The following post was originally written as a newsletter article for the ETNZ.
For those of you who have been under a rock the past few months (or, more likely, under a ridiculous summer gig / festival schedule) the big news in health and safety land is that the new Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 (HSWA) is coming into effect this month (4 April to be precise).
Yay! I hear you all say… ok, maybe not everyone…. As a health and safety professional I am getting a wee taste of what it must have been like for computer professionals in December 1999 with the Y2K panic. My phone and email have been running hot with people concerned that the sky is going to fall and they are, come 4 April, suddenly going to be sent to prison for not having a good enough health and safety plan for their business.
This isn’t going to happen. Really. And if you don’t believe me then take it from the man in charge of the regulator, Gordon MacDonald (CEO of WorkSafe NZ) who put out this press release this week
http://www.business.govt.nz/worksafe/news/releases/2016/keep-calm-and-keep-safe
The reality is, the new laws do not differ that much from the old ones. If you already have robust systems in place for managing health and safety risks in your workplace then you are already most of the way towards being compliant with the new laws.
WorkSafe aren’t interested in whether or not you have purchased a generic health and safety manual, filled the name of your company into the blanks, and have it sitting neatly on your shelf gathering dust. They want to know that what you do in practice ensures the health and safety of your workers, and others affected by your activities. They want to know that you have identified all the hazards in your workplace and have functional controls in place to manage these so that the risk of anyone getting hurt is as low as possible. And, they want to know that you routinely monitor the hazards and the controls to make sure your systems are working.
If you don’t have a really good handle on all the hazards in your workplaces start by talking to your workers. They’ll know, they deal with them every day.
If you are unsure of what measures to take to control the risks start with ETNZ’s “A guide to safe working practices in the New Zealand theatre and entertainment industry” http://www.etnz.org.
And, if you are still concerned that you don’t know enough about the new laws then there is good information available on the WorkSafe NZ website.
http://www.business.govt.nz/worksafe/hswa/hswa-guidance
Cathy Knowsley – HiViz Event Management www.hivizevents.co.nz (and ETNZ committee member).
