Pathways to Health and Safety improvement and compliance

Psychological harm includes bullying, harassment or work induced stress that is unreasonable, repeated and has the potential to cause serious mental harm. Given mental harm is typically invisible, this area is open to spurious claims. On the other hand, many employers can’t see thus don’t deal with mental harm.

The case of Maritime NZ v Anthony Michael Gibson, 2024, which resulted in a $130,000 fine and $60,000 in costs against the CEO of the Ports of Auckland, gained attention for the size of the fine. The judgement also contained some timely advice on due diligence.  In short: First – get out of your seat, […]

We are often asked why people take risks – and what can be done about it? To consider solutions we need to understand the cause. There are books on the subject, but the need is for something succinct so we have put together our thinking on why people take risks. It is starting point for […]

Health and safety investments are not about spend, but rather the effectiveness and strategic allocation of those funds. At face value, implementing safety measures, training, equipment, and maintaining compliance do drive direct costs that impact the bottom line. So targeting spending is critical.

We get asked about “Work and Height” training – there is no one qualification for this. We get asked how to determine a person working in a job there is no relevant formal qualification for – which is most labouring work. Sitting in a course for 6 hours with virtually everyone passing is not proof […]

The Site Specific Safety Plan (SSSP) details potential risks around the work and the site, how these will be controlled and what systems will be used to manage health & safety. The problem is many NZ companies cannot provide acceptable SSSP. They throw whatever paperwork they can fing together and hope the receiver never reads […]

Businesses adopting “use your common sense” as their health and safety policy are making the fundamental mistake. They are assuming everyone has an equal measure of common sense. The policy works until someone leaves their common sense at the gate and there is a serious accident.

The reality for many businesses is they cant afford health and safety support. So they do it themselves on a best endevours basis. There are 3 basic steps: For more detail on what is involved see the link below.

Legislation requires that due diligence is performed to minimise risks – so far as is reasonably practicable (SFARP) . There is no formula for determining what is “reasonably practicable”, rather there are a set of considerations which inevitably track to the cost and whether the cost is grossly disproportionate to the risk. Its a tricky but critical area when deciding on control.