Measuring strategy can be hard because it’s long term. You need to understand clearly what success looks like for each objective and set this out at the start. That is where you’ll agree the value and whether it is worth the effort. When you break it down into shorter term actions, line these up with your overall success measure. Review the strategy routinely and make sure you’re still on track and that the objective is still valid and providing value in the renewed context. You may well have to change direction if, for example, a pandemic disrupts everything.

How to answer that in one paragraph? Thanks, Jon!
Least helpful to me is the accident triangle (or at least how people have interpreted Heinrich’s original work and used it). It has driven obsession with counting and focusing on low risk issues. The most helpful is probably the underlying theme of several different, and newer, schools of thought which is to put the worker at the heart of H&S and better understand their reality.

Your headline strategy information should be simple to understand because it’s at quite a high level (if you have a multi-lingual workforce, do some translated versions). The key thing is to link the strategy to the work people do so it is clear why it matters to them. If your strategic objective is to reduce paperwork (hint: do this), it will be fairly obvious. But if it is to increase technology use, this may be less clear, so show them what it means to have a virtual reality version of their workplace.
Afterwards, keep the conversation going – when people make suggestions, raise issues or ask why we do things, look at how it links to the strategy and discuss it in those terms so their understanding grows over time.

I always make sure there is a really clear alignment between the safety strategy and the overall business strategy – how do they help and support each other? How will the strategy we are developing make the overall business better? But the real key is groundwork with them before the strategy is developed. I spend a lot of time emphasising the link between safety and business. The underlying aspects of good safety also support good quality, reliability, efficiency and profitability, so safety is effectively a health indicator for business performance.

It is the role of the executive to lead the business. They should have the discussion around the strategy and what direction to take. But this should always include input from the teams. This will mainly be to flesh out detail and refine things, but the leadership and team views should mostly align. If they don’t, don’t be afraid to change things, but only make fundamental changes if there is a radical mismatch that will derail the strategy.

Before we start – would just like to say well done to all the H&S people managing their teams through this pandemic. I have had positive feedback from lots of organisations about how well things are being managed – even though it’s a tough time.

Thanks Peter - looking forward to it

The situation is fairly static right now given the lockdown, so this is reasonable for essential workers - and I gave similar advice to somebody yesterday when discussing ppe requirements for current work.
Where an epidemic is different to other risks is that the risk is continually increasing at an exponential rate (when not under lockdown). Five weeks ago Italy had 67 new cases in one day - three weeks later it was over 6000.
It also rapidly expands to impact on areas outside of your immediate control - availability of staff, equipment, health care, emergency services, etc and so becomes very complex very quickly. A standard risk assessment becomes mostly obsolete in a complex environment because cause and effect get messed up. Great article about this topic posted a couple of days ago here https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-coronavirus-may-stress-test-which-finally-unmasks-warren-black/?trackingId=FrT%2BA6fVcBGDaK7cku70zA%3D%3D

Not necessarily. If you are assessing the risks, putting in proportionate controls to the best of your knowledge, monitoring them etc then probably not. If you tell your worker to come in even though they tell you they're sick and then put them in close proximity to each other with no other protection, then probably yes. If the virus is ebola, the controls would have to be way more rigid than if it's the common cold.
The Act does not require absolute prevention of every possible consequence, hence 'so far as is reasonably practicable'

Personal pet hate. I once reviewed almost 200 policies for a government ministry as part of a supplier review. There were probably really only 4 or 5 different policies there. The rest were boiler plate nonsense.
David Provan wrote a good article about his experience in changing this here https://safetydifferently.com/safety-policy-from-compliance-to-desire-driven/ and I have done something very similar in the past - link the policy to your specific organisational approach and make it meaningful, if you're going to have one.
You need to be careful with this series @Simon Lawrence. This is how my book started and mutated into something a lot more time consuming!

It just says "may have regard to" Surely this means it could go either way depending on the particular overlap/conflict?

Have a look here - particularly the video titled 'paperwork'
https://vimeo.com/showcase/3938199

We have an in house occ health nurse which is the ideal solution.
Not everyone can do this, though, so http://www.habitatwork.co.nz/ has some good basics.

I'll message you separately rather than get into lots of detail here.
My thoughts on rules in general - https://www.safetydifferently.com/rules-who-needs-them/

Generally speaking I find them patronising, a huge over-simplification of issues and a convenient tool to blame the worker for incidents. We have removed ours and replaced them with a set of principles that talk about how we will work and also give some pointers to focusing on critical risk areas. It's been extremely well received by the field teams (especially as they were developed in conjunction with them).

The common permit system is still up and running in Taranaki. Not sure who is overseeing it these days with all the changes in field ownership etc over the last few years.

Educating the Board is easy - include routine awareness slots in Board meetings (and outside them occasionally); get them out in the field to understand the hazards (not stage-managed and not en masse); include training and awareness information in routine written reports. We include both technical information and a general industry update - case law, relevant incidents elsewhere, what WorkSafe are doing etc.
What is hard is getting a Board interested in receiving the information and learning from it. I'm fortunate to have a Board that is very receptive as well as having a good foundation of knowledge and awareness - this is not the case for everyone. For this you need influencing skills rather than informing skills - why they need to, why it's important, how safety is often a proxy for overall performance etc. Move away from the old fashioned 'because you must' towards a more holistic view that emphasises that safety and productivity and profitability are all inextricably linked and that providing a safe environment where teams feel valued is foundational to performance.

See this thread
https://forum.safeguard.co.nz/discussion/comment/924

As ever, nothing is black and white and the answer is probably a bit of both camps.
However, while I'm not a fan of the absolutism of the strapline, the 'fix the road' side would be most successful. Seems to be a lot more straightforward to put a median barrier round a tricky corner than try to educate and retrain everyone of the thousands of drivers that may go round there at any point. We have a training and licensing regime now that strongly emphasizes the need to obey the speed limit, but people don't. Not sure why we think shouting it more loudly will help. Mass behaviour change can be achieved - it has been for reducing drink driving and seat belt use for example, but it's very hard, very uncertain, very slow and needs to consider much broader societal aspects than simply driving.

This video is interesting https://www.zeroharm.org.nz/resources/risk/fatigue-risk-management/ It nicelys outline the dangers of relying on a single limit as a fatigue management approach