Hi,

We have several recognition here for HSRs and staff. We have a hazard/done it card system which rewards staff with a freebie from the cafeteria. We also have a company wide awards for Health and Safety Champion as part of our wider yearly awards ceremony. This has a significant cash reward and trophy for the winner and runner-up and can be anyone who has contributed to H&S. Each year staff nominate candidates for various categories. The selected winners head up to our leaders forum. They get to meet our various staff from across the nation, watch all the presentations for projects happening, and finally get to do a big ceremonial dinner with the rest of the company where they will meet board members and executives. It's a pretty big eye opener for them as quite often they are not expecting it and don't normally get to meeting everyone else.

If I hadn't been nominated one year and won I would never have considered changing my career to health and safety. Happy to say I've been in my H&S role now for three years and can't wait to continue progressing.

Our HSRs are also supported by our integrated culture. HSRs are involved with our regional safety team, critical risk teams, safety leadership teams and working groups. Any additional work or projects they decide to partake in goes towards their yearly development reviews which in turns helps with career progression. If HSRs have a certain aspects they wish to train further in we also support them finding the right courses. HSRs are fully supported by our H&S team.

FYI - For anyone looking at the way HSRs are integrated into a company and how the company can work better with HSRs to help make changes, Worksafe have a specific research group we were put in contact with. This has been really helpful for us and HSRs now have another contact they can use. If you want more information then contact Ali Whitton (AlidotWhittonatworksafedotgovtdotnz). He wants to understand how systems work and him and his team are developing new resources for HSR which will be free for everyone to use.

Cheers,

Hi Janet,

I have just done this exact thing! I was a safety representative at my workplace and now I'm just about to start my new role for my company as a health and safety advisor. I got there by being a safety representative at my workplace and then expanding on the representative role.

We have a limited health and safety structure here which allowed me to take on small projects, chair safety meetings, practice communication skills, report writing, practise talking to management and learning how staff engage with health and safety in my workplace. @Jon Harper-Slade and @E Baxter both mention a NEBOSH course, which I highly recommend as it gives such a good foundation to add to knowledge already accumulated. I was lucky that my company supported me doing a NEBOSH International Certificate in Occupational Health. The NEBOSH course is intense and recommend taking time off work to make sure you complete comfortably without too much stress.

Apart from that making sure that you encourage them to attend a variety of workshops to gain exposure to different area of health and safety e.g. domestic violence, mental health, hazardous chemicals, crucial conversions etc.

Although I still have a lot to learn I feel more confident that I can now start to combine my knowledge and experience much easier than I would have been able to before.

Hey Catherine,

Yes our system has these as two required fields. Who reported the incident and who was involved. Only health and safety people or people and capabilities (health issues) with appropriate reasons to see these incidents are made aware of names at first, i.e. health and safety manager. It is then up to the person taking responsibility for the incident to have desecration about who they tell names too. This might mean talking about it in a safety meeting and all staff which are given details are expected to know the confidentiality of the situation too. However, although I work in with a wide variety of people here, everyone is very open about mistakes and near misses they make/happen, even if they don't use the system to report it.

I think mostly this is a cultural thing we have. The no blame policy seems to work well and people feel happy to talk to managers and health and safety staff about issue and problems.

No magic cure-all though... I'll make sure to patent it when I create one though :wink:

I'm new to H&S in NZ too. Nice to meet you.

At my current workplace we have been going through a change of reporting procedures. It use to be paper forms but has changed into a online only forms which remain anonymous unless discussion form management is required. We have also simplified the form to be as quick and easy as possible. However it is still difficult to get staff to engage with it. There have been many times where I have filled out a form on someone's behalf because they are unsure or feel under time pressure.

My workplace has a few sites across the country and other sites have got observation and identification/done it cards. However trying to bring this onto other sites has been difficult. Tool box meetings are in some places and not others and seem to work really well encouraging group discussions and actions to be taken.

It is hard to get a change in culture here, however if the OFI forms are not producing accurate or sufficient data to create an incident management report then I guess you could suggest that your leaving your workplace vulnerable to hidden incidents, hazards and non-compliance.
Most of the time I don't think its the system, but the engagement between the system and staff. I think @Tony Walton, is right. Group discussions are better when talking about near misses and engaging staff in the system, but managing the data and keeping track of changes is another can or worms. Something which the forms/OFI need to fit neatly into.

We have a variety of ways to communicate near Miss reporting. Staff can report an incident electronically through our system. This identifies all the important information and actions taken at the time so we can do root cause analysis. It may be filled out my anyone involved or on the behalf of someone which is often done by a health and safety representative. We do this as some staff my be under time pressure or a little unsure about filling this out themselves.
Each report is mentioned in the safety meetings which is open for all staff to attend. We discuss any issues and decide on solutions in those meetings. All staff members involved with the incident are also involved with solutions and outcomes. If the incident is considered a high risk then the incident is pushed up the chain for upper management to sort.
Feedback from those minutes are available to staff via our intranet or meeting board in the staff room. The meeting board also has hazard and done it cards for staff to fill out, similar to what Amdrew P said. Any important issues or changes are communicated to staff via e-mail, site newsletters and safety alerts.
I'm not sure if anything we do is innovative but our system tries to cover all bases.

Hi Craig, sounds great! I would be interested too.