I think it very much depends on what you do with the audit and the findings after the fact. an audit is a snapshot in time, and will give you findings based on both the evidence supplied and the experiance of the auditor.
if you take the audit, have a good look at he recommnedations, implment the ones that are effective, and then in the following audit review the last one (or more) in the review of the next audit, they can be effective. Alas this does not happen very oftern.
Also what is very important is the scope of the audit to ensure that any expoected outcomes are achived.

Hi there Jop
Thanks for sending me the article, it made for some insightful reading my comments are below:

The article presents a compelling case against the effectiveness of "Take 5" as a safety practice, supported by empirical evidence and detailed analysis. However, the conclusions are not without contestation. The study highlights significant issues with the implementation and practical use of "Take 5," but there remains an argument that with better implementation, "Take 5" might still have potential benefits. I would also comment that the study has a very limited scope interms of people / orgainsations studied and thus to confrim your data, I would recomend a much wider scope to ensure you validate your findings.
Your article's insights into the bureaucratic nature of safety practices and their social functions provide valuable contributions to the discussion on workplace safety management and i certinly enjoyed sparking the discussion with my team on Friday as a result of this.

From a practical point of veiw, I agree with the point that a Take5 can be considered "safety clutter". As for the most part in my experiance, there is very little done with the outcomes of the Take5 forms, i.e who reads and acts upon the issues that are raised for a fix at a later date.

In my view, however, the point of the Take5 is not as a risk mitigation tool for a buisness, the point of a Take5 is a dialog opener, to get people talking about what it is they are going to do and what are the risk and hazards of that task. When done well this works to facilite conversations about potenital risks and hazards at a site and provide a form to discuss potential way to mitiagte these. however if implemented poorly, then it is seen as a tickbox excersize and in this case I would agree with your findings being that they are infact a waste fo time.

In short, as with all safety related thing, it is very diffuclt to say this thing works vs this thing dosen't as in reality what works for one buisness really well is seen as a wate of time by another.

Why dont you send me you paper, (stevedotschroderatsmartsafetysolutionsdotcodotnz), i will have a read and then will be in a better postion to answer your questions. i will also include my experiance from a practical point of view

Funny that we covered AI as a topic in one of my lectures last night.
I use AI almost exclusivly for writing my sales proposals and other marketing type material. This has save me sooooo much time.
AI is a tool and should be embraced as it will only get better with time, there are some big advancments being made in Hazard ID and other practical implementation for safety people, however, like all developing tools people should be very carful to check and verify any results from any AI model.

"Our data suggested that workers look for hazards equally, with or without Take5 policy." if this is the case then i would be happy, however, my experiance practically is that, if there is no process like this (it dosent have to specifically be a take 5) then that company will not be as "safe" as other companies that do.
My arugment was not to "fix" the take 5 process, but rather imbrace the fact that we need a process for workers to undertake a risk assessment, whatever this may look like.
PS: i have not read your research, so i am also making these comments based off my experiance rather than from a position of crtitcally examining your work.

Research like everything, should be read and considered alongside other evidence as well as practical experience and then considered within the environment you work in before change is implemented.
For example, in this example, Take 5 serves no real purpose, i would argue that, this very much depends on where the company is in their safety journey. i.e. just starting out - if it get the team thinking about the risks of the job and results in a safety controls being implemented, then i would consider this very beneficial. However, a company that is further along the journey, that has more sophisticated processes in place, they may not see any real benefit from this process.
In short there is no one size fits all to safety, including when it comes to research, that can be very narrow focused in its application.

I believe this needs to be a multi-facetted approach over the medium to long term, as there is no one size fits all "silver bullet" here. I also do not believe that remuneration is a barrier to entry. It is now fairly easy for a person with even just a couple of years’ experience to gain a position playing in excess of 100k, and in fact if you ask me, there needs to be a correction downward in this respect.

A dedicated campaign to raise the profile of the industry: and break down the ingrained view the HS professionals are there as tick-box clipboard warriors there to make life harder for workers. I am a true believer that our industry has a significant image problem.
A dedicated drive to actively recruit you and talented professionals both from school / uni and within our industries.

A pathway to professional development: a topic for another post entirely. (yes i am aware there are some that exist, but they are fragmented and while all having the same overall goal how and which to choose can be unclear and daunting)

Recognition that even if we start tomorrow, 2100 professionals is a tall ask.

You auckland based?
give me a call if you want 021 452 930 happy to chat

honestly you will be better off having a chat with a guarding expert. it is a specilist field and there are a couple of good ones out there, that could advise you better on your sepcific issues.

Happy to have a discussion with you regarding this if you like.
Insureance depends on what people required.
we hold several insurances due to the contracts we do, bu public liability at a min.
i would suggest sole trader to start, and utalise something like henry for your accounts until you get established.
And always remember, you are only ever as good as your last contract. contracting is as much of building your personal brand as it is being a good contractor.
it is hard work!

O.k. so a bit of an open ended question.
Your workers need input into the identifaction of the risk and the development of the controls to mitigate them. what is more important than the sign off, is the record of your consultation with them to develop these things.
I personally would be ustaliising the safety committee and SME's within the buisness to do this, and would have the most sienor person incharge of safety at the buisness autherising the risk, interms of it being acceptiable to the buisness.
then a monitoiring system of the risk by the workers and the supervisors/managers in place to ensure the controls are implemented and working.
There is no short answer to you question really.
hope that helps

Usually if you are in the role it is fairly easy to detect change so i will not comment on that, however, at the interviewing stage, this is something that as consultants you have to learn to gauge quickly.
People need to remember that interviewing is a two way street (in fact if i am interviewing for a new staff member, a person who doesn't ask questions of me gets disregarded as a candidate due to not being able to come up with questions on the fly and be able to articulate these in an appropriate manner).
Ask questions of the management such as what changes have happened during the last 12 months, and listen to their response. then ask questions about roadblocks and how these were overcome, I find that, that sort of questioning goes a long way to giving me a gauge on how the company manages change and how resistent they could be.

This is a hard question.
if you are asking what i would achive in the for 90days, i would say almost nothing. the first 90 days of any role at that level is about understanding the drivers for the buisness and what levers can be pulled to affect positive change.
My first 90 days would be spent talking to key stakeholder from through out the entier orgainisation as well as extrnally, then considering that feedback develop a plan to move forward.
I will cavit this with the fact that i dont belive there is serious commitment at a goverment level to resource WSNZ adaquitly, so mr Haszard has a big and challenging time ahead of him.

less and less common on sites.
more common on in smaller compainies now, rather than the big ones.

Bear in mind this https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/increased-health-and-safety-representation-workers is on the cards as well, which may change your stance on things. was slated to be in already but the legislative plate is full atm but they would like to have this access the line before the election

I would be having a chat to the person as asking if they would like to take their working career further in HS. you could suggest working up to LVL 6 or even further if they want to.
This would have a couple benefits. a couple would be succession planning for the HS roles, shoes the staff that you invest in your people.
they might not want to, in which case i would treat it like a refresher :)

do you have a breakdown of the types industry they are in?
i would be interested to know what portion of those sit in high risk industries, large organizations that have multi site responsibilities, are consulting that type of thing.
Also what portion of the industry does this represent?
I think there is a huge amount that goes into the salary / age equation.

thank buddy!

Hey Peter did the results come out for this? just trying to find it.
Asking for a friend..... *looks around suspiciously*

As a person who run a Health and Safety consultancy out of AKL i have found a couple of things.
1 - safety people (good ones) are hard to come by and thus at a premuim driving up salery expectations
2 - we have yet to empoy someone for under 105k as a package

All safety consultants in NZ should now in my opinion be required to be at least LVL 6 qualed, NZISM and HASNZ registered to help ensure that we have professional bodies behind us holding poor performers in the industry to account.

But i do take your point that there is a wide spread of salaries accross NZ