No not in the 12 years I have worked here, I think what Andrew said above happened here some years prior and that thanfully was the end of that.

The ANZSIC classification code for our industry is C 12 my thinking is it is out side scope of WEPR regs. Hmm yes have a niggle of suspicion i have seen C 11 class on our ACC docs so will have to follow that up. I am sole practioner, implementing my take on a HSMS, past 7 years on our only Sth Island work site of 200, 20% of my work is in RMP compliance.. our license to operate, we are certified auditors and subject to a number of audits incl. unannounced annually from MPI, Ecan, Customers, as well as worksafe, building compliance, machine guarding, ergonomics ect..we have never failed one so i have to put some credence in my direct rept here, the compliance manager who pulled out the high risk industry regs., previously my direct repts were national HS managers until they were scraped when ACC audits stopped.
We have a new CEO HS focused hence mad scramble for a gab analysis of the work i do to show site HS compliance upstream. Nailed it but for this question. No small fete its a big portfolio to handle solo as you all well no, i was worried that my focus on investigating and mitigating critical risks over putting effort into general everyday hazards that are managed well enough through SOP and dept. daily checks wouldnt go down so well, the only procedure i dropped was contractor management which for us is supplier rather than contractors as such, which falls under a senior manager.
We are the same struggle get HSC off ground (think all were happy during covid to flag it) never mind HSR, i approached our union rep this week see if keen do HSR traing, got a flat no, left school 30 yrs ago after form 2. We have other means of engagement that works, tool box, sop/haz review particularly after an event and a big notice board in cafe where i post data ect with invite to a regular open forumn, for anyone wanting to continue HS chat.
Non HS practioners just dont get that first and foremost we are answerable to our profession. I doubt the idea of HSR will be dropped, it looks good on paper i guess.
Appreciate the feed back and any other thoughts

I wanted to edit my post but couldn't find edit button.
The question was is HSRs mandatory in high risk industries or the process for HSRs is initiated upon workers request.
I failed an internal audit by non qualified HS persons for not having HSR's in what they deemed to be a high risk industry as per the WEPR regs specifically C 11 Food Manufactures.
Worksafe NZ guidelines for the regs were the most informative. I reached out to two people registered with HASANZ, both thought the regs. were unclear, couldn't really answer the question and one directed me to WorkSafe for an answer.
However one suggested I look at how the business had determined it fell into the high risk industry. That really clarified things, who knew that food manufactures take a product and turn it into something else e.g milk to milk power, chicken fat to ice cream, yeast to beer, our business are primary processes not food manufactures, so are outside the scope of high risk industries.
WorkSafe NZ then nailed it by telling me that irrespective of the level of risk of any business, HSRs are only initiated at workers request, unless PCBU initiates themselves.
It was an interesting exercise.

Umm I will put my hand up for doing no checks on light work vehicles before taking one out of the car pool only to be pulled over and ticketed because rear brake light was not working.

I I wish. I recently got no where disputing an accepted ACC work injury claim for a work boot rubbing against a bunion causing it to ulcerate. We discovered the worker had failed to tell us 18 months prior of a diagnosis for diabetes that was poorly managed and a recent tendency for the feet to swell excessively during the day. A look at the feet post event revealed swollen, discoloured ankles, long sharp toe nails and feet that are calloused with numerous corns/bunions sticking out from the skin. Foot/wound care is poor, worker cannot reach feet. The work injury referral was made by A&E with a note that the workers personal GP should be consulted in assessing the validity of the claim, ACC accepted it anyway and paid the worker weekly ACC compensation on the workers own Doctor's standard sick note not the ACC118. Now that the worker is back at work we hope padding the foot with foam will help prevent a similar injury..(unlikely).

Gaining tertiary level through the ACC WSMP awarded the business a 20% discount on ACC levies for two years in recognition that the business demonstrated continuous improvement, under a best practice framework.
That incentive motivated a business to up their Health and Safety game. Our first ever National Health and Safety Manger appointed in 2010 to implement management of workplace H&S saved the company $750,000 in levies on achieving our first tertiary level cert.
When ACC shelved, the program many business not big enough to meet the Accredited employer prog. <500 concluded that there is no incentive to show continuous improvement and gains made in HS for some were lost e.g. National HS managers/roles, HS policy and S.M.A.R.T objectives dropped along with HS KPI requirements for managerial roles.
Enter Work safe with its best practice tick the box requirements for machine guarding, traffic management etc. and a she will be right attitude if we just budget those costs in is the stance many business in manufacture industries appears to have taken. WSMP made HS easy with its clear guidelines

It is still very much a thing occupying 50% of my time as sole HS Officer for an essential service with 200 workers all of whom have been able to continue to come into work as household contacts and with 85% having had to isolate for 7 days as positive cases and currently running with 15% having to re-isolate due to reinfection. Managing Covid has distracted from more general health and safety. There is an uptick in injuries and accidents due to increased workload on existing staff (longer hours, 6 days working week, workers being asked to carry 2x normal workload) labour shortages, isolation and now the flu season causing high staff absenteeism alongside increased production demands to meet food supply chain. Many of our workers who have continued to work through the past 3 years are suffering from covid fatigue with blurring of boundaries between work/home while dealing with schooling, illness, loss, rising economic costs and loss of income in households where household contacts do not work in critical services. Try, trying to find replacement AED pads in the country at the moment. Routine or preventative equipment maintenance is dire with parts not being able to be accessed or service people unavailable to fix, equipment malfunction not only increases the dangers for staff if something untoward occurs but it also increases manual loading if the machine is out of service. Then there is the use of inferior PPE until stocks arrive in the country. Staff waiting 10 hrs in A&E to met medical treatment for workplace injury and necessary paper work for ACC. Sorry for the rant, hygiene, social distancing and protocols for contagious diseases were all part and parcel of our everyday buisness

We had best laid plans ready to roll into whatever phase it was at the end of Feb: with bubble groups on different rosters, staggered starts/use of cloak rooms/canteen and separate portaloos/canteens set up for identified close contacts etc. Only for 40% of our staff to go off and attend a 21st party on the last Saturday of Feb. It turned out there were positive cases and household contacts at the party who had not received notification of their status prior to attending. By the end of the week 40% of staff tested positive, it has been a challenging two weeks. Surprisingly we have no medical treatment injuries so far this year and this is very unusual.

whose paying?? For any of it! The HR of the Workplace where I work with 500 put out the companies isolation payment procedure just last week. I really love that anyone with flu like symptoms is encouraged to stay home and will be paid leave entitlements incl leave in advance as needed. On return to work the employer will apply for the govt. grant and on receipt of payment the leave used to the value of will be reversed. However I, with my HS hat check govt updates daily and see procedure for subsidy requires persons in isolation to have received a confirmation text from the same ph. number that vaccine reminders are sent from and that as of now you are only going to receive such a text if you go through all the hoops to self identify, never mind that not everyone has ready internet access or is internet savey, our workers certainly are not. I have entered 20 self identifications to date and only one entered on the 15 Feb. received her txt from MOH yesterday and a ph. call from WINZ re: subsidy lol...Re: registering as a critical business ect I drove past like 1000 car in the cue for test at Orchard Rd,CHCH yesterday to pick up first set of RATs all they required is me to tell them the order number from the car window. I really feel for the people cued, sitting in hot cars, this govt!

Interesting will have to get some positive cases to have a go. We have RATs we have purchased and those distributed through the distribution center (3 different types) to close contact critical workers who are exempt from isolation during work hours. We are relying on the RATS to indicate with some certainty when the household close contacts in particular are positive. If daily RAT test is positive, we do a 2nd to confirm. We have not yet had a negative result after a positive of 20 positive cases.

Note MOH states after 10 days isolation a positive case may test positive, but this is to be expected and not of a concern as outside of infectious period. Will give them a RAT test when back at work to gauge this

Employed in Primary Industries with food chain reliant on us and animal welfare constraints. Found only one RAT avenue who will sell us 5000 at $12 a pop..lol price 3 weeks ago was half that.

Andy Bunyan just had email to our query about RAT availability from from one of NZ's approved suppliers Roche Diagnostics NZ Ltd. They are out of Self Test RAT (a global problem) and stock that requires a medical professional to conduct the test is not due into the country until at least March.

At a minimum quantity order of 2500 kits (5 tests a Self test kit) and a 1 year shelf life

Thank for that yes the more I delve I see, and hope my PCBU doesn't learn HSWA is in the backseat as I try to push engineering controls for clean air in a workplace that does not meet the scope for all 600 workers to be vaccinated but nevertheless it is required because of the transmission hazard. Yes the Mrna technology is an amazing breakthrough imagine the day when bodies can be instructed to produce bone marrow for leukemia patients for example

MattD2 my mental health and stress just increased exponentially with having to lead the consultation process, engagement and participation with the workforce on the work site for the senior leadership teams proposed vaccination policy. With a Worksafe guide beside me that says "your focus in the risk assessment must be on the role – the work being done – rather than the individual performing the role. If you want your employees to be vaccinated for reasons other than work health and safety that is an employment matter" whilst the risk assessment completed by a consultant says vaccination is warranted because the business needs to continue to operate to support NZ food supply and animal welfare concerns through shut down disruptions

With no HR I am now having to listen to staff concerns (these are minimum wage workers, for some english is a second language) about inserting magnets or growing two heads while trying to keep an impartial face on while referring them to talk with their GP or the MOH 0800 number; hearing workers complain off bullying from direct supervisors and co-workers re vaccination status, union reps. up in arms wanting pay increases for vaccinated staff; production complaining that are understaffed and already turning away job seekers and Winz beneficiaries because of their vaccine status and I have four workers complaining of health issues post vaccination (that we took them to the center to get). Do I register them in our accident/incident register along with my own stress and mental health I wonder.

Steve H Increased rates of cleaning of staff rest rooms is one of the measures Irish employers are using.
Great work from Ireland, hoping like heck they get it under control particularly Waterford the hometown of my daughter-in-law..
Yes, well have watched in vain for MOH to give the people any form of advise on boosting immunity, I have had to send such booster packs off to friends and family testing positive after arrival in MIQ from Europe

Preventative risk management to boost immune systems in both vaccinated and unvaccinated workers. Issue bottles of Vit. D3 and Vitamin K to activate (alternatively two serves of sauerkraut a day). Why, who for and dosage link at bottom of comment.
In areas where there is high community transmission or risk of e.g. planes, poor air flow boardrooms/office encourage nasal sprays, regular nasal washing (similar to throat gargle) and blowing nose instead of inhaling mucus (virus from infected individuals is more able to enter the respiratory track by sticking to mucus in nasal cavity where it is ingested)
https://youtu.be/fbGug3rczx4
COVID-19 Mortality Risk Correlates Inversely with Vitamin D3 Status, a Mortality Rate Close to Zero Could Theoretically Be Achieved at 50 ng/mL 25(OH)D3: (125 nmol/L) Results of a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/13/10/...

Thank for response. I have no peers to ask what best practice looks like in this regard; my direct report is to my site manager who sits on the senior leadership team, i have been in this role 10years with high compliance rate. If I raise any such concerns it is seen as not in buisness best interest. I am fully vaccinated because I have compromised immune system. Due to my role working from home is not an option during lockdowns so for me it makes sense to have multiple layers of controls to reduce risk. I have increased interest in looking for anything that's working well because my two year old grandchild will migrate with my fully vaccinated son and his wife to her home town in Waterford, Ireland, next year where currently her 75 yr old mum is on 3rd booster and has covid as does her 5 year old neice, I hope to never see that level of infection in this country, so coercion to do something that works makes sence but is it the right thing to do

Excuse the rant, but if not here, where? What work requires a vaccinated worker? According to consultant who completed RA using Worksafe template on all 600 workers (not yet mandated and a essential service operating throughout all levels) across four sites from CHCH to Auckland will need to be vaccinated otherwise infection spread in the workplace will have a substantial impact on business interests and animal welfare. Vaccination Policy with full vaccination by x date or termination of employment now on my desk for worker consultation and engagement with HS committee etc.

How do I resolve the conflict? Does the Covid Health Response Act and mandatory orders (likely on 29/11/21 for vac. cert. workplaces) supersede HSWA?

Appears not if you take this direct quote from Worksafe Regulatory Approach "We continue to support and encourage businesses and services to meet requirements under the relevant COVID-19 legislation alert level requirements orders (and) the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015"

(and) then implies that the Covid 19 Health Act does not supersede the HSWA. This is really important because the PCBU still has duties and responsibilities to ensure that there is to be no harm in the workplace that they are unaware of and no risk of harm that they are aware of that they haven’t taken measures to counteract.

People at the moment seem to believe that the order supersedes their responsibilities and are in effect committing an offence by transferring the duties and responsibilities to someone else by promoting a lesser degree of due diligence by promoting that the order says that the harm in the workplace is the virus and the only control measure is the vaccine.

Worksafe guidance says it is not reasonably practical for the PCBU of a big organization to do due diligence as its on the Ministry of Health website, does this absolve a PCBU from looking at the likes of The Centre for Adverse Reactions Monitoring (CARM) for instance when it is readily available? And the likes of which even the World Heatlh Org. says it is likely only 5% of all such reports are actually made.

If these were normal, circumstances and you were introducing a control measure for a harm
that a medical authority went public and said it is directly killing individuals and you ignored that to comply with an Order then you would be prosecuted under the HSWA but we are told do not do any more due diligence than what the Ministry of Health has done for you - even here I am told to not question the science. Is not due diligence an ongoing evolving process as more information and data comes out about the vaccines and the risks than when they were first introduced alongside other medicines and testing procedures (Ministry of Health this week said vacciantion does not stop infection or spread so rapid testing is recommended) coming onto the market..
.
There are some risks associated with the vaccine but they are very rare. But if one of those risks is the vaccine has directly killed people the PCBU cannot ignore that. You can’t introduce something into the workplace for something like flu like symptoms that may in some circumstances be extremely dangerous to only a few individuals and in doing that require healthy individuals to take it when it is the only option available to them knowing that it is directly killing some individuals.

That responsibility for what is in the vaccine is for the PCUB to resolve if coercing a healthy worker to take it. If they are not able to resolve that then they are the ones who should be asking for that to be resolved. Its illegal to not do this but to do it because someone else said you must do to follow this order. In effect suspend the HSWA in order to implement that order?

Did not the death of the workers at Pike River which gave birth to the HSWA teach us anything about regulatory failures in duty of care or the lack of full disclosure in worker consultation and engagement.

So by presenting the Covid Vaccination Policy for consultation without full disclosure of known harms mean that I too alongside my PCBU commit an offence under Sec. 47 of the HSWA or am I absolved
because I followed orders.

I will attach a couple of documents that might be of interest to some, the actual risk assessment is not mine and it is not something I would refer to in its entirety but it has a couple of good links that I thought worthy of exploring (and its to late in the day for me to separate them out here for this comment) as I completed what I thought was a risk assessment to determine what roles on this worksite would require a vaccinated worker similar to what I do with heavy manual handling roles requiring a worker with high degree of work fitness.

It is an essential service so has operated through all levels of lockdowns

Thank MattD2, yes I am aware of all you have said, I doubt if my PCBU and HR are aware, I have had to correct so many of their assumptions a number of time through the course of implementing the business plan on the floor, each work site has a HS Advisor who all have been sidelined from the plan so I too am learning to not expect the rules to be logical

So effectively this is the CEOs of most of NZ's large companies saying that there is no need to do a risk assessment anymore before we mandate vaccinations in any of our organisations.

In my organization of 500 staff employed between 4 sites in the north and south Island anything to do with covid from its onset is decided between PCBU and HR and then we are all instructed what is required of us under the plan including the recent obtaining of individual vaccine status. HS role has been to source best PPE; conduct extraction/ventilation surveys; and police hygiene practices are followed. This morning I have been given the heads up that the workplace is looking to register in the Vaccine Cert. Scheme. The business is not open to the public, entry is restricted, it is not involved in the boarder, health care, hospitality or hairdresser industries. It is an essential service so has operated through all levels of lockdowns and has had not one incident of covid outbreak in the work place. Tell me again how this comes under Health and Safety Leg.