News

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...

The Prescribed Person – the 2021 edition

The day of the tradie is here...

Torque or Talk? The Importance of Communication in the Workplace

Communication in the workplace is so important. Here is some linguistic gymnastics to get your tongue around: While you are promulgating your esoteric cogitations and promulgating your esoteric cogitations, articulating your superficial sentimentalities, your amicable philosophical or physiological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Let your extemporaneous verbal evaporations and expatiations have lucidity, intelligibility...

Temporary workers and chemicals

With the impact of COVID-19, the shortage of skilled and reliable employees  and the reminder of having to do things differently, the hiring of temporary workers has increased. For work where chemicals are involved, effective health and safety management is always important, but making sure temporary workers are informed about the...

The importance of a JSA

A job assessment prior to the start of a task or contract is not a new thing, but it's increasingly important. Take 5 steps back and 5 minutes to review and consider the way the work is to be done, as well as the actual or potential hazards and risks associated...