I expect mine to 100% be listening to their work groups and raising the issues/ideas those people don't feel so inclined to raise otherwise — Andrew

Problem is you always seem to be the exception to the rule @Andrew :wink:

Reps doing their job and thinking they are helping keep people safe should I would have thought be incentive enough. — Andrew

Is part of the problem that a lot of organisations have strayed away from the intended purpose of H&S Representation - with most of these roles now being a mouthpiece of "management" rather than actually advocating for the needs of the workers they are representing?

It would be interesting to hear the split of time that H&S reps spend on communicating the latest company safety initiative (or similar) vs listening to their work-groups H&S issues and working with management to actually address those issues?

Digging up this old thread since there has been some new developments - specifically the decision made by the Private Security Personnel Licensing Authority (PSPLA) that H&S Consultants that carry out investigations are considered Private Investigators, but they agreed that HASANZ, NZISM or similar are better suited to "regulate" H&S Consultants. Therefore if you are registered with HASANZ or a member of a HASANZ member organisation you are exempt from needing to be licensed.
(Also it clarifies auditors and employees who conduct investigations for their employer are not considered private investigators)
Update including links and previous updates are on the NZISM website - https://www.nzism.org/blog/accident-investigators-and-the-psppi-act-2010/

Like most of the above comments I think this is not the best outcome, while it is good there is some clarity I think the arguments made missed some key issues (similar to those made here).

1.
The definition of a private investigation in the act is [paraphrasing] someone (or a business) who collects information regarding;

• the personal character, actions, or
• behaviour; or the financial position; or
• the occupation or business; or
• the identity or whereabouts

of another person to provide to a client - in other words their core business is providing information about one person to another person.
The act also makes an number of exceptions, one of which is where the information is gathered "only as a necessary, usual, or reasonable incident of any other activity by that person that is not described in [the definition of a private investigator]"
Investigation into a workplace incident is the activity that H&S practitioners undertake, with gathering the types of information above being incidental to that as necessary - we do not collect the information primarily to provide it to another person in and of itself. This should have been the main argument made to the PSPLA

2.
The exclusion of "in house" H&S practitioners solely on this fact alone is potentially illogical as a large proportion of "in-house" H&S investigations, while conducted by the employer regarding their own incident, have the ultimate purpose of providing the information to others - mainly clients but this could even include for WorkSafe in the case of duty holder reviews (but not sure if this would be exempt as providing information to the Crown as they are a Crown Agent).

3.
It is also potentially illogical to say that the HASANZ / HASANZ Member Organisations are better positioned than the PSPLA to regulate/manage H&S Consultants that conduct H&S Investigations, but if you are not a member of such organisation then you need to be licensed by the PSPLA - surely the logical outcome of the first part of this statement would be PSPLA does not regulate any H&S practitioners, and leaves HASANZ, etc. to regulate all H&S Investigations / H&S practitioners. Unfortunately this is a much bigger issue relating to the professionalisation of the H&S industry in NZ.

One final point is that I do completely agree with the comment made by @Mike Cosman that there is need to for our industry as a whole to improve knowledge and understanding of NZ's privacy laws and how they relate to H&S Investigations.

Interested in hearing others opinions on this decision.

This is essentially the reason why they scrapped the WSMP scheme - it had become a farce where companies knew what they had to do to get certified so were just focusing their limited resources on getting that done, rather than improving the actual safety of the operations. And you couldn't really blame them as a lot of the time improvements to actual safety could have little influence of the outcome of a WSMP audit.

ACC basically said this with their findings when they reviewed the WSMP scheme where they "found there were no significant reduction in injuries and injury claims."

This is a common issue with most auditing schemes - if the focus is on getting certification for certification's sake then typically the minimum will be invested to get there. Even the ACC AEP webpage lists the first 2 benefits (of 5) as financial motivation. Same happens with ISO9001 Quality systems - if the motivation is needing it to win work or as a client/statutory requirement it is seen less as a tool to use to improve the business's operations and more rather a hurdle that needs to be jumped every 1-3 years.

To be honest my advice is to accept the AEP audit for what it is seen as for the company, a means to reduce their operating costs - but that also means that very little weight should be given to the audit's outcomes when reviewing and planning improvements to the work processes, and rather use evidence from more "realistic" sources such as your H&S committees and worker engagement processes.

1) valve guards are useless because you can't attach a regulator to the bottle — Matthew Bennett

Are they misunderstanding the purpose of the threaded valve guards/caps? My understanding is these are installed when the cylinders are being transported/moved (and therefore not chained up), not when they are in use. Once in position and secured, the cap can be removed and regulator fitted.
Am I missing something?

My other favourite is asking what the HSAWA regulations that you must follow when you see this sign. — MichaelWilson

Well the obvious answer is "all of them" :roll:

The BOC Guide (thanks for sharing Steve) is well laid out and contains good information. It references, value guards, rings and caps, however is quite silent on when where and what. — Matthew Bennett

Section 5.5 of Worksafe's guide for Gas Cylinders provides a bit more details for "when, where and what"

It is important that all users of cylinders take appropriate steps to ensure that
cylinder valves are protected against damage.
Examples of appropriate steps include:
a. Valve protection rings, where these form part of the cylinder design
b. Vented valve caps, where threaded provision for these has been provided
c. Protecting the tops of cylinders during transport and handling, or
d. Securing tall cylinders during transport and storage to prevent them from toppling.

While it is implied that not all of these need to be done (with the "or" at the end) the question to the supplier if their intended method of protection is to ensure the cylinders are chained up is what is the plan for a case like the linked video when a cylinder is being moved and potentially left to stand unsecure for a moment while doing so?

Most "sign-in" sheets I have seen include some form of "I acknowledge have been informed of and understand the hazards and controls required for this site" statement on them, the thinking being if someone is injured then you can always point to them signing this to claim it was their fault and not the company's... although (without digging up any actual cases) I would expect this defense would only work for very rare/specific circumstances.

I can think of some specific circumstances where a "sign-in sheet" would be useful / practical evidence, but this would be as a record of an agreed conversation between two people rather than the generic "name, company and tick the boxes (without even looking at what you're ticking)" sheet that are very common.

One other reason to have one is if there is the potential to need to inform people of an exposure to a hazard that may not be immediately obvious, delaying immediate notification and therefor needing a record of those that could have been exposed within a certain date/time period.

who can hold the Upstream PCBU even a little bit accountable if the Downstream PCBU does not want to — Benjamin Basevi

Regarding this question, in the first instance it is ultimately:

• WorkSafe NZ for HSWA related offences, or
• MBIE / Local Authority for Building Act related offences

With regards to enforcing HSWA (i.e. holding people accountable to it) WorkSafe NZ is the agency that gets to decide who/what gets publicly investigated/prosecuted. Another person can only privately prosecute if WorkSafe NZ decide not to.
So essentially, if the Downstream PCBU is convinced there is no issue that needs to be dealt with, then the issue would either need to be alerted/raised to WorkSafe NZ or whoever issued the building consent. Of course you may have to wait 12 months (or up to 24 months possibly) for WorkSafe NZ to decide if they will prosecute or not...

It may be worth applying to NZTA for a specific exemption from the logbook requirements for this person / role (under Section 30ZA), especially if it is only a single trip every few weeks (and assuming it would not be much more over the 50km radius). Otherwise I would expect that the driver would need to comply with the logbook rules for the whole work period that the >50km trip occurred in as per Amber's post.

Although I don't know how easy / difficult the process to apply for an exemption is, and there doesn't seem to be much information about the process for applying for one on NZTA's website.

We struck the same problem with an office worker who sometimes drives a truck when we are short staffed. On these weeks he must record all time worked- in the office, and driving for the whole work week as all of this time counts towards their hours. — Amber van Polanen

How do you manage this in practice Amber? I am assuming that this worker could be pull onto a driving shift with little notice (e.g. turn up in the morning and told they are needed to drive today) - do they just retroactively record the required previous days work time (from memory?) in their logbook before leaving the depot?

WSMP made HS easy with its clear guidelines — robyn moses

But did it actually improve H&S performance? I think that was the conclusion to their review, that while the required actions to gain the certification were occurring there was no evidence that it was having the expected effect on improving workplace H&S (and therefore reducing ACC operational costs).

If they can demonstrate suitable capacity and capability ACC will massively reduce the levy's. — Matthew Bennett

My understanding is that their levies are reduced as the Accredited Employer is responsible for paying any costs associated with a work related injury (either self-insured or by taking out worker compensation insurance) - is this correct?
So we shouldn't look at the accredited employee program as getting a "discount" of the levies, rather it is shifting the responsibility and costs/payments to the private insurance sector rather than state funded/run ACC. (I realise this is off-topic for the original post but just wanted check my understanding)

Unless there is a special agreement with management, staff and unions that elected H&S reps will make up your health & safety committee. This would be highly unusual. — Tony Walton

The regs require that at least half of the H&S committee members must be workers representing the workers (and they have not been nominated by the organisation). It also clarifies that H&S Representatives are eligible to be a member of the committee.
Given the H&S Representatives are generally workers who represent the workers (or workgroup) it seems common practice that they are members of the committee. The only stumbling points would be if the organisation is selecting (either overtly or covertly) the H&S representatives and not the workers, or if the H&S Representative is not a worker of the organisation itself (but the last one would only mean the H&S rep would count toward the required half of members).

The prescribed ratio in the Worker Engagement,... regs is 1 H&S Rep for every 19 workers (R6)

Is there a legal requirement to have H&S Meetings every month or can they be done every 2 months, we still hold the monthly team meeting that has an H&S component. — Don Ramsay

Technically the only legal requirement is to "have practices that provide reasonable opportunities for workers to participate effectively in improving work health and safety" (paraphrasing HSWA S61), and to engage with workers (S58) in the circumstances detailed in S60... but that is the bare minimum compliance. Formal (statutory defined) H&S representatives and H&S committees come from a request from the workers to have these in place (or the organisation electing to establish a committee).

As others have said the statutory minimium (or maximum?) is 3 months between H&S Committee meetings. However this is usually a case where the better approach is for the processes for worker participation/engagement to be agreed on by all involved, and then run to those agreed terms. So if the workers are happy and agree with the H&S component of the monthly team meetings and the dedicated H&S Meeting every two months there should not be an issue. Best bet is to have a periodic review (e.g. annually) of the process as part of the H&S meeting to re-confirm that the process is working and everyone is still on board.

That caption is not wrong!

Yes, but remember the expression'what can be measured, can be managed' — Stephen Small

Isn't the full quote from Drucker "What gets measured gets managed — even when it's pointless to measure and manage it, and even if it harms the purpose of the organization to do so"

Which couldn't your story be an example of a reason to not collect this data as if you don't have it, it cannot be used as evidence against you... if you were only considering statutory risks...

So to set metrics, first decide what metrics are required after discussing with all affected stakeholders to determine where, when, why, who and how the metrics are related to each parties needs. — KeithH

completely agree with your comment Keith - with asking "what" / "why" being the most critical questions. The "what" being to understand where the organisation is currently (i.e. not jumping to what metrics are required):

• what is currently working well, and why is it working well - to establish metrics to help maintain these aspects
• what is not currently working well, what are the likely causes, and what could be done to change this - to help improve these aspects by establishing metrics to both confirm that planned actions are being done, and to verify that, if the planned actions are being done, they are having the intended/expected effect.

If you are meaning a Certificate of Competence for powder actuated tools the expiry date has to be included on the certificate (and be recorded in the register).
Worksafe may specify the expiration period for the certificates, but I could not find any information that they (or OSH / DoL) have done so for PATs - even the ACoP just mentions the regulator can set when the certificates expire but doesn't include any specific period.
Just for reference, my Ramset PAT CoC expires in 2028, and given I got it in 2005 that's 25 years!