Slightly off topic - but we should also think about our own personal safety. I spend a fair bit of time in , well lets call them dodgy places

I don't go out without this Rescue Me PLB on my person. If I end up in trouble a rescue helicopter will get to within 5m. It will also track my moving body so if I get washed away I'll still be found. Only takes one hand to operate and I figure should I ever need to use it, provided I'm conscious I should be able to get it to work.

And I also carry a small 2,000 lumen torch with strobe. Night vision googles will pretty much pick me up from one side of the island to the other.

https://www.guncity.com/rescueme-plb-1-personal-locator-beacon-319448

Blame is not a binary choice.

There are always many element to what caused an injury. And each person who played a part in any shortcomings should take responsibility for the part they played in it.

Until people accept what they did was wrong they can't atone - which is all about putting things right.

Thanks Stuart. That goes int my Darwinism At Work library.

Theres a few great "forklift Fail" videos around. But as long as we have the Official OSH Certificate we'll be right!

@Tracy IRD is pretty good at identifying "secondary Employment" ask your payroll people what tax code the person is on. If it SEC then you know you arent the primary source of income

Generally it will be a "no" to secondary employment. But as always its a case by case basis and so I dont have a policy.

I was recently looking for a welder and had a call from a guy who was interested. He already had an 8 hour job and reckoned he would be fine in my 8 hour job as well. "You're dreaming mate" was my response.

People who follow my posts know I detest policies. And I don't busy-body into peoples private lives out side our four walls.

I view "fatigue" as just a simple subset under "impairment" and so we are always on the look out for signs of impairment. Doesn't matter where it comes from - we want people here fit, able and alert to do their jobs. If not we have a wee chat.

"Acceptable risk" and "doing enough" comes with the concept of the principle of diminishing returns.

Those that ignore this principle can of course keep themselves employed indefinitely but not actually contribute anything meaningful. This is just "busy work". There is no end to doing "all we can". Which would explain the gutter cleaners I saw the other day. One ute up front with flashing lights. The gutter sweeping truck lights ablaze and flashing. Which was then followed by one of those big trucks lit up like Las Vegas with the big "X" flashing merrily away on the back. Lets put aside how blinded I was by it all and just think about the poor planet being killed by all these filthy CO2 emissions.

I'm not so sure your example of the taxi driver is a good one. "Doing enough" is making sure your taxi is in safe condition each time it is out on the road. Ie in warrantable condition every day - not one day before inspection.

This is the whole problem with certification - eg "OSH Forklift Licenses". People think they only have to prove their competence once every few years - when it should be assessed/monitored much more regularly. Despite NZ Land transport thinking you only ever need to be assessed once and you are good to go virtually forever from that point on.

The positive thing about "acceptable risk" is that the decision makers should be placed in a position to make an actual well informed decision. It does not mean just 'lets do this' without some actual constructive thought behind the issue.

I like the idea of "acceptable risk" and your distinciton between hazard maangement and risk management.

As @PaulReyneke says these are a set of very interesting cases. And the out comes will be very interesting.

And we can begin by thinking that we will do in, say wellington. We know there is an earthquake hazard. And the risk of being seriously hurt and even killed in an earthquake event isn't far away and gets closer as every single day passes.

And we can think (and I am not sure if it has ever been answered) that as the All Blacks enter the field against the South African on Saturday there is a very good chance someone is going to be seriously injured. And people pay to see that. We know that injury is absolutely imminent.

Why should White Island visitors be different?

Yes Trudy. Something like that. Say you get paid $1000 a week, you get $717 from the tax payer for paid parental leave. I'd top up $283 a week for, say six months. I'm going to have to do something for the men that take time off as well.

@julie - I have the lump sum sort of sorted. I'm offering the person who fills the gap a lump sum as compo if I bring the Maternity fixed term to an early close. Food for thought past the year mark. Best I get the first year covered first.

Do you mean cannabidiol or the medication containing THC?

I don't have a drug and alcohol policy but have in the past had at least 2 people taking this medication.

The fact they were being prescribed medicinal cannabis wasn't the issue. It was their underlying medical conditions that was the greater problem and the one causing the greater risk of impairment. Its those conditions that had to be managed.

Seems to me you, and others, are missing the critical part in the OP. Which is "What is your experience?"

Strikes me that is an open invitation for any one to express a view. Had OP wanted a specific gender response I'm sure the question might have been, say, "As a woman, what is your experience?"

And if that were indeed the case I would look forward to responses from say, the Executive Director, the 2 Business Managers and the 2 Project Managers of HASANZ who fill five out of 6 positions in that organization. Or the CEO of the Safety Council of NZ.

And as this is my 8th post in this thread, and for the sake of a better understanding, do we get judged on quantity?

I'm always one up for a challenge @robb.
I could mention, and I know I am going to get fried for this, Matilda Lang. She was the first to invent a new washing machine and she got the NZ patent for it in 1871. It was known as "Mrs Lang's Patent Economical Domestic Washing Table" She was one of earliest engineering inventors we had

It is of course quite difficult to find the first New zealand woman that did something in a field. As it is to find the first new Zealand man in a field. NZ is such a relatively young country many "firsts" were achieved offshore.

But you might be interested in one New Zealand educated woman Beatrice Tinsley. She didn't let sexism stop her from achieving. She went on to prove the universe is infinite and could just keep on expanding forever. She essentially pioneered research into how galaxies evolve,

I'm not sure it is safe to conclude that a person that doent have $5,000 in cash on hand is living pay check to check. Financially, if you have a mortgage it seems to me very sensible that you would not in fact hold cash earning a very low taxable interest rate compared with the benefit of having that $5,000 sitting off your mortgage. That's not to say people arent leaving week by week - of course they are. And I despair each time I get a phone call from a lender of last resort.

I bring up Working For Families because it guarantees a worker with a family a minimum income dependent on the number of children in that family. So the worker doesn't just get their weekly pay check. I find this a major problem with absenteeism - because if the weekly pay drops it gets topped up by WWF. And I can't get overtime done because the more a person works, the more they earn and the less WWF they get.

There is numerous reasons for absenteeism. Which has increased over the past few years. Which I attribute primarily to the increase in sick leave. People get paid more to stay at home on sick leave than they do to come to work. Mondays and Fridays, especially around long weekends / sunny days are worse. A fair bit I put down to resilience - or the lack of. This ranges from can't be bothered getting out of bed through to marital problems bogging people down - for which we provide EAP support. Theres is also the addictive element of gaming. And also low aspirations. Its a multi factor issue with many issues outside my influence. Where I can influence I try to provide solutions. Interestingly (or not) absenteeism is very low / non existent among our foreign workforce. And at the risk of getting myself into trouble with another contentious view, Nz's working conditions essentially don't change very much. These conditions ought to be well known to anyone considering having a family. Theres should really be no suprise conditions

Hand on heart I can honestly say "No" " employees taking extended leave due to injuries/medical issues covered by the policy (i.e. save on costs of overtime/temp cover, retraining for other roles, recruitment costs, etc" has not once been part of the decision making. We have the view that we are very good at solving internal work related problems. External private life problems are not ours to interfere with or try to solve. But we try to give people the tools and resources to find help themselves. Either through the medical insurance and/or EAP. I don't even blink if our EAP provided say someone would benefit from councelling. Just do it and send me the bill.

The only reason we do the health insurance is we think it is of significant benefit to the employee. If a person doesn't have $5.000 in emergency savings where are they going to find $15,000 for a replacement knee. And we insure family members - not just our worker Having their kid get eye surgery adds nothing to our bottom line.

You say "With over a third of NZ'er living pay check to pay check I wonder how much employee wellbeing would be improve by just giving them the $500 extra to spend on unexpected costs or just the day-to-day expenses they face rather than dictating how they should spend their money."

Id be somewhat cautious about where you are getting your data from. And lets not forget the unseen Working For Families which tops up every workers pay if they have kids.

You may be surprised with just how much Leave without Pay our people take. It staggers me when I look at it every week. Employee well being would be significantly improved if they just turned up to work because I am more than happy to pay them.

And believe me. Every year when we sit down and look at our health insurance bill we do go - maybe its better in the employees pocket. But we fully subsidize the insurance and there are quite a number of employees who get significant benefit form it. We average 7 claims per employee. That's claims they would be unlikely to be able to pay if they relied on their weekly pay check.

I can't speak to women in safety because I don't have a big enough data set.

But if you want my experience with roles at a senior level I can say I have recently hired 2 people with a pay rate over $100,000. If I recollect correctly most applicants were women. I hired the 2 best applicants for the job based on their skills and experience. Both happened to be women. Both hires ended up being abject failures and they no longer work here. Do I say "women are hopeless"?. No. I say I had 2 bad hires and will continue to find the best people for the job and currently applicants are on the whole women.

Unfortunately I have hired so many women I have run out of toilet facilities. Do I stop hiring women. No I don't. I am getting more facilities built. That's my commitment to ensuring I hire the best people for the job regardless of some socially constructed label placed on them

Anyhow, best I back out of this tread since it seems to be getting personal

Like wise Trudy. I find these sorts of discussions often dissolve into anecdotal opinion pieces often devoid of reality or fact.

So lets see what the latest Ngā kaiarataki Ratonga Tūmatanui o tēnei wā report says (because I am struggling to find data in a safety context and I am trying to show objectively that barriers are a construct rather than a reality. (Without denigrating individuals own personal experiences - because I am sure we have all had some shockers)

So how does the senior leadership of the NZ public service look:

"There are 41 Public Service leaders, which include:

39 Secretaries and Chief Executives
2 Deputy Public Service Commissioners.
There are 22 women (54%) and 19 men (46%)."

Interesting paper. Which concludes with "That group, mainly male, Māori and Pasifika,
remain severely at risk of poor outcomes, such as joblessness or even imprisonment,
that could be overcome by educational engagement and success."

A situation that hasn't really changed

What I often find in discussion like this is people find barriers when in facts no such barriers exist.

And I don't live in a privileged world. With "privledge" being a word I could be quite offended by if I was so inclined.

My world has been one of meritocracy. I have lived it since my very first job which was the sole male in an office full of women when I learnt the most intimate details about their periods and included, but not limited to, the positions they got into in the back seat of their boyfriends car.

There is probably a very strong argument to be made (if I had time and didn't want to derail this thread0 that the most discriminated person today is your "older, white, male"

But I am looking forward to more womens (am I even allowed to say that nowadays?) input into this subject. Hopefully based on fact rather than opinion because I sure as heck doent want to be accused of "mansplaining"

No Trudy it didn't. I only used recent examples.

1877 Kate Edgar. First woman to get a university qualification. Followed by Helen Connon in 1881 who got a masters degree with honours. And Bessie Te Wenerau Grace was the first Maori woman to get a degree in 1926
1889 Lavinia Kelsey set up the first kindergarten
1893 Elizabeth Yates first woman mayor,
1896 Emily Siedeberg first woman doctor to graduate
1897 Ethel Benjamin first woman law graduate

I can keep going if you wish.

And lets put the gender pay gap nonsense to bed.

Say I have a Safety Manager job going that the market suggests I'm going to have to pay $140,000 to fill. What do you reckon I'm going to do. Hire a man at $140,000 or a woman at $110,000

(and in case an answer is necessary I'm going to hire the best person for the job and if their skills and experiences match $140,000 then that is what I will pay).

The "racism" argument is also a nonsense. And If I had time I would drag out the university demographics of tertiary enrollments and subsequent graduates. And such discussion usually end up patronizing successful members of racial minorities.

Are women in fact inhibited from applying for senior roles.

Gee our first woman Prime Minster (Jenny Shipley) was back in 1997.
Dame Sian Elias was first woman Chief Justice in 1999
Dame Cath Tizard was first woman Governor General in 1990
Christine Rankin became boss of Social Welfare in 1998
Even Georgina Beyer became the first trans woman MP in 1999