Hand sanitizer is only needed when a person can't access hand-washing facilities. You can minimise the risks and save money as well by promoting effective hand-washing and hygiene processes.

You need to check composition and claims of any non-alcohol hand sanitizers. Many are effective at killing bacteria but not verified as destroying viruses. We also looked more closely at a hand sanitizer being promoted as killing 99% of all germs and viruses and discovered the active ingredient was a substance used to sanitize hard surfaces, and which carried warnings about being a skin irritant!

So as in all things, conduct appropriate due diligence.

It might be a good idea to survey potential users - my partner has joined the many people fed up with Facebook's political dealings and some of the very polarised and nasty interactions that seem to be escalating. I know of a number of people who have already deleted their Facebook accounts and I am very close to doing the same myself.....

PS - We were able to agree for him to return to work on restricted duties while his back recovered and also to avoid causing injuries to his knees while he was waiting for replacement surgery. In many ways, we really turned around his attitude toward the company as well, so he was a lot happier to work together with us when it came time for his knee surgery.

I am reminded of an injury management challenge some years ago when a 62 year old factory operator strained his back, went to his doctor and got a certificate for time off. The Operations Manager and I rang to talk to him, and the worker was very hostile and didn't want to talk to us. He didn't want to come in to meet with us. When we offered to come to his house, he said he would set the dogs on us! I suddenly remembered advice from negotiations training and remembered the tip for breaking a stalemate - I asked him what it would take for him to talk with us. He asked if he could have his union rep there, and of course we said yes.

When he finally came to talk with us, we eventually unravelled the defensive "firewall". He was going to have knee replacement surgery in a few months, and with that and his age, he was very afraid that the manager was just going to fire him and get someone younger and more fit to do the job! After his initial adrenalised and defensive response subsided, he also eventually admitted that he has been suspicious because of how managers in the past had treated him.

That's a slightly long story, but here are some of the most important lessons I learned from that experience:
- Find out what's behind the person's resistance - it's usually much deeper and more complex than it looks on the surface. In general, everyone is trying to get some need met - find out what the real need is, rather than guessing or projecting. And don't judge - there will be a reason for their perspectives. Sometimes it can even be a situational distortion due to fear and the adrenaline it generates.
- Don't take it personally - sometimes people are actually just venting and often just acting on past experience that has nothing to do with you. It only becomes personal if you make it so.
- If both parties adopt a fixed position, the discussion is very likely to get stuck. Among the principles of my own training is the maxim that the party with the most flexibility / adaptability will ultimately prevail.
- If negotiations get stuck, ask the other party what they need and work on a solution from there.
- Sometimes it takes a bit of time, discussion and various iterations to resolve an issue - be patient, and stay present. As long as you are still in the conversation, you can still influence the outcomes.
- Listen with the intent to genuinely hear the other person and work together for a win-win solution.

I'm sure most people would find it a very different conversation to talk about theoretical illness and deaths compared to a discussion about their own or a family member's illness and death. Priorities have a way of changing when it becomes personal. :wink:

Don't people like bus drivers, pilots, etc have to undergo mandatory regular health checks? How are those managed?

How do you think the experiences of getting through COVID-19 and Whakaari will shape future perspectives on risk management?

It's great to see you are thinking about designing processes to optimise handling complexity. What do you do to prepare the people themselves to deal with complexity and risk, especially when under pressure?

One of the factors behind the 'herd mentality' arises when people don't have a clear understanding of a requirement, can't or won't delve into it to determine what it really means or the purpose for the requirement, so I have observed that many will look around to see what other people have decided and just jump onto that bandwagon without any proper due diligence or sense-making. I saw this all the time when ISO9001 was being introduced in NZ, and so many management systems ended up with overly bureaucratic systems that still missed the mark of achieving management control of a process.

Zero Harm, just as Zero Defects did before it, made it unacceptable to get any outcome other than what you intended, which completely stifled the learning process and effective communication.

You are right that the majority of advice given did not specifically mention the responsibilities individuals have for preventing the spread of COVID-19. My employer's Managers' Guides and company communications to employees included mention of worker responsibilities, and along with all the work we did to meet MPI requirements to continue operating as an essential business, the company also required each worker to make a declaration that they would adhere to all the MPI requirements, including social distancing and maintaining a separate 'bubble' at home as well as at work. We also emphasised that anyone who felt unwell should contact their manager and discuss it, and the instructions to managers was that anyone who felt unwell or anyone who met criteria for a suspected case should stay home and contact their manager ASAP. We had a couple of people who were sent home for illness and we required them to get their doctor's advice on testing - they were tested and found negative. We also put in place a return to work interview and declaration form, to give us a formal opportunity to assure ourselves that anyone who was off sick for any reason could return safely. We also clarified options for leave very early in the piece. Our managers and admin people mostly worked on site because we felt it was more fair to the workers who did not have an option to work from home, and so we could be there to support them. That also meant we were all keeping more connected and keeping an eye on everyone's mental state throughout.

I sincerely hope that once we have worked our way through this experience there will be more deep and meaningful discussions about risk and risk management. Risk is a fact of life; optimal outcomes are never 100% certain. There are enormous gaps between individual perspectives about what is 'reasonably practical' and some people's apparent aims to have 'no risk', which leads to a lot of confusing and contradictory messages (just like we have seen from the whole COVID-19 experience).

In addition to the conversations about risk, we should also be talking about personal responsibility and accountability, for the managers who are charged with the responsibilities to lead and make decisions, as well as the individuals who participate in business activities.

We can't expect hard lines or 'black or white' answers, because there are so many possibilities of contextual factors, but ignoring individual responsibilities (including the impact of one's own attitudes and actions), abdicating responsibilities, adopting an overly controlling authoritarian approach or taking a laissez-faire approach - none of those will fix what has long been broken in the way we approach workplace safety matters.

My employer has continued to operate as an essential business with strict protocols set by MPI to allow our operations to continue. We have taken the requirements seriously, especially for social distancing, which has led to several warnings to individuals for flouting these. I'm just wondering how well aligned ER will be with H&S and government's requirements during the state of emergency and lockdown requirements?

What will be the legal position when parents are expected to return to work and they either don't feel it is safe for themselves, or they have concerns about their children going off to daycare or school, or if their children's school is not going to be open, and they don't have any paid leave options, so their household finances are already under strain? I know we can't expect the whole economy to just 'restart' at the flick of the switch - will there be some leeway for parents and families?

We have actually had very good attendance rates throughout this period, along with record volumes - my employer provides logistics services to keep supermarkets supplied with fresh produce, so not only can people clearly see the essential nature of this business; they also recognise that they are very fortunate to still have the opportunity to work. The distribution centre managers are all a key factor in this, as are members of the team at all levels. We acted early and proactively, communicated clearly and often, and reinforced the health and well-being aspects first and foremost. Everyone has been quite amazing and very supportive with getting things done.

Exactly - an intelligently designed management system should have documentation that makes sense and is easy to follow. In general, too many systems are implemented with insufficient rigour around the purpose behind it and not enough critical thinking about what makes sense and what actually delivers on the intention and purpose. It's also very important to clearly distinguish between what information might be 'nice to have' compared with what is USEFUL to have. For example, I have seen many examples in the past of forms that required a whole lot of detailed information that I was 99% sure no one would ever look at or use, but that had been put into the form because so many other forms asked the same questions. I used to have to reply to all the ISO approved supplier questionnaires in one of my past roles, and I could see that most of the questionnaires asked about 85% of the same questions in one form or another, even though a lot of that information and the form itself was very likely to be filed somewhere and only pulled out at audit time - such a farce! I suggested writing an FAQs type of document that we could attach to the form and return it, but the Managing Director was not comfortable doing that. Such a waste of my time and efforts!!

I agree there is a place for records - a very important one, but only worth the integrity of the processes they represent. Paper alone achieves very little, but smart paper trails can be invaluable.

In the old days, the assumption was made that written documents constituted 'proof'. A signed document was evidence that someone had given their word. This the auditor's mantra was born: "If it's not written down, it didn't happen.' In different times, where one's honour was more highly valued, few would have taken into consideration the potential for documents to be forged.

After years and years and years of this practice, few have questioned its validity, despite the temptations and many known examples of documents being forged, or so many signatures being required that the intended meaning behind putting one's signature to something is often lost.

In addition, the written documents and signatures provided a means of concrete communication in hierarchical organisations that relied largely on their chain of command to communicate amongst the ranks.

In the digital age, most management systems have just automatically carried their hard copy systems over to a digital version, without giving much thought to effectiveness, efficiency, validity, etc. Those old habits are really hard to give up.

In addition, when the key focus becomes accreditation rather than effectiveness and reliability, many organisations (and unfortunately too many so-called consultants) rely too heavily on an accreditation standard, using it as a template - which it is not designed to be, often resulting in ill-fitting solutions - instead of as a checklist, which should prompt the organisation to carefully consider what it needs and how best to provide it for their particular circumstances.

Strictly parroting an accreditation framework or standard is a lazy approach that gives a false sense of assurance and often creates unneccessary bureaucracy, inefficiencies as well as a lot of frustration and friction. Casting the organisation's management system rigidly in terms of the standard may make it easy for the auditor, but it often does not serve the organisation itself as well as it might.

I like to say, "The auditor doesn't live here, but YOU do!" You can always create a navigation resource for the auditor and still develop and implement appropriately compliane systems that best serve your organisation - you just have to understand the purpose of each requirement and do some consulting and consideration for your own organisation to achieve systems that work. And then the documents should capture what you actually do at work - ie get the processes sorted out, then document them. The documents are not the star of the show - the actual ways you do the work is what matters.

There is work to be done..... we could do this so much more effectively and efficiently.

OK - I will hop down from my soapbox now. :-)

We will continue to have safety meetings, especially as we are an essential business that is continuing to operate. Our agenda will be mainly about COVID-19 actions and activities, as well as an opportunity to check in how people are going.

We have implemented an agenda that uses a checklist kind of template, which we fill in before the meeting. Every agenda item is assigned to a person who will be tabling it and an estimate of time allocated for that topic. Our agreement is always that if something requires additional time, the committee can determine amongst the people present whether they want to continue on that topic and extend the meeting time accordingly, continue on that topic and drop something else from the agenda, or schedule a separate meeting for that specific topic. That way we don't hold people hostage and we keep meetings on track for their allocated times.

Playing an active role in business continuity / crisis management team as well as sub-set team for communications. The NZ side of the business was already preparing and had ordered supplies in modest quantities. Australia is much more complex and still only had one HR person for the whole country and one person in logistics to manage safety, so our NZ team started collaborating with AU team to share resources and ideas and help each other.

I have found myself the main COVID-19 researcher and provider of information and resources. I have been providing a lot more support to the HR manager, who has had to work through all the ER requirements. I've been creating everything from training materials, to COVID-19 health information, restricted access signs, posters, procedures. Communications to employees. Working closely with operational managers to verify site hygiene and distancing requirements (which is taking a lot of time to determine, communicate, implement and monitor). Fortunately most of the management team are very committed and very solutions oriented, so they offer ideas and help each other.

My current employer is considered an essential business, so it's really important to keep our workers safe and working. Although many managers could work from home, we prefer to be present, visible and available for employees who have no choice to work remotely. But yesterday we started seeing healthy employees coming to work wearing masks, despite expert advice against it. It was clear people were starting to feel frightened, so I spent some time listening to their concerns and reasons for choosing to wear masks.The trouble is that when other employees started seeing other people wearing masks, they started to become more anxious. One tearful employee explained to me that her trip to the supermarket the previous evening had just set her off - the sight of all those people wearing masks and queueing to enter the supermarket, etc. So we had a conversation that allowed her to safely 'download' some of her anxiety so she could carry on (she is in the office again today, so I consider that a win!).

One of the biggest challenges is trying to manage individuals who are anxiously trying to figure out EVERYTHING right now, when the only thing we can really do is to focus on the present moment and get through that.

Thank you Peter - stay safe and well.

I have been watching with interest as the HR people try to grapple with safety requirements and expectations for people working from home as they prepare for COVID-19 response.....what a minefield!!