New Zealand Safety Council

Welcome

Topic of the Month

How Well Are You Managing Risk? ~ Corporate Governance and the Effective Management of Risk

New Zealand workplaces have higher rates of Fatalities, Serious Injuries and Occupational Health Risk Exposures than many other western countries. WHY IS THIS?

There are many factors, but the New Zealand Safety Council believes that the main cause is failure to recognise the risk and underestimating the degree of Risk. Before starting a job, we must assess the level of risk involved. This means identifying all hazards and effectively controlling them.

Many supervisors and workers do not recognise the imminent ‘Danger” of a task and proceed in ignorance. In lone worker environments, tragedies often result either to the person taking the Risk or to another person who becomes the ‘victim’. Confined Space work is an example of a ‘High Risk Task,’ which can go tragically wrong.
Before commencing any task, there is a need to analyse and plan what you are attempting to achieve. This should include an Assessment of the Hazards and Associated Risks. This lack of planning and poor perception of risk is the failure of management and the undoing of many workers.

In the wider business context, all organisations should be aware of all their risk exposures and implement a risk management framework to treat and control those risks.
To OSH risks we can add Environmental Protection, Strategic Risk, Credit Risk,
Market Risk, Investment Risk, Liquidity Risk, Operational Risk, Regulatory Risk,
Project Risk, Reputational Risk, Natural disasters etc As part of any management system, all the above risks are of course interlinked, requiring a team approach by both directors and management to formulate a Risk Framework.
All aspects of risk may threaten the viability of an organisation and if unidentified provide a sudden and nasty shock to all stakeholders in the enterprise. Having a risk register and risk action plan will formalize this process.

The first global standard for risk management has been released in New Zealand, called AS/NZS ISO 31000:2009, it supersedes AS/NZS 4360:2004.

The New Zealand Safety Council’s position is that Ionisation Smoke Alarms be

BANNED FROM SALE in New Zealand

One of the major risks to everyone of us is fire at night when we are blissfully asleep.

The

NZSC SMOKE ALARM REPORT raises many serious issues, was sparked by yet another house fire involving a fatality, to Papakura pensioner Freda Birch, in June.

The vital point is that Freda had approved ionization detectors fitted by the NZ Fire Service, they did not work and Freda died. Freda could have been any one of us. In 2003 Colin Zonnerfield lost his wife and four other relatives when a horrific fire engulfed his house in Waihi. Colin slept through the creeping toxic smoke, only awakening when the fire flashed over, which was too late for the family members trapped in the basement. Similarly to Freda, Colin had approved ionization detectors fitted with fresh batteries.

New Laws For A New Decade

Gran t Nicholson reports:

20 09 wa s a relatively settled year for the law in the health and safety area, with judges

quick ly getting to grips with the approach to sentencing mandated by the High Court in late 2008 and defendants feeling the pinch as average fines rose mmmm

sharply towards $40,000 per offence.

2010 i s shaping up as a more challenging year, due to an impending change in the Health and Safety in Employment Act (‘Act’).

In 2008, the Department of Labour persuaded the then Labour Government to make several changes to the Act, but they were not passed before the election. In December 2009, Minister of Labour, Kate Wilkinson, announced she was going to adopt Labour’s changes, and that National would also change the definition of serious harm.

So, as a health and safety practitioner, what does this mean for you? Probably quite a lot, with the devil being in the detail.

The definition of serious harm

The first important change relates to the definition of serious harm. As most readers will know, the definition is important because it is the threshold for reporting incidents to the Department of Labour. These reports can and often do lead to investigation of workplace accidents by inspectors and to almost all enforcement actions by the Department.

As things stand, the term serious harm is defined in Schedule 1 of the Act. The definition has six parts and is fairly easy to understand. The new law hasn’t been released yet, so we don’t know what it will say.

Labour Minister, Kate Wilkinson has, however, announced that it will be different. All physical injuries will be serious harm if the employee is unable to perform normal duties for ten days or more. This can be contrasted with the current law, which requires the victim to be hospitalised for two days or more.

Other permanent injuries, diagnosed occupational illnesses and one-off events like electrocution or loss of consciousness, will continue to be serious harm as well, regardless of duration of the harm.

Tim e will tell whether this change increases or decreases the burden on employers. According to the Minister, her intention is that employers be spared from the need "to spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with what can be minor matters". It is hard, however, to reconcile this goal with the proposed change, given that Labour’s consultation documents had indicated changing the definition was likely to lead to a potential doubling in the reporting of incidents.

Without a substantial increase in resourcing for the Department of Labour, which appears unlikely in the current political and economic climate, there is a risk that employers will be put to the expense and inconvenience of additional reporting in circumstances where the Department of Labour has little or no ability or enthusiasm to investigate or offer support after the newly notified incidents.