I had a great mentor when working with ABB back in the day. Russell Kilpatrick was the Quality Manager and helped me as I started on the health and safety pathway. He was a good listener and asked probing questions to help guide my decision making rather than giving me the answers. He was an excellent sounding board for me to bounce improvement ideas off. One key phrase he used has always stayed with me, "you have enough rope to make mistakes but not enough to hang yourself". "Talk to me if you are not getting the results you want or are having problems otherwise feel free to experiment - just keep me in the loop". We would have weekly catch ups to talk about what was working and what wasn't. By working with Russell as I studied for my GradDipOSH, I was also exposed to Quality and Environmental processes. Even back in the late 1990's early 2000's Russell had a visionary approach integrating all three disciplines to ensure robust management of operational risks was maintained. He emphasized selling the story not telling people how to do things.
Interestingly this approach is as valid to day as it was back then.
I now have a business mentor, Mel Roswell who is helping me continually fine tune the story tellling and understanding what managers are asking which, in turn, helps me understand what they actually need and I can deliver messages they understand and can take on board.

Yep, best kept secret since sliced bread!

Our reps have a reduction in the productivity code to allow them time to carry out their activities. It is a voluntary position so no financial remuneration is provided. Asking for payment is going back to the 'dark ages' when danger money was provided instead of engagement, commitment and leadership.

Hi Kenneth. That's tricky. I would go back to your H&S or HR system for guidance. If you have a policy or procedure stating that this information is required annually then it is a reasonable request from an employer, so long as you are not asking for detailed information which is private between doctor and patient. Another option is to have mandatory health monitoring paid for by the company annually.
You need to make sure your questionnaire is based around the risks associated with the work. I've seen some that a doctor would complete for a patient which is far more than is reasonable for an employer to know.

Hi. We have dusted off our old plan and tweaked it to suit COVID-19. We have 4 stages and are currently in stage 1 - preparing and informing.
We have started a Response Team to identify all the things we will need to have in place including remote work options, restricting travel following MoH advise, ongoing support to staff in isolation, impact on business and how we manage client expectations etc.
At present it is all about planning for various scenarios and how we would respond.
This is being communicated to our people which is helping to lessen hysteria over this. Unfortunately media are not helping by focusing on deaths and numbers of those infected without balancing the news with the number who recover.

Hi Lucille
We have 8 locations. Each location holds their own H&S meeting with the Reps. Each location nominates one Rep to attend a group meeting where learnings, issues, risks and opportunities are shared so we can all learn from what has happened in other parts of the business. Good for checking to see if the risks / opportunities have been found in other parts of the business and locations .

I make a point of taking the team offsite each year around this time to review what we have achieved over the past 12 months and where we want to take the company in the following three years. At these sessions we pretty much land on actions for the first 12 months, have some detail for the next 12 months and generally just a high level idea of actions for the third 12 months. By doing it away from the day to day means we can focus and quickly generate ideas. We try and keep to a theme or one goal with several planned activities to reach the desired outcome.
By doing this it makes it easier to share with the various parts of the business in a way they can understand and take on board. Having too many goals or activities only serves to confuse people and gives them anxiety over how much "extra" work they will have to do.
By having a three year goal and breaking the actions down spreads the amount of work and embeds the processes better in the company.
The hard part is getting to talk to all the relevant groups due to their busy schedules. Takes a bit of planning

This says more about the culture of the company than having an immobilizer fitted to a vehicle. If the manager can do something so stupid with no thought to the safety of those in the vehicle what other bad practices are they demonstrating?

I had this issue at my previous company. I even approached the Sikh community to see if they had a workable solution - even if the turban can be tied differently to allow a hard hat to sit on a persons head properly and still protect their hair from being seen. They did not respond so my suggestion would be to make it clear on all job advertising that wearing hard hats is compulsory so please do not be offended if employment is declined if you cannot meet this requirement.

I agree - no process, training or system can prevent stupidity. The sampling process would still be protected but at least the orchardist would have had an opportunity to reiterate the need to stay on mown sections and could have refused entry if they thought the operator was not going to follow site rules - same as any other industrial site

WorkplaceSIM are creating interactive 'gaming' inductions - https://workplacesim.co.nz

Actually Andrew unless the bill was presented by someone who has the name Bash referring to it is extremely derogatory. If you want to reduce the name down use an acronym - DVVPB.
Domestic violence is more than just one partner hitting the other or hitting their children. There is also mental abuse which has nothing to do with 'bashing'. I agree with your sentiments that the workplace should not be held accountable for managing domestic violence but you lost your argument before it started by demonstrating a lack of sensitivity to an extremely serious issue that is plaguing our nation.

Paul you need to look at the hours your organisation works. If they are not exceeding 1 million per year then that is a pointless measure and you would be better to look at 200,000. TRIFR and LTIFR are only worthy as a point in time comparison to other organisations as a check to see if you are better or worse than anyone else when the measure is applied. Taking Peter B's view proactive measures are far more worthy of organisations wanting to continuously improve.

I personally won't join an organisation if HSW sits under HR. It either stands as it's own discipline (extremely rare) or under either Risk or Operations. If it sits under either of these I prepare and present the Board papers and sit in on Board meetings to discuss the HSW portion. I have had too many problems where messages just don't get delivered appropriately by having some one else deliver them.

It would be helpful if clients would recognise all pre-qualification systems. We are in the same boat and are now declining some pre-qualification systems as they are not as robust as others and we have limited funds available.
The advantage is the third party reviews the documentation thus alleviating our staff from spending time doing that. Instead, our staff can focus on the project risks and auditing to ensure contractors and clients meet their obligations under the terms of the contract and legislation.

I find it disappointing that people do not know the difference between Accreditation and Certification. Legally this is quite big - Accredited means you own the process - Certified means you have met the requirements (i.e. ISO owns the standards process and companies work to gain Certification to the standard).
I also have a major concern about promoting standards that are only applicable to New Zealand. I agree something is needed to replace ACC WSMP and Partnership however I do not feel developing a stand alone process with lower levels of acceptability than ISO and AS/NZ standards is helpful.
Whilst SafePlus appears to be more robust that the ACC system, I am concerned that this will be a money maker for independent consultants to "push" smaller businesses into with little thought or consideration to the needs of those businesses.
I hope I am incorrect in my assumption - only time will tell.