You're right there Peter, can almost sense the visible relief when they expect H&S speak, but hear someone talking 'commonsense'.

I reckon the challenge is finding a way to get farmers into a habit of doing this themselves ie stop and take a moment to ask themselves these questions when they're often working alone and 'too busy'.

Any ideas?

Yep, this sounds about right!

I don't have an H&S background but I do see good operators (farmers, contractors on farm etc) with safety built into every day activities, not as a separate thing. To them, it's just stuff that makes sense - they don't want breakdowns in people or machinery and they put things in place to get the result they're after.

Seem to get much more traction when we're talking about better business performance not H&S per se (with the associated collective rolling of eyes!)

Yep, I hear where Grant is coming from...

I work in a sector (Agriculture) where 'H&S' is definitely a tainted brand and plenty of farming folk share his sentiments, often less eloquently...

They know the folders and a few signs make no difference at all - yet somehow they think they need these to 'prove to WorkSafe' they're taking health and safety seriously.
Reality is, farmers have more chance of being killed on the job than being prosecuted by WorkSafe, or more chance of being injured than receiving a notice of any kind.

We're looking at how we can tap into this idea (Grant's thinking) by making sure farmers are crystal clear on the things that can injure or kill them - and get them to realise it's the decisions they make in relation to these things that matter (even if they've done the thing a thousand times)

Add in a few higher level controls eg seatbelts on tractors, utes and side-buy-sides, and I reckon we'll make a difference.

Would love to better understand how we can do this in a farm friendly way ie avoiding H&S speak ("higher level controls"), without diluting the meaning. Thoughts?

Thanks for your comments folks, I've learned a bit more after canvassing this topic.

I've heard that companies that treat this as a safety issue, and not a speed monitoring issue, are able to get this across the line (external fleet manager and drivers get their own report - no-one in the company sees it unless there has been multiple overspeed incidents).

It has become self-policing, with employees making a competition out of it eg division with lowest/no speed tickets etc. There was some initial grumbling, but trust has built to a point that they're now discussing the real time monitoring as they've seen how the driver feedback reporting helps them improve their own vehicle handling. The employees are behind it as they and their colleagues often work alone, and outside of cellphone coverage, so they get the benefits of location monitoring during work hours.

Like most things, its a process, and its about building trust first...

Would the same apply to company issued mobile phones?

Good question - you described me and the other two finger warriors very well!

Can't offer much in the way of suggestion except to say I've found it beneficial to use an adjustable sit/stand desk and change position regularly.

I've also trained the 'other' hand to use a mouse as well. I changed to a new ergo mouse when I had a broken thumb, and as a random finding I now use two - one mouse permanently on each side of the keyboard - they work independently and there's only one pointer/cursor so I change hands frequently.
I also mouse click more on say Word or Excel now - I'd previously been pretty good at using the MS shortcuts - but I found they mostly required two fingers anyway...