Articles

Using a Software Solution for Health and Safety Management

For all New Zealand businesses, taxation, GST, ACC payments, and employment agreements are a non-negotiable responsibility of business owners. The introduction of the health and safety legislation in 2015 became a more robust, non-negotiable, no excuse compliance issue that has made many businesses think twice about ignoring it. This is now...

Primary Duty of Care – reviewing your health and safety systems

"Primary duty of care” (Section 36 of the Health and Safety at Work Act) is, in my opinion, one of the key sections that all businesses should take note of, understand its application, and apply to their businesses. Many business owners don’t know it exists, let alone understand its implications if...

COVID-19 = a duty of care by all

Recently, there was a case in Napier of an Air New Zealand traveller refusing to wear a face mask, as required by government and the airline safety rules. This raises an interesting and challenging question, as to the ability of a business to enforce the wearing of face masks for...

How often should you review health and safety documentation?

If your business has implemented a quality management system, then you will, or should, be on top of your game, as this requirement is an important part of any quality management system. When it comes to health and safety, it’s my experience that document reviews are infrequent or non-existent, as one...

Taking time out

(Written in mid 2021 - but still appropriate!) The last twelve months has been, and still are, a challenging time for all countries with the COVID-19 pandemic. New Zealand has not escaped the heartache, fear, stress, and anguish that has been associated with this horrible event. From a business viewpoint, the pandemic resulted...

Brainstorming with your Employees

If you don’t encourage brainstorming with your employees, you just might be missing an opportunity to take your business from zero to hero! No one person, business owner, manager, or supervisor has a mortgage on knowledge. A business may have 25 employees - what an opportunity with 25 fantastic, creative, qualified,...

Continuously Improving the PDCA Cycle

A few years ago, we attended a health and safety forum, where WorkSafe NZ presented a program for employee involvement, via what is known as the PDCA cycle.  This is not a new concept - in fact, Gordon has been teaching this process to first line managers for over 30...

How to make Contractor Prequalification easier

With contractor prequalification part of the New Zealand health and safety scene, this process can still be frustrating and time consuming for many smaller business operations. For many small businesses, whomever does the administration of the business, is also in charge of HR, and thus ends up the health and safety...

15 Ways to Increase your Customer and Visitor Safety

When was the last time you reviewed the effectiveness of your customer and visitor safety procedures? In July 2013, Briscoes Ltd were fined an eye watering $75,000, when an elderly customer tripped over a cardboard box in an aisle. At the time, there was much consternation from the public about the...