the frequency. So to put this into action, take a walk around your workplace using your ears as the first cut in identifying those areas that need further investigation. This is Tony Collins at <a href="http://Safetyhub.co.nz" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Safetyhub.co.nz</a>

Noise Induced Hearing Loss

Solving workplace Heath and Safety problems with tips, interviews andadvice.

Leadership and Workplace Safety  Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on itunes. [leadplayer_vid id=”51A1B43970226″] Leadership in safety is critical to drive workplace safety improvement and we’ve talked previously about this under the blog called workplace safety model.  0:17 Who are the leaders? 0:37 The story of the senior manager 1:29 His Eureka moment! 2:55 What you can do  Quotables: “…leadership is key to improving safety” – Tony – Click to Tweet When we say leadership, of course I mean the people in the organisaiton that can drive change. Very few people have more influence than the supervisors. These people set the tone within the business. An supervisors will take their lead from Senior Management. I remember a story about a safety performance company in the US who were brought in to a large to assess the attitudes and culture within a large American business, and they noticed an unusual result that kept being reported about one senior leader. He was a high performer in all the safety performance areas relating to attitude, midset, communication, walking the talk and so on.  This was really unusual and the safety company had worked with many large organsiations like NASA and never saw these results. And eventually they came to interview this guy and asked him, why are you so focused on safety. What makes you outstanding? This manager replied for years he had been a plant manager and knew when he got a call at 2 in the morning, it was not good news. And if it was an incident with an employee, he’d act appropriately and do his best by that person. However, his twin daughters had just left home to go to University, when the phone rang at 2 in the morning. As a parent, his first thoughts while running for the phone were his daughters. What has happened to them. His was struck with relief when he found it was someone at his plant who had suffered a serious injury on the job. And he was struck with a massive conflict of feelings. Relief that his daughters were safe. Guilt that he was happy it was someone else injured. And then it hit him emotionally this injury just happened on his watch, and that other families were going to get that phone call he dreaded.  Right then there was a massive mind-set change.  He made a pledge to himself. For this injured person and from them on, he treated people as family despite the protests of PR or the Legal teams (remember we are talking about the US) and went out of his way to help them get back to work and fix the problems. So, how does that help you? If you’re trying to work out how to improve your workplace safety, then I’d start by talking to the head of the business, the director or CEO, and find out where they sit with respect to safety. Obviously not everyone will have the type of experience I just described, nor do you want those to happen in order to get your boss engaged. What I suggest you can do is book a time to chat with the boss of your company, and do a stock take. What is her knowledge and attitudes to safety; Does she manage for compliance reasons, increase profits or are their some emotional motivators. Know where you sit and what are her hot buttons because once she turns on and applies leadership to workplace safety, then you can focus on the other leaders and everything will become so much easier to lift the safety performance in your workplace.

<h1>Leadership and Workplace Safety</h1> <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/nz/podcast/safety-hub-workplace-health/id642104276" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank"></a> Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/nz/podcast/safety-hub-workplace-health/id642104276" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">itunes</a>. [leadplayer_vid id=”51A1B43970226″] Leadership in safety is critical to drive workplace safety improvement and we’ve talked previously about this under the blog called <a href="https://safetyhub.co.nz/culture/workplace-safety-model/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">workplace safety model</a>. <ul> <li>0:17 Who are the leaders?</li> <li>0:37 The story of the senior manager</li> <li>1:29 His Eureka moment!</li> <li>2:55 What you can do</li> </ul> Quotables: “…leadership is key to improving safety” – Tony – <a href="http://clicktotweet.com/0E31K" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Click to Tweet</a> When we say leadership, of course I mean the people in the organisaiton that can drive change. Very few people have more influence than the supervisors. These people set the tone within the business. An supervisors will take their lead from Senior Management. I remember a story about a safety performance company in the US who were brought in to a large to assess the attitudes and culture within a large American business, and they noticed an unusual result that kept being reported about one senior leader. He was a high performer in all the safety performance areas relating to attitude, midset, communication, walking the talk and so on.  This was really unusual and the safety company had worked with many large organsiations like NASA and never saw these results. And eventually they came to interview this guy and asked him, why are you so focused on safety. What makes you outstanding? This manager replied for years he had been a plant manager and knew when he got a call at 2 in the morning, it was not good news. And if it was an incident with an employee, he’d act appropriately and do his best by that person. However, his twin daughters had just left home to go to University, when the phone rang at 2 in the morning. As a parent, his first thoughts while running for the phone were his daughters. What has happened to them. His was struck with relief when he found it was someone at his plant who had suffered a serious injury on the job. And he was struck with a massive conflict of feelings. Relief that his daughters were safe. Guilt that he was happy it was someone else injured. And then it hit him emotionally this injury just happened on his watch, and that other families were going to get that phone call he dreaded. <a href="https://safetyhub.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Leadership-Multiplying-Workplace-Safety.png" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> Right then there was a massive mind-set change.  He made a pledge to himself. For this injured person and from them on, he treated people as family despite the protests of PR or the Legal teams (remember we are talking about the US) and went out of his way to help them get back to work and fix the problems. So, how does that help you? If you’re trying to work out how to improve your workplace safety, then I’d start by talking to the head of the business, the director or CEO, and find out where they sit with respect to safety. Obviously not everyone will have the type of experience I just described, nor do you want those to happen in order to get your boss engaged. What I suggest you can do is book a time to chat with the boss of your company, and do a stock take. What is her knowledge and attitudes to safety; Does she manage for compliance reasons, increase profits or are their some emotional motivators. Know where you sit and what are her hot buttons because once she turns on and applies leadership to workplace safety, then you can focus on the other leaders and everything will become so much easier to lift the safety performance in your workplace.

Leadership and Workplace Safety

Computer Workstation and Preventing Back Pain  Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on itunes. [leadplayer_vid id=”519DF942BB633″]  1:19 Why we need a plan 2:40 Types of harm from working at a computer workstation 3:18 Fixed Height Desk – start with the keyboard 3:45 Then adjusting the chair 4:16 Adjustable Desk – start with the chair 4:34 Now the monitor  Many office workers sit at a computer for most of the day and often people don’t know what they’re meant to do for their workers in order to protect them from harm, such as back pain or pain in the arms and so on. Even if you are not an office worker, you or you family will sit at a computer for gaming and so on so I’m going to talk about how to set up your workstation which will not only benefit you and your staff, but your family. In your workplace you may have people reporting pain or discomfort from working at their computer. Even if you don’t have people reporting yet, eventually this will happen. So we want to put a plan in place now to prevent this so that: 1. the injury is prevented 2. staff see by your actions that workplace safety and health is important In the 3 hazard management chapters in my free video training, I explain how we need to identify and manage the hazard, which is what we must do with computer related work. For example, it is know that harm from working at a computer can be caused by a number of factors, including the way your work is organized, the work environment eg light, noise, thermal confort. In addition, there is posture, furniture, the computer hardware and education and training. All of these factors, if not managed, can create 4 potential health issues including: Visual discomfort; Stress; Fatigue and Physical discomfort, pain or injury. These guidelines have more detail and I’d recommend if you’re building out your safety system to take a look at this guide and move the relevant content into your system. But right now, I’m going to take you through the basics of the correct posture by looking at your Desk, Chair and then computer equipment. Most people will have a fixed-height desk, so we’ll start with the keyboard. The recommendation is to start with the keyboard at about 10cm from the edge of the desk. That doesn’t work for me on this desk because I like the support of the desk. And that’s the key to all of this, we are taking some time out to that about your body positions and trying to get everything neutral and comfortable. The chair height should be adjusted now to ensure the arms are comformtable. Too low and your arms are sitting like T-rex, and you can feel the tension in the shoulders and there is a chance of pain developing around the knees. Too high, then there is a chance of pain in the hamstrings. If you need the chair high for your shoulders, then you may also need a foot-rest. If you have an adjustable desk then we actually start with the chair. Move the chair to the height which puts your feet flat, and your thighs roughly parallel to the ground or a little higher. Then move the desk height. Once again, too high and you may have pain in the shoulders, too low pain in the hands/forearms. The next major element is the monitor, which is easy. Roughly, the monitor should be about an arms length away and your eyes level with the top of the monitor, which puts your neck in a nice neutral position. If you have any yellow pages lying around they are really handy to serve as a monitor stand. Play around with these basic positions, and if you need more information this link will take you to a free interactive website which includes training on workstation setup. In fact, you could build this website into training for your staff. If you have a large organization of office workers, use the links I’ve provided to training one of your staff to do basic workstation setups and checks. This is Tony Colins form Safety Hub. Links Mentioned Detailed guidelines. Free interactive website. Get the free video training to help implement this into your hazard management plan.

<h1>Computer Workstation and Preventing Back Pain</h1> <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/nz/podcast/safety-hub-workplace-health/id642104276" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank"></a> Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/nz/podcast/safety-hub-workplace-health/id642104276" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">itunes</a>. [leadplayer_vid id=”519DF942BB633″] <ul> <li>1:19 Why we need a plan</li> <li>2:40 Types of harm from working at a computer workstation</li> <li>3:18 Fixed Height Desk – start with the keyboard</li> <li>3:45 Then adjusting the chair</li> <li>4:16 Adjustable Desk – start with the chair</li> <li>4:34 Now the monitor</li> </ul> Many office workers sit at a computer for most of the day and often people don’t know what they’re meant to do for their workers in order to protect them from harm, such as back pain or pain in the arms and so on. Even if you are not an office worker, you or you family will sit at a computer for gaming and so on so I’m going to talk about how to set up your workstation which will not only benefit you and your staff, but your family. In your workplace you may have people reporting pain or discomfort from working at their computer. Even if you don’t have people reporting yet, eventually this will happen. So we want to put a plan in place now to prevent this so that: 1. the injury is prevented 2. staff see by your actions that workplace safety and health is important In the 3 hazard management chapters in my <a href="https://safetyhub.co.nz/free-safety-video-training2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">free video training</a>, I explain how we need to identify and manage the hazard, which is what we must do with computer related work. For example, it is know that harm from working at a computer can be caused by a number of factors, including the way your work is organized, the work environment eg light, noise, thermal confort. In addition, there is posture, furniture, the computer hardware and education and training. All of these factors, if not managed, can create 4 potential health issues including: Visual discomfort; Stress; Fatigue and Physical discomfort, pain or injury. These <a href="http://www.acc.co.nz/PRD_EXT_CSMP/groups/external_ip/documents/publications_promotion/wpc097189.pdf" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">guidelines</a> have more detail and I’d recommend if you’re building out your safety system to take a look at this guide and move the relevant content into your system. But right now, I’m going to take you through the basics of the correct posture by looking at your Desk, Chair and then computer equipment. <a href="https://safetyhub.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/stick_figure_micromanaged_400_clr_9293.png" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a>Most people will have a fixed-height desk, so we’ll start with the keyboard. The recommendation is to start with the keyboard at about 10cm from the edge of the desk. That doesn’t work for me on this desk because I like the support of the desk. And that’s the key to all of this, we are taking some time out to that about your body positions and trying to get everything neutral and comfortable. The chair height should be adjusted now to ensure the arms are comformtable. Too low and your arms are sitting like T-rex, and you can feel the tension in the shoulders and there is a chance of pain developing around the knees. Too high, then there is a chance of pain in the hamstrings. If you need the chair high for your shoulders, then you may also need a foot-rest. If you have an adjustable desk then we actually start with the chair. Move the chair to the height which puts your feet flat, and your thighs roughly parallel to the ground or a little higher. Then move the desk height. Once again, too high and you may have pain in the shoulders, too low pain in the hands/forearms. The next major element is the monitor, which is easy. Roughly, the monitor should be about an arms length away and your eyes level with the top of the monitor, which puts your neck in a nice neutral position. If you have any yellow pages lying around they are really handy to serve as a monitor stand. Play around with these basic positions, and if you need more information this link will take you to a <a href="http://www.habitatwork.co.nz" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">free interactive website</a> which includes training on workstation setup. In fact, you could build this website into training for your staff. If you have a large organization of office workers, use the links I’ve provided to training one of your staff to do basic workstation setups and checks. This is Tony Colins form Safety Hub. <h3>Links Mentioned</h3> <a href="http://www.acc.co.nz/PRD_EXT_CSMP/groups/external_ip/documents/publications_promotion/wpc097189.pdf" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Detailed guidelines.</a> <a href="http://www.habitatwork.co.nz" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Free interactive website.</a> Get the <a href="https://safetyhub.co.nz/free-safety-video-training2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">free video training</a> to help implement this into your hazard management plan.

Computer Workstation and Preventing Back Pain

Workplace Safety Model  Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on itunes. [leadplayer_vid id=”519DF87075045″] Discussed in the video:  0:50 The 3 components of the model 3:01 How to use the model  Tony Collins with a model to help you get your head around workplace safety. I remember in 2009, attending a workshop with a Dr Thomas Krause, who that year was named one of the Top 50 Most Influential H&amp;S experts in the World. Up until that point I had read a lot around safety, experienced how people work and think about safety out in the field. I was helping to implement safety management systems and that the next step to take was address safety culture. Eventually we will be talking about all these topics in detail, but today I want to give you a framework or around workplace safety. Until the workshop, I had all these concepts in my head and it was difficult to decide what I should do to move things forward at work. The model is that safety is made up of three distinct components, which are: 1. Systems 2. Culture and 3. Leadership  What I love about this model, is that when you are working on safety in your workplace, you can ask yourself which area am I working in, and what am I putting in place in the other areas to support what I’m doing. If we look at these components, most of the time people focus on Systems. Systems are critical because they capture learnings from the past. Usually hard won lessons from other’s or your own experience. It is critical to create a system that allows learnings to be retained within the organisaiton or your business, and is not reliant on a few key individuals. Because one day, they will leave your business. Systems help shape your business., including safety. But what is the Culture thing. That is when the company values safety to the points it is shared belief throughout the company and those values become part of decision making so that decisions favour better safety outcomes. The problem with Culture it is difficult to measure or assign a number, as a Systems approach. But a classic example of a poor culture is have a company being at an audited systems level, but the safety manual stays on the bookshelf until the next audit so people can get on and do their work. That’s a classic example of misalignment of systems and culture. Leadership of course drives and creates the culture. Leadership at all levels driven by personal ethic of the leaders towards safety. The reason I like this model is we separate the three elements out in this model as it highlights how important these components are. In your workplace, the way to use this H&amp;S model is when you are looking at doing any work, let’s say hazard management around a particular task, ask yourself what is the system, how to we involve the leader, how do we make this part of the culture of our workplace. There are limits to models so if you have any others you’d like to share with the community, please add them to the comments section below. This is Tony Collins at safetyhub.co.nz

<h1>Workplace Safety Model</h1> <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/nz/podcast/safety-hub-workplace-health/id642104276" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank"></a> Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/nz/podcast/safety-hub-workplace-health/id642104276" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">itunes</a>. [leadplayer_vid id=”519DF87075045″] Discussed in the video: <ul> <li>0:50 The 3 components of the model</li> <li>3:01 How to use the model</li> </ul> Tony Collins with a model to help you get your head around workplace safety. I remember in 2009, attending a workshop with a Dr Thomas Krause, who that year was named one of the Top 50 Most Influential H&amp;S experts in the World. Up until that point I had read a lot around safety, experienced how people work and think about safety out in the field. I was helping to implement safety management systems and that the next step to take was address safety culture. Eventually we will be talking about all these topics in detail, but today I want to give you a framework or around workplace safety. Until the workshop, I had all these concepts in my head and it was difficult to decide what I should do to move things forward at work. The model is that safety is made up of three distinct components, which are: 1. Systems 2. Culture and 3. Leadership <a href="https://safetyhub.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Reviewing-a-Workplace-Safety-Model.png" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> What I love about this model, is that when you are working on safety in your workplace, you can ask yourself which area am I working in, and what am I putting in place in the other areas to support what I’m doing. If we look at these components, most of the time people focus on Systems. Systems are critical because they capture learnings from the past. Usually hard won lessons from other’s or your own experience. It is critical to create a system that allows learnings to be retained within the organisaiton or your business, and is not reliant on a few key individuals. Because one day, they will leave your business. Systems help shape your business., including safety. But what is the Culture thing. That is when the company values safety to the points it is shared belief throughout the company and those values become part of decision making so that decisions favour better safety outcomes. The problem with Culture it is difficult to measure or assign a number, as a Systems approach. But a classic example of a poor culture is have a company being at an audited systems level, but the safety manual stays on the bookshelf until the next audit so people can get on and do their work. That’s a classic example of misalignment of systems and culture. Leadership of course drives and creates the culture. Leadership at all levels driven by personal ethic of the leaders towards safety. The reason I like this model is we separate the three elements out in this model as it highlights how important these components are. In your workplace, the way to use this H&amp;S model is when you are looking at doing any work, let’s say hazard management around a particular task, ask yourself what is the system, how to we involve the leader, how do we make this part of the culture of our workplace. There are limits to models so if you have any others you’d like to share with the community, please add them to the comments section below. This is Tony Collins at <a href="http://safetyhub.co.nz" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">safetyhub.co.nz</a>

Workplace Safety Model

Workplace Safety Discounts (WSD)  Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on itunes. [leadplayer_vid id=”519DF21F9B3B6″] Tony Collins here with a really positive step you can take if you are a small business owner. The ACC have a programme that will provide you a discount on your insurance levy if you can show you have a safety system in place. The scheme is called the Workplace Safety Discount scheme or WSD for short. On the 1 Apr, the WSD was opened up from just being available to certain industries, to all businesses types.  By getting accepted on the scheme you will get a 10% discount on your ACC levies. Also, with big changes afoot in New Zealand workplace Safety, being part of a Government recognised product around safety will provide a competitive advantage. For example, larger companies will prefer those companies that can provide some kind of assurance that the are a safe company before they work with you – they do not want to carry the risk. This helps also when tendering for work in a formal setting. Also by having a system in place, you are more likely to reduce injuries which can really impact your own business. There are some limits on the WSD scheme as it is focused on smaller companies with less than 10 employees or a certain payroll  If you are larger than that you can apply for the larger programme called the WSMP, which can give you a larger discount. To be accepted you have to submit an application and agree to a possible audit. The details are in this application form. A lot of companies may already have some kind of audit or standard they abide by, but none of these will prove automatic cross-accreditation. You still need to apply for a WSD, which includes answering a series of questions. You must however, provide supporting documentation that proves you do have a system in place. This is more than a ticking the box exercise. Remember, if you need support you can sign up for the free video or podcast training that walks you through how to do this work. You can sign up to receive the videos here to help get your application and system ready. Regards Tony Collins What are your experiences with the Workplace Safety Discounts programme? Leave your comments below.

<h1>Workplace Safety Discounts (WSD)</h1> <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/nz/podcast/safety-hub-workplace-health/id642104276" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank"></a> Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/nz/podcast/safety-hub-workplace-health/id642104276" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">itunes</a>. [leadplayer_vid id=”519DF21F9B3B6″] Tony Collins here with a really positive step you can take if you are a small business owner. The ACC have a programme that will provide you a discount on your insurance levy if you can show you have a safety system in place. The scheme is called the Workplace Safety Discount scheme or WSD for short. On the 1 Apr, the WSD was opened up from just being available to certain industries, to all businesses types. <a href="https://safetyhub.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Workplace-Safety-Discount.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> By getting accepted on the scheme you will get a 10% discount on your ACC levies. Also, with big changes afoot in New Zealand workplace Safety, being part of a Government recognised product around safety will provide a competitive advantage. For example, larger companies will prefer those companies that can provide some kind of assurance that the are a safe company before they work with you – they do not want to carry the risk. This helps also when tendering for work in a formal setting. Also by having a system in place, you are more likely to reduce injuries which can really impact your own business. There are some limits on the WSD scheme as it is focused on smaller companies with less than 10 employees or a certain payroll  If you are larger than that you can apply for the larger programme called the WSMP, which can give you a larger discount. To be accepted you have to submit an application and agree to a possible audit. The details are in this <a href="http://www.acc.co.nz/PRD_EXT_CSMP/groups/external_levies/documents/form/wpc118080.pdf" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">application form</a>. A lot of companies may already have some kind of audit or standard they abide by, but none of these will prove automatic cross-accreditation. You still need to apply for a WSD, which includes answering a series of questions. You must however, provide supporting documentation that proves you do have a system in place. This is more than a ticking the box exercise. Remember, if you need support you can sign up for the free video or podcast training that walks you through how to do this work. You can sign up to receive <a href="https://safetyhub.co.nz/free-safety-video-training2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">the videos here</a> to help get your application and system ready. Regards Tony Collins What are your experiences with the Workplace Safety Discounts programme? Leave your comments below.

Workplace Safety Discounts (WSD)

Health and Safety from an HR Manager  Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on itunes.  Often Health and Safety is given to an HR Manager to ‘get sorted’ and just get on with the task. Tony Collins discusses with Linda Nelson Caie lessons of an HR Manager. Discussed in the podcast:  00:53  What kind of Health and Safety training is covered in an HR degree? 3:12 Challenges implementing Health and Safety 5:59 Why the HR team brought in safety consultants 7:17 How to convince management HR need support 8:34 What sort of disadvantages are there with hiring consultants? 10:01 How did staff react to consultants? 12:36 How do you justify any safety investment? 14:08 Pros and Cons with getting in consultants 16:02 Wider experiences as an HR Consultant 18:16 How to contact with Linda for HR advice  Tony:              We have an interesting show for you today. I’ve asked a good friend, Linda Nelson Caie, to join us. Linda has a background in HR and has worked in HR roles. Often Health and Safety is given to the HR manager and I have asked Linda to come along and give her perspective about the best way, as an HR Manager, to get Health and Safety sorted. So Linda, within your HR field, what sort of Health and Safety training is covered in general HR training? Linda:             If you are looking at getting into HR you really are looking at a minimum of a bachelors degree in either Human resources or a related field. For example industrial organizational psychology. Interestingly, most of the health and safety training I had was in the psychology field, rather than the HR or business field and it was mostly in the postgraduate rather than the undergraduate field. In my undergraduate degree I was exposed to it but it was more a sense of familiarity with the Health and Safety in Employment Act and just the basics eg Eliminate, Isolate, Minimize etc. This was mainly focused on rather than anything else. It is the awareness of potential hazards in the workplace and how you can potentially deal with it. In terms of there being specific Health and Safety training, there wasn’t a great deal in my undergraduate degree. Tony:              That’s really interesting because what I’ve found is that it’s relatively simple for people to grasp the concepts around hazard or controls   and a systems approach, but I think the biggest challenge is in the psychology of the process. How people think and therefore how to change behaviors and the like. You mention you did a lot of psychology. Did you find that helped in any way? Linda:             Yes I found that really interesting. One of the biggest things when you are engaging with Health and Safety in the workplace is that often it is seen by employees as a box ticking exercise and they don’t take it that seriously. In order to get them engaged with it and for them to actually take it onboard and run with it the psychological principles are quite good. Just a few things like getting the people that it affects involved in the planning of it particularly. In New Zealand especially, there is a mind set of the she’ll be right attitude or also just the culture of we’ve always done it this way and no ones had a serious accident yet so its OK. Tony:              What particular problems or challenges have you faced working within HR Roles around implementing Health and Safety systems? Linda:             Again, the biggest issue was getting buy in.  I haven’t worked in a high-risk environment. I have been in more low risk environments and because there is no high-risk machinery for example there can be bit of a happy go lucky attitude towards Health and Safety. Fortunately I have been working for organisations that are “Best Practise” organisations and they do take it seriously. So even in an office environment it can be really little things like how your workstation is set up. Like people complaining from what was previously known as RSI, repetitive Strain Injury.  Other small things like swapping hands with your mouse can make a big difference to a persons long term ability to move their arm and their hands and also when it comes down to sick days and things like that. So it can be really little things that make a big difference over time. Another thing that we had was we had sales reps out in the field so we had a very spread out employee base. We had issues with our range of reps, with some very tiny women to some big burly guys and when it came to how our car fleets were managed, we were expecting these very different body shapes to be fitting into these vehicles. We had one issue with a particularly petite woman who was really struggling literally to reach the pedals of her car, which is a bit of a Health and Safety issue if she can’t drive safely. Other issues involved people who were having bad back problems because they were carrying a lot of promotional material and they weren’t lifting them correctly out of the back of their cars. So they didn’t have the best cars for that kind of work so what we did was we got in consultants to assess their cars and their lifting technique to help improve this situation. We had significant improvements in terms of reduction in sick days, and even complaints as well.  People reported back to say they were feeling much better so little things do make a big difference. Tony:              There’s a lot there to dig a little deeper into.   The first part there is you said you brought in consultants and I’m assuming that’s to look at the technical aspects of ergonomics or manual handling around the tasks of car loading and unlading I’m assuming. How did that work for you bringing in someone outside your organization and getting them to quickly understand anything unique to what your staff were doing? Linda:             There were only two of us in the HR team and 180 employees so the Health and Safety role fell into my tray if you like.   It was partially a time element for us as in to do health and safety properly you really do need to dedicate a decent amount of time to it.  Also expertise as neither of us were experts in ergonomics or lifting etc. so again we both came from a generalist HR background where we knew the basics but we didn’t really know the nitty-gritty or that sort of thing so really it was a bit of a no brainer when it comes to getting in consultants. Simply for the amount of time it saves you and also getting the right level of expertise as well. We did see some good results from it so it was definitely worth it. Tony:              Yeah, I suppose one question that jumps out at me that perhaps listeners may have a similar situation at the moment. They are sitting at work and they have been told to sort out Health and Safety within the workplace. How do you go about convincing your boss, or your management that you needed support or help in this particular area? Linda:             Luckily because we were a best practice organization it wasn’t that difficult. We were in the process of reviewing our Health and Safety processes and this issue was part of this.  Also we just didn’t have the level of expertise. We already had a relationship with a Health and Safety consultant so we used that person and when it came to outsourcing further around the country we used our local health and safety contact to coordinate for us. Tony:               What sort of disadvantages is there with hiring consultants? One thing that springs to mind is when you get someone in the best outcome is to embed that knowledge as a system within your business so your kind of teaching a person how to fish as opposed to providing them the fish. In this case, if you had to continually bring in a consultant to provide technical advice you kind of buying the company into an ongoing commitment.  To me that’s a potential disadvantage. Did you have this issue at all and if you did how did you get around that? Linda:             No we didn’t see this was the case at all. In fact we took a lot of learnings from the consultant that we brought in because with our office staff we got them to have a look at every single desk set up. Looking at things like the chairs and the level of the screen, looking at any ergonomic issues there might be and we got some really valuable material from them that we starting to implement into our induction process, so from that point on we were able to use this knowledge for our new employees.  So we didn’t have to continually get them back every time that we had a new person in because we were actually able to learn something from them. Tony:              Back to the psychology, which we started off with, and the buy in. How do you think staff perceived consultants coming in to help them? Was that seen as a positive or potentially a negative? Linda:              As I said earlier it is often a box ticking exercise when it comes to Health and safety and its not taken as seriously as it could be. I would say it was probably split as in the people who were experiencing pain or issues or discomfort in their workspace they saw it as fantastic things. For other people where this wasn’t really an issue for them they thought it was probably a bit of a waste of time and money. Tony:              Of course we can’t make everyone happy but we are making those that need it happy at this time. Linda:             Absolutely. And the thing is its great if you’re not having issues in your workspace and it’s a matter of tidying away a cord so you don’t rip over it, then that’s all very well and good but for the people that were experiencing issues, not doing the little things like the breaks, stretching, looking around the room and giving your eyes a rest, this was important. It seems like a little thing but when you’re doing something every day you don’t think to do things like use the mouse with my other hand etc.  In some ways I think having an external consultant can give it a little more weight than if it is somebody in the workplace.  It really does depend on the culture of the workplace but if the individual doing it doesn’t have the reputation as a health and safety expert b or if they are known as a box ticker or whatever the case may be then its not really going to be taken that seriously. Tony:              Yes I think there are strong parallels with parents with kids. You can suggest to your child a course of action as to what they should be doing but until they hear it from someone else it doesn’t have the same impact. Linda:             Absolutely! Tony:              One of the most difficult things around safety is justifying the expense of why you are putting money into it as the ultimate outcome is for nothing to happen. So was there a way to feedback to management any performance indicators that could show value from bringing in a consultant. In this case manually handling. Linda:             Yes in this case we sent reports back. We asked the sales reps in the field who had the issues to feedback to us. Thus was especially important as we didn’t have the relationship with the other consultants in other locations and we needed to be sure they were doing a good job and that we were seeing the results. So we received a report form the consultants after they had seen each of our reps and we also got the reps to report back to us. I think immediately afterwards to get their feedback from it and also further down the track to see if things had in fact improved for them and their medical discomfort. A pretty hard message if you like is the sick days as there were fewer sick days taken as a results so in terms of quantitative data it’s pretty strong. Tony:              Is there anything else that you can add to this from your experience around getting a consultant in? Linda:             I guess the obvious con is that it is an extra expense and if its not supported by your senior management team its going to be a bit more difficult to do. But on the other hand if you look at the potential cost of the risk and whether that be as minor as sick days which is obviously a cost to the organization, effectiveness of work performance, that sort of thing. So unless you have the expertise to do it yourself it’s not going to get done properly. Tony:              Yes I agree with that. There are pros and cons. I think ideally, if able, the best outcome is for it to be driven within the orgnisation for staff to pick it up and run with it. There are strong parallels with accounting. A business will manage their finance but often they may have to outsource it depending on how big their business is to an accountant, or software or if there are large enough then employ their own people., but they still may need technical  expertise. So really its horses for courses. Linda:             That’s right and again it depends on the workplace environment as well. I mean for a low risk environment that we were in, there is no point in having a health and safety expert on the team as a permanent staff whereas if you are in a high risk workplace using heavy machinery for example then definitely have your own expert on board. Tony:                Sure and I know you have an HR consultancy so have been exposed to a number of high risk organisations as well. What are your experiences from what you’ve seen so far around different ways of dealing with Health and Safety? Linda:              Its interesting because it kind of depends on the organisation and the culture of the organization. Again for organisations that can be a high risk, even just the stats on accidents in New Zealand are incredibly high and we have a great deal of legislation around health and safety yet we still have an appalling record in the workplace with health and safety accidents in which case the message is clearly not getting through. And just because you have people at the job whether it be managers or HR, whoever are implementing these HR strategies, if its not actually followed through on the shop floor or wherever the case may be then you are wasting your time and your money and something seriously needs to be done to address that. Tony:              I totally agree. There is going to be a big change in New Zealand around Health and safety across the board this year 2013, and this is the reason for this podcast and video channels. I’m personally going to take it on myself to have a crack at providing good information to people out there and make a difference so thank you for coming along and helping. Is there anything you want to add before we sum up? Linda:             Just one thing we didn’t briefly touch on was the psychological aspects of health and safety and in fact workplace stress is part of the Health and Safety Act as well and it’s something that’s sort of neglected as a softer part of health and safety as it’s easier to look at the high risk elements and the physical elements also. But thinking about the psychological wellbeing of your employees is really important and it is something that gets forgotten. Tony:              Hey that’s a good point and if I can twist your arm maybe we can get you back to talk about stress. Hey Linda if people want to get hold of you for HR advice how do they go about doing that? Linda:            Probably the best way is through my website which is www.hrconsultant.co.nz Tony:              OK thanks Linda and we’ll catch you another time, hopefully. Linda:            Thanks Tony.

<h1>Health and Safety from an HR Manager</h1> <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/nz/podcast/safety-hub-workplace-health/id642104276" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/nz/podcast/safety-hub-workplace-health/id642104276" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">itunes</a>. <a href="https://safetyhub.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/HR-Consultant-Linda-Nelson-Caie-on-workplace-health-and-safety.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> Often Health and Safety is given to an HR Manager to ‘get sorted’ and just get on with the task. Tony Collins discusses with Linda Nelson Caie lessons of an HR Manager. Discussed in the podcast: <ul> <li>00:53  What kind of Health and Safety training is covered in an HR degree?</li> <li>3:12 Challenges implementing Health and Safety</li> <li>5:59 Why the HR team brought in safety consultants</li> <li>7:17 How to convince management HR need support</li> <li>8:34 What sort of disadvantages are there with hiring consultants?</li> <li>10:01 How did staff react to consultants?</li> <li>12:36 How do you justify any safety investment?</li> <li>14:08 Pros and Cons with getting in consultants</li> <li>16:02 Wider experiences as an HR Consultant</li> <li>18:16 How to contact with Linda for HR advice</li> </ul> Tony:              We have an interesting show for you today. I’ve asked a good friend, Linda Nelson Caie, to join us. Linda has a background in HR and has worked in HR roles. Often Health and Safety is given to the HR manager and I have asked Linda to come along and give her perspective about the best way, as an HR Manager, to get Health and Safety sorted. So Linda, within your HR field, what sort of Health and Safety training is covered in general HR training? Linda:             If you are looking at getting into HR you really are looking at a minimum of a bachelors degree in either Human resources or a related field. For example industrial organizational psychology. Interestingly, most of the health and safety training I had was in the psychology field, rather than the HR or business field and it was mostly in the postgraduate rather than the undergraduate field. In my undergraduate degree I was exposed to it but it was more a sense of familiarity with the Health and Safety in Employment Act and just the basics eg Eliminate, Isolate, Minimize etc. This was mainly focused on rather than anything else. It is the awareness of potential hazards in the workplace and how you can potentially deal with it. In terms of there being specific Health and Safety training, there wasn’t a great deal in my undergraduate degree. Tony:              That’s really interesting because what I’ve found is that it’s relatively simple for people to grasp the concepts around hazard or controls   and a systems approach, but I think the biggest challenge is in the psychology of the process. How people think and therefore how to change behaviors and the like. You mention you did a lot of psychology. Did you find that helped in any way? Linda:             Yes I found that really interesting. One of the biggest things when you are engaging with Health and Safety in the workplace is that often it is seen by employees as a box ticking exercise and they don’t take it that seriously. In order to get them engaged with it and for them to actually take it onboard and run with it the psychological principles are quite good. Just a few things like getting the people that it affects involved in the planning of it particularly. In New Zealand especially, there is a mind set of the she’ll be right attitude or also just the culture of we’ve always done it this way and no ones had a serious accident yet so its OK. Tony:              What particular problems or challenges have you faced working within HR Roles around implementing Health and Safety systems? Linda:             Again, the biggest issue was getting buy in.  I haven’t worked in a high-risk environment. I have been in more low risk environments and because there is no high-risk machinery for example there can be bit of a happy go lucky attitude towards Health and Safety. Fortunately I have been working for organisations that are “Best Practise” organisations and they do take it seriously. So even in an office environment it can be really little things like how your workstation is set up. Like people complaining from what was previously known as RSI, repetitive Strain Injury.  Other small things like swapping hands with your mouse can make a big difference to a persons long term ability to move their arm and their hands and also when it comes down to sick days and things like that. So it can be really little things that make a big difference over time. Another thing that we had was we had sales reps out in the field so we had a very spread out employee base. We had issues with our range of reps, with some very tiny women to some big burly guys and when it came to how our car fleets were managed, we were expecting these very different body shapes to be fitting into these vehicles. We had one issue with a particularly petite woman who was really struggling literally to reach the pedals of her car, which is a bit of a Health and Safety issue if she can’t drive safely. Other issues involved people who were having bad back problems because they were carrying a lot of promotional material and they weren’t lifting them correctly out of the back of their cars. So they didn’t have the best cars for that kind of work so what we did was we got in consultants to assess their cars and their lifting technique to help improve this situation. We had significant improvements in terms of reduction in sick days, and even complaints as well.  People reported back to say they were feeling much better so little things do make a big difference. Tony:              There’s a lot there to dig a little deeper into.   The first part there is you said you brought in consultants and I’m assuming that’s to look at the technical aspects of ergonomics or manual handling around the tasks of car loading and unlading I’m assuming. How did that work for you bringing in someone outside your organization and getting them to quickly understand anything unique to what your staff were doing? Linda:             There were only two of us in the HR team and 180 employees so the Health and Safety role fell into my tray if you like.   It was partially a time element for us as in to do health and safety properly you really do need to dedicate a decent amount of time to it.  Also expertise as neither of us were experts in ergonomics or lifting etc. so again we both came from a generalist HR background where we knew the basics but we didn’t really know the nitty-gritty or that sort of thing so really it was a bit of a no brainer when it comes to getting in consultants. Simply for the amount of time it saves you and also getting the right level of expertise as well. We did see some good results from it so it was definitely worth it. Tony:              Yeah, I suppose one question that jumps out at me that perhaps listeners may have a similar situation at the moment. They are sitting at work and they have been told to sort out Health and Safety within the workplace. How do you go about convincing your boss, or your management that you needed support or help in this particular area? Linda:             Luckily because we were a best practice organization it wasn’t that difficult. We were in the process of reviewing our Health and Safety processes and this issue was part of this.  Also we just didn’t have the level of expertise. We already had a relationship with a Health and Safety consultant so we used that person and when it came to outsourcing further around the country we used our local health and safety contact to coordinate for us. Tony:               What sort of disadvantages is there with hiring consultants? One thing that springs to mind is when you get someone in the best outcome is to embed that knowledge as a system within your business so your kind of teaching a person how to fish as opposed to providing them the fish. In this case, if you had to continually bring in a consultant to provide technical advice you kind of buying the company into an ongoing commitment.  To me that’s a potential disadvantage. Did you have this issue at all and if you did how did you get around that? Linda:             No we didn’t see this was the case at all. In fact we took a lot of learnings from the consultant that we brought in because with our office staff we got them to have a look at every single desk set up. Looking at things like the chairs and the level of the screen, looking at any ergonomic issues there might be and we got some really valuable material from them that we starting to implement into our induction process, so from that point on we were able to use this knowledge for our new employees.  So we didn’t have to continually get them back every time that we had a new person in because we were actually able to learn something from them. Tony:              Back to the psychology, which we started off with, and the buy in. How do you think staff perceived consultants coming in to help them? Was that seen as a positive or potentially a negative? Linda:              As I said earlier it is often a box ticking exercise when it comes to Health and safety and its not taken as seriously as it could be. I would say it was probably split as in the people who were experiencing pain or issues or discomfort in their workspace they saw it as fantastic things. For other people where this wasn’t really an issue for them they thought it was probably a bit of a waste of time and money. Tony:              Of course we can’t make everyone happy but we are making those that need it happy at this time. Linda:             Absolutely. And the thing is its great if you’re not having issues in your workspace and it’s a matter of tidying away a cord so you don’t rip over it, then that’s all very well and good but for the people that were experiencing issues, not doing the little things like the breaks, stretching, looking around the room and giving your eyes a rest, this was important. It seems like a little thing but when you’re doing something every day you don’t think to do things like use the mouse with my other hand etc.  In some ways I think having an external consultant can give it a little more weight than if it is somebody in the workplace.  It really does depend on the culture of the workplace but if the individual doing it doesn’t have the reputation as a health and safety expert b or if they are known as a box ticker or whatever the case may be then its not really going to be taken that seriously. Tony:              Yes I think there are strong parallels with parents with kids. You can suggest to your child a course of action as to what they should be doing but until they hear it from someone else it doesn’t have the same impact. Linda:             Absolutely! Tony:              One of the most difficult things around safety is justifying the expense of why you are putting money into it as the ultimate outcome is for nothing to happen. So was there a way to feedback to management any performance indicators that could show value from bringing in a consultant. In this case manually handling. Linda:             Yes in this case we sent reports back. We asked the sales reps in the field who had the issues to feedback to us. Thus was especially important as we didn’t have the relationship with the other consultants in other locations and we needed to be sure they were doing a good job and that we were seeing the results. So we received a report form the consultants after they had seen each of our reps and we also got the reps to report back to us. I think immediately afterwards to get their feedback from it and also further down the track to see if things had in fact improved for them and their medical discomfort. A pretty hard message if you like is the sick days as there were fewer sick days taken as a results so in terms of quantitative data it’s pretty strong. Tony:              Is there anything else that you can add to this from your experience around getting a consultant in? Linda:             I guess the obvious con is that it is an extra expense and if its not supported by your senior management team its going to be a bit more difficult to do. But on the other hand if you look at the potential cost of the risk and whether that be as minor as sick days which is obviously a cost to the organization, effectiveness of work performance, that sort of thing. So unless you have the expertise to do it yourself it’s not going to get done properly. Tony:              Yes I agree with that. There are pros and cons. I think ideally, if able, the best outcome is for it to be driven within the orgnisation for staff to pick it up and run with it. There are strong parallels with accounting. A business will manage their finance but often they may have to outsource it depending on how big their business is to an accountant, or software or if there are large enough then employ their own people., but they still may need technical  expertise. So really its horses for courses. Linda:             That’s right and again it depends on the workplace environment as well. I mean for a low risk environment that we were in, there is no point in having a health and safety expert on the team as a permanent staff whereas if you are in a high risk workplace using heavy machinery for example then definitely have your own expert on board. Tony:                Sure and I know you have an HR consultancy so have been exposed to a number of high risk organisations as well. What are your experiences from what you’ve seen so far around different ways of dealing with Health and Safety? Linda:              Its interesting because it kind of depends on the organisation and the culture of the organization. Again for organisations that can be a high risk, even just the stats on accidents in New Zealand are incredibly high and we have a great deal of legislation around health and safety yet we still have an appalling record in the workplace with health and safety accidents in which case the message is clearly not getting through. And just because you have people at the job whether it be managers or HR, whoever are implementing these HR strategies, if its not actually followed through on the shop floor or wherever the case may be then you are wasting your time and your money and something seriously needs to be done to address that. Tony:              I totally agree. There is going to be a big change in New Zealand around Health and safety across the board this year 2013, and this is the reason for this podcast and video channels. I’m personally going to take it on myself to have a crack at providing good information to people out there and make a difference so thank you for coming along and helping. Is there anything you want to add before we sum up? Linda:             Just one thing we didn’t briefly touch on was the psychological aspects of health and safety and in fact workplace stress is part of the Health and Safety Act as well and it’s something that’s sort of neglected as a softer part of health and safety as it’s easier to look at the high risk elements and the physical elements also. But thinking about the psychological wellbeing of your employees is really important and it is something that gets forgotten. Tony:              Hey that’s a good point and if I can twist your arm maybe we can get you back to talk about stress. Hey Linda if people want to get hold of you for HR advice how do they go about doing that? Linda:            Probably the best way is through my website which is <a href="http://www.hrconsultant.co.nz" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.hrconsultant.co.nz</a> Tony:              OK thanks Linda and we’ll catch you another time, hopefully. Linda:            Thanks Tony.

Safety Systems:Lessons From An HR Manager

Safety Hub - Workplace Health and Safety with Tony Tikiku

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