This is an experiment in using the Forum software's live chat facility for the first time.
It is also an experiment in using the Forum's 'event' facility. Bear with me.

Craig Marriott is general manager health, safety, environment & quality with FirstGas.
He was scheduled to speak at the 2020 Safeguard Conference about developing an effective long-term health & safety strategy.
The conference has since been cancelled due to the pandemic (it has been rescheduled for 1-2 June 2021).

Craig has kindly agreed to be the guest expert in our first Forum Q&A session. He will be on the Forum for an hour, starting 10am Friday 3 April.

The idea is that Forum members send in questions. They come to the moderator (that's me), who selects the best ones for Craig to respond to.

Given that many businesses have suspended their operations due to the pandemic, it might be the ideal time to do some long-term thinking about H&S strategy when the lockdown ends.

For those businesses still operating, the issue might be: how do I rapidly adapt whatever H&S strategy currently exists to the new reality?

Anyway, let's give it a go on Friday. If it works we'll try it again, maybe weekly, with a new guest each time.

(Any errors will be mine as I try to set this up for the first time.)

The phone call went something like this.
Caller: Do you do investigative stories?
Me: Sometimes. What's the issue?
Caller: There's a company out there selling a non-compliant H&S system to SMEs and they need to be exposed!!!
Me: Interesting. May I ask where you fit in the H&S ecosystem?
Caller: We sell H&S systems. To SMEs. But our system is compliant!
Me: So ... this other crowd is a competitor?
Caller: <awkward pause> Yes.

The conversation raises once again the vexed issue of H&S consultants selling glorified manuals (even if, these days, they are dressed up as software) to SME business owners who want to tick off health & safety as 'done' and never have to think about it again. They are an easy source of income to people who promise their particular 'system' will make H&S go away and leave the business 'compliant' with H&S legislation.

Of course, SMEs should be able to call on specialist advice when they are grappling with H&S. No problem with that. But the thing is, no one can contract out of their H&S duties. As a business owner, you have to do the hard yards yourself: find out what the risks are, understand the ways to eliminate or minimise them, and so on. To do this you have to walk around the business, observe operations, talk to your people, and so on. You have to really and truly understand risk exposure, and no one else can do this for you.

You can get a H&S specialist in to help steer you in the right direction, to understand some of the less obvious risks that your people (or the public) might face, particularly risks to physical and mental health. But the heavy lifting must be done by the SME itself.

And you don't just do this once and never again. It's a process, a mindset, and one which must always involve the people exposed to the risks that your business creates.

As for being 'compliant', that is an illusion. No system can make your business compliant with the HSW Act. If something goes wrong and someone is hurt and the regulator investigates, and finds that the maintenance crew forgot to put a guard back on a machine, and that you, the boss, had walked past that guard lying on the floor for weeks and did nothing about it, you are non-compliant, regardless of your expensive H&S software system. If you are taken to court you will have no defence.

Which is what I told the caller, except more bluntly.