I wonder if the word 'outsider' is not quite right. I feel that I don't necessarily belong to any one team, but rather can move between all teams, and build great relationships as I do so. I am outside of the teams but it gives me a great over view and I don't necessarily know (or need to know) all the operational details immediately. Although not really belonging to a team can feel isolating and lonely, the flipside is that I can join any team if I want since I have built that relationship, and as a backup there are always the H&S networks to draw on!
However, I have the sole official H&S role in the organisation, I can be a team of one. If you were to expand the concept to a bigger team of H&S people within an organisation, then I imagine the logistics would be quite different to achieve the status of not belonging to any one team and yet still have the fluidity to join any team when there is an existing "H&S" team designation.
I dislike the phrase 'outsider' as it brings to mind an 'us and them' point of view.

Manatū Hauora says
"The Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Act 1990 (the Act) requires all internal areas of workplaces, licensed premises and certain public enclosed areas to be smokefree and vapefree. The Act applies to schools, early childhood centres, retailers, licensed premises, sports clubs and all employers.

The internal areas of all of these premises are required to be smokefree and vapefree and smoking and vaping is only legally permitted in open areas. Employers/proprietors may choose to ban smoking in their open areas as well."

Therefore, employers get to choose how and where or if they allow smoking or vaping on their sites.

It would be a prime time to engage with people about the issue and how the employees want to deal with it. The employer could offer Quit Smoking options instead. How cool would it be if an employer subsidised quit-smoking hypnotherapy or something like that?

In all things, the employer should offer a safe space, that doesn't necessarily mean seating!

Yep I figured that may be the case, I am not particularly fond of gloves. The guards I was talking about was the metal ones that attach to one or two fingers like a ring, but your finger tips are free. (see photo)

It is pretty important, as Robb said, to include people in the problem solving, rather than inflicting a solution on them.

I read an old case study once where particular miners were going deaf but they refused to wear hearing PPE because the deafness was a status symbol of their elite role. Imagine the process that bosses/consultants went through to discover that! The issue was overcome by a different status symbol - I think it was as simple as different shirts than everyone else.

Google "finger guards chopping vegetables" and there are some guards that are based on ring attachments rather than gloves, or some of the gloves are for finger tips rather than the whole hand.
Trial alternative safety PPE with a small group and treat them as elite - see how (or if) everyone else wants to get in on the action and be elite too.

I reckon that getting into H&S is like an itch that you just have to scratch, and any career change is workable so long as you work at it.

I would imagine that the ideal start would be to decide where you want to be 5 or 10 years from now and make decisions now that will get you to that goal. Or, what is it about H&S that lights your fire? Organisational change? Organisational influence? Positive changes for individuals, Teams, Projects, and/or thinking processes? What do you want to develop in yourself within the H&S field? Answer those questions, and then go find a role that you think meets those needs. Ain't no one else can answer these questions for you!

Have fun in your journey!

I agree with the definition. Which I then think leads to our roles in H&S being to help people achieve their objectives... safely. This puts the focus on achieving objectives which is the WIIFM factor that ideally draws people into participating in the H&S process. Our focus may be H&S, but the key focus should never be H&S which is only one of the many risks around achieving the objective.

This leads to the continuity of operations, identifies the burning bridge, allows cross discipline, and the overlapping risk considerations.

Our goal should be to have people always consider (and action) H&S when they are planning on how they will achieve their objectives. I think this is a different goal than trying to teach people to be safe.

Thanks Peter!

Not that I can help with your topic, but are you thinking in addition to existing parental leave entitlements? If so, that's pretty cool.

https://www.employment.govt.nz/leave-and-holidays/parental-leave/eligibility/
https://www.employment.govt.nz/leave-and-holidays/parental-leave/types-of-parental-leave/

Sorry, I didn't mean for you to change a thing...I was just trying to share a joke.

Diversity (unrelated to our topic) - reminds me of an old bumper sticker: Nuke the gay whales for Jesus!

Yes, what did you do with said company?

That sort of behaviour is legally challengeable but there needs to be a certain level of energy to take up that sort of fight. And would anyone still want to work for that sort of company even if they win the legal fight?

Totally!

Another one to add to the list "not being able to talk about everyday stuff because it relegates you to an island of irrelevancy" (whilst discretely sweating like a stuck pig).

I am not trying to be a keyboard warrior, and truly did enjoy the examples you shared (especially Georgina Beyer who was awesome). Georgina ticks a whole lot of "first" boxes (MP, transgender/Māori mayor, first female mayor for Carterton etc.), I only hope that other women don't have to go through what she did to succeed.

And I am serious when I say it would be a privilege to be in an environment with no racism, sexism and with pay equity and equality. However I also think that to recognise such a place would be to acknowledge that other places are not so lucky, otherwise how would a person truly understand the comparison?

Here are just a few of the things I have had to put up with:
a job interview where the company owner asked if I was planning to have babies soon.
a job interview where they were interested in my ethnicity because I might bridge the gap with cultures that pākehā management couldn't reach (and being female reduces my 'threat' factor I assume).
a job where a male counterpart is paid $20k more with less responsibility
being the sole woman at a table of senior managers laughing about a male "having a period" because he was upset about something (the men laughed, I did not - and the men did not laugh very long)
exclusion from a "management retreat" where my budgets and strategies were discussed without me

So while I personally have had and will always apply for senior roles, I have to be picky about who those roles are for. As Julie says, a woman in a senior role is always distracted with active male bias.

Feel free to keep going, I enjoy NZ history and am loving the details that you are raising. Although I ponder that education is not necessarily leadership or "application for senior roles".

But also note, that while you are privileged enough to not be in a sexist, racist, or gender-differentiated pay environment, they do indeed exist.

Keith said it all in his first post really, although we could also consider racism in the list too, especially considering that we are a multi-cultural nation.

So it only took us 157 years to vote in female leadership - 104 years after women were "allowed" to vote. Sad outlook for the gender pay gap.

Got it! The good behaviour evaporates once the watching eye has moved on. That makes a lot of sense, thank you.

Hi Don
While having a look at your form I noticed a term "evaporative behaviour", would you explain what this is please?

Thanks!

See if any of your staff will stand up and tell their story. In house stories are some of the best training tools.

As everyone says it is still a thing, I had found it to be a big thing every time there was a govt led change. Once people get used to the new settings things calm down to a 'new' business as usual which means I have less Covid work now because there have been very little Govt led changes.
We are going to ramp up Covid comms shortly to address 'living with the pandemic now' (or something like that). So I will have a small increase in Covid work again.

It's not so easy to define in a not-for-profit organisation, we don't all live in an ideal world where management says jump and gives you a no-springs trampoline with safety net to do so. I am currently doing the foundation work for a new system, but it has taken me a month and a half to get the basics in place and I am just now starting the consultations, feedbacks, interactions, testing and updating etc. For us it is a question of capability and capacity to get the ball rolling, and not complacency or a lack of buy in.

So yeah, I agree with Sidney and Todd, being focussed on the paperwork for one topic is driving me bonkers and I welcome every opportunity to jump off track! But the end result of this task is going to be an amazing body of work.

I don't think the two scenarios are an apples with apples comparison in two key areas.

• Jenene wasn't vaccinated then, health workers are vaccinated now
  Jenene had symptoms, the returning to work scenario is supposed to be for positive cases without symptoms

I live in hope that common sense and kindness will prevail on a case by case basis.