Health and Safety

Occupational Health and Safety

Maintaining a safe and healthy workplace can seem like a daunting and sometimes costly task for employers.  But the reality is quite simple.  If you fail, as an employer to keep your workplace free of harm and hazards managed you can end up with hefty fines or worse, injured, sick or seriously harmed employees.  Causing harm to an employee is beyond cost.  It can take a serious toll on workplace morale, the injured employee's mental wellbeing as well as decreased productivity. 

Whether you have 4 employees or 400, implementing a health and safety framework into your workplace doesn't have to be an onerous task.

Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992

In New Zealand, all workplaces, self employed, employees, principals and others who are in a position to manage or control hazards must abide by the health and Safety in Employment Act 1992.  The aim of the Act is to promote the prevention of harm to all people at work, and others in, or in the vicinity of, places of work.

The emphasis of the law is on the systematic management of health and safety at work. It requires employers and others to maintain safe working environments, and implement sound practice. It recognises that successful health and safety management is best achieved through good faith co-operation in the place of work and, in particular, through the input of those doing the work.

The Department of Labour administers and enforces the HSE Act in most workplaces.

The Maritime New Zealand and Civil Aviation Authority administer and enforce the Act in the maritime and aviation sectors respectively. New Zealand Police works with OSH to enforce the Act in relation to commercial vehicles.

The HSE Act was first passed in 1992, but was reviewed and amended substantially in 2002.

Source:  http://www.osh.dol.govt.nz/

© Crown copyright [2005]

Duties of Employers

The H&S Act, requires that all employers take all reasonable steps to ensure the safety of employees while at work.  They must:

• Provide and maintain a safe working environment,
• ensure that equipment and machinery is safe for employees to use
• ensure that employees are not exposed to hazards during their work,
• develop procedures for dealing with emergencies in the workplace
• ensure employees have sufficient knowledge and experience to carry out their duties and not cause harm to themselves or others at work.
• ensure employees are appropriately trained to carry out their duties safely.
• take all practicable steps to ensure that employees do not cause harm to any other people who might be in the workplace.
  

Where should you start?  It is all so confusing!

It can be a daunting task setting up a health and safety process, but it doesn't have to be.  First of all, start by establishing a simple and clear health and safety policy.  The policy should include the following:

• clearly states the organisations commitment to managing health and safety in the workplace
• defines the safety obligations of the employer and employees
• explains how the organisation will plan, monitor and review it health and safety activities.
• explains the consultation process the organisation will take on health and safety matters.

for help.

hazards. 

Hazard Management

Employers must have in place a process that identifies and communicates hazards in the workplace.  Employers must take all practicable steps:

• to eliminate a significant hazard, or
• to isolate a significant hazard from employees (if it cannot be eliminated), or
• to minimise the likely harm to employees if the hazard cannot be eliminated or isolated.

As an employer, you are required by law to have a systematic approach to deal with hazards.  This is a three part process:

1. Identify all hazards in your workplace
2. Identify the significant hazards.  Then work out which ones need immediate attention and which are of a lesser concern.
3. Take action to deal with the hazards.  Remove them or at least reduce their impact. 
   

Once you have done this, you will then need to:

1. Review the hazards regularly
   
2. Adapt processes as new things / equipment and people come to the workplace.

The following resources will help you to manage hazards in your workplace:

What do I do when someone has an accident and/or injures themselves?

It is important to have an Accident/Incident reporting procedure in place so that all accidents or incidents are recorded and communicated to staff.   Keeping track of accidents or incidents that occur, gives you the information to make informed health and safety decisions in the workplace.   Tracking accidents also allows you to monitor how well you are doing at keeping your workplace safe and free of harm.

 By law, Employers, are required to keep a register of all accidents and incidents, and any other occurrences of serious harm that arise from workplace hazards.

The HSE Act defines "accident" broadly, as any event that -

• Causes any person to be harmed; or
• In different circumstances, might have caused any person to be harmed.

 A record must be kept of:

• Every accident or incident that harmed or might have harmed any employee at work; and
• Every occurrence of serious harm to an employee at work, or as a result of any hazard to which the employee was exposed while at work and in the employment of the employer,

It is important to note that the employers must record accidents and incidents where any degree of harm of has occurred or could have occurred, i.e. it need not have been serious harm.

Useful tools to help you record accidents include:

Form OSH Incident reporting procedure.doc

Form OSH Incident Report form.

Investigation of accidents and illness

As well as the duty to record all accidents, incidents and cases of occupational illness, employers are required under section 7 of the Act to then investigate the cause of any harm. This is to determine whether or not any recorded incident or illness was caused by a significant hazard. The standard required is "all practicable steps". This is an important element of the hazard management requirements of the Act.

If the hazard is significant, it must be eliminated, isolated or minimised under the hazard management requirements of sections 8-10. The investigation of all accidents in this way is an important requirement of the Act. It should also be remembered that although the harm done in any particular incident may not be "serious harm", there may have been the potential for serious harm, and the incident may point to a significant hazard.

Useful tools to help you investigate accidents include:

Health and Safety resources

The Department of Labour has an excellent health and safety site with many resources to help New Zealand businesses.  Click here to check it out.

Click here to see the guide to the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992

Click here for a full version of the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992

The Department of Labour has a 'Hazard handler online tool' for small business.