Safety Leadership with CEO Mike Bennetts of Z Energy

 Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on itunes.

• 1:09 Why is Safety Important to Z Energy?
• 2:40 How Does a CEO Drive Safety Performance Improvements?
• 6:10 Why Safety is Important to Mike Bennetts
• 10:08 Take Time to Reflect Using Other’s Examples
• 10:53 Increase Safety in the Supply Chain (contractors etc)
• 13:48 How to Prepare for Worksafe New Zealand
• 16:29 Why CEO Should Embed H&S in their Business
• 18:29 The Paradox of Safety

 

Tony:               Welcome back listeners. I’m here with Mike Bennetts who is the Chief Executive of Z Energy. Now Mike has nearly 30 years working in the oil industry and Z Energy itself has over 200 shop stores and nearly 100 truck stops, about 3,000 employees or partners or contractors. Basically it’s a complicated and a dangerous business to be in. Today we’re going to get a chief executive perspective on safety in such an environment. Thanks, Mike, for coming on.

Mike:              Great. I’m very pleased to be here.

Tony:               I thought I’d start off by asking you right off the bat because I’ve been to your website and your tag line even in your e-mail and in your annual reports you can tell safety is really important. Safety first. Why is safety important to Z Energy?

Mike:              I think it actually has a number of dimensions. I think you took the most obvious one we run a hazardous business. All the products we sell are hazardous. Therefore in order for us to deliver the commercial outcomes that we are committed to and that our shareholders expect, we have to make sure we run safely and reliably. That means we don’t want to be blowing things up or damage the environment with our hazardous products. The first thing is it just makes a whole lot of business things.

Then secondly, I think in terms of the values of this company, I was very fortunate that I inherited a company that was 99 years old under the Shell ownership. Then we ever since brought the Z Energy branding to all of that. What we’ve done is we’ve been able to put together a set of values inside the company where we actually care about the stuff.

I like to strive that I care about it but actually all of the people who worked for us, they equally care about it because it matters to them. In terms of their own personal safety, given they work in hazardous operations in our business, but we have things like 60 million customers a year come across our ball court. If we didn’t have safety we’re putting at risk the 60 million people or the equivalent there obviously is the 4 million Kiwis who come and visit us all those times.

It’s very much a values thing and I think that when you connect safety at the level of values you’d probably get a lot of more opportunity available to you rather than if you just connect to it at a logical level or at a level of sort of commercial outcomes.

Tony:               Sure. I can tell that you are really passionate around safety. As a chief executive, how do you go about leading and driving safety throughout your organization?

Mike:              Yes. One of the phrases that we use inside our company around that is what we call “visible safety leadership.” There are different ways of doing that. You can have safety walk-abouts, you can go into your operational activities and be visible, you can equally pay attention to those people who do well. Often it’s probably more important to recognize the mini extras that are done to keep things safe rather than being on site investigating an incident when something goes wrong.

Tony:               That’s a really good point.

Mike:              Putting them into a positive is a really important part of that. Then a practice that I have is once a month I just drop an e-mail or a blog to everybody inside the team. It’s what I call my health and safety reflection. Whatever is on my mind at the time I just let them know what’s on my mind. Clearly I don’t randomly generate that. I think about what’s the theme that’s most appropriate for where the company is at right now or what I have recently experienced or where have I recently dropped the ball or felt I wasn’t doing so well. I would create my own thoughts.

I think it’s a combination of good assistance, target spearheading, paying attention to the procedures, being visible and equally I think being human. I’d like to think that people will hear me say from time to time, “I don’t know what the right answer is here. I don’t know what great safety leadership looks like for the city or a company like this. Can you tell me what you’d expect whether you’re a stake holder, an employee, a contractor or indeed a partner that we may have a more enduring relationship with?”

Tony:               How do you find people respond to the safety blog?

Mike:              Yeah. I get mixed messages on there actually. Sometimes you’re the boss and you’ve seen things out, balance can be interpreted in different ways. It either means people didn’t hear or they might go, “Oh. I don’t know how to respond to that.” I take a little bit of the silence possibly being a little bit of both of those.

Equally a number of people like to say each month, maybe five or 10 people would come back to me out of the 200 or maybe 300 people who receive the e-mail directly. They would either come back to me face to face or they would drop me an e-mail. Sometimes I get challenged which I really appreciate. People say, “Do you realize that’s not quite how it works,” or “Do you know how hard that would be for me to do that?”

Most of the time people come back and say, “Well I haven’t thought about that,” or “It’s really good to see that you brought that up.” When I talk about health and safety I do talk as much about health as I do about the safety, because in a business like ours where you mentioned we have 3,000 people who interact with us. The 300 of those sit in an office which is much less hazardous than working in a terminal where we store fuel or working on a service station or driving a truck.

I think it’s a combination of all those things that really matters. Visibility, I try to be committed in what I do. I encourage any safety leaders to do what’s best for them or what they feel most comfortable for around safety leadership but not shy away from being visible on things because you don’t want to go uncertain and not really know how it works.

I think it’s okay to go on uncertain, not know how the operations work and just engage with people. “Tell me about your job? What are the hazards that you face? Do you feel well-supported?”

Tony:               What turns your mind to putting this personal importance on safety? Was there a particular event in the past or was there an evolution or series of learnings and appreciation of the business been in fact, etcetera? What was it?

Mike:              It was a mixture of both actually. When you are in the industry like I was, I started in the mid-80s where safety was a focus, given the hazardous nature of the sector that I worked in, but it wasn’t necessarily systemic or as well-organized as it is today. I was on that evolution and I always like to think that for the company that I work for I was a good example of safety leadership.

For one time I worked in South Africa. I was responsible for a business unit of about 500 people where somebody died. It wasn’t sort of a workplace accident. It was one of our HR employees driving a company car on a public holiday on a road in Johannesburg with clear blue skies and she lost control of the vehicle and crashed. Because it was a company incident, our procedures required us to investigate the incident. It was awful to intrude upon the grief of her family which is a private matter given it happened during a public holiday to actually go and do the procedure.

Once I come to grips with that myself I can recall driving home a couple of weeks later and just thinking to myself and I often ask myself this question about safety. I say, “What did I do or not do that contributed directly or indirectly to Myra’s death?” I worded it deliberately that way because I thought, “Well, didn’t we have that debate properly whether do we put airbags in cars or whether we bought cars with AVRs in place?” This was a number of years ago.

When someone you work with dies even that was outside of work, it was a typical accident because most of the accidents that do take place in our industry are actually car accidents or traffic accidents rather than things blowing up. It was about a month later another colleague of mine, so not in my business unit, was killed in another car accident. His car was hit on a levelled train crossing in Zimbabwe.

When it just comes close to home and you think, “We followed the procedures, we do all of these things but people still died. What did I do or not do as a safety leader that contributed directly or indirectly to the outcome?”

That made it a lot more personal for me and I’d say up until then I probably had an attitude of compliance towards safety. Then after those thing I had an attitude of commitment. It’s a subtle difference in language but I think it’s quite a profound difference in terms of how you think and behave.

Tony:               Thanks for sharing that. The listeners out there hopefully will not have to go through this type of event. I’m wondering how they could learn from this without having to go through that because often everyone here, those sorts of incidents you read about them all the time. How do we get them to an emotional mindset and realise that that could actually affect their business?

Mike:              I think that’s a great question. Unfortunately there are lots of examples out there I think for people to relate to. You mentioned a few whatever level of leadership you have in your company you’d say, “If I haven’t been at my level of leadership at Pike River, what would I have done or not done that contributed directly or indirectly to what happened?”

I encourage all safety leaders to actually put themselves in whatever safety thing comes on TV whether it is something as tragic but simple as a car accident or a heavy load falling on someone in the workplace versus your largest scale tragedy like the Gulf of Mexico explosion or Pike River or in lieu of other incidents that happen. I think there’s enough in television.

I think if people just slow themselves down and put themselves on the shoes of the chief executive, the CFO, the operational manager, the safety leader or the foreman on site. If you really want to get committed to safety it doesn’t take you long to put yourself in the shoes of others.

Tony:               You mentioned before writing a blog or a newsletter of health and safety reflections. Sort of what you’re talking about recommending people do reflect taking a time out of the essential and reflect upon what’s going on and what’s happening in other areas and how they would affect you.

Mike:              Yeah.

Tony:               Talking about you’ve got a large number of contractors or suppliers, how do you drive an increase in safety performance in your supply chain?

Mike:              That’s a fantastic question and clearly it’s very topical right now sort of post-Pike River and with the workplace safety in New Zealand and all that stuff happening. We have a combination of things. I think if I spoke about the things that people would be more expecting to hear from me is we have a management system around health and safety. We expect the contractors who work for us to have the same.

They don’t have to have the same system as us but we need to have evidence that they actually have a system. If they worked for us say on the service station, they need to follow our permit-to-work process etcetera etcetera. There’s a whole bunch of systems and procedures that we require from our contractors.

Secondly, again I come back to that visible leadership piece wasting time with out contractors. For example our delivery of fuel through the trucks. We almost 100 trucks driving around New Zealand. They’re not actually owned by Z. They are owned by Hookers Pacific and we think of it as an outsourced operation.

Every 6 months I sit down with the truck drivers at Hookers Pacific and in Christchurch, Wellington, Dunedin and Auckland which covers almost all of the drivers. I just sit down and have a yawn. We just talk about safety stuff and they tell me things.

The first time I turn up they go like, “Here’s the new guy and he’s just showing off,” or whatever story they have because sometimes the boss would do things. The second time I go back and I go back every 6 months they go, “Oh. Maybe we should pay more attention to what he has to say.” Particularly when they tell me things and I go do something with it. When I come back for the third time, it was almost not quite like old mates catching up but there’s a relationship developing now and there’s a more openness for them to hear what I have to say, and equally for me to listen to what they have to say.

Again there is just two things. I think there are two ends of the spectrum here. There is both the systems and procedures that you would mandate or contract your contractors or partners to do for you but also you have to show that you care. My way of showing that I care about the drivers is you’re going to have a sausage roll with them and chew the fat over a bunch of stuff. I could tell you what, they give me more advice on what I need to be doing to improve customer satisfaction than meeting my own people.

Tony:               So there are benefits their for you too?

Mike:              Yeah, exactly but as I said if I make sure that I genuinely listen to what they had to say and I do something about it well then they’d be more trusting and open around raising talks under the issues around safety that they wouldn’t otherwise raise. I always make sure that there’s someone from their own Hookers Pacific management team that is in the conversation with me, so that we come across as being not just Z parachuting in. This is actually management both the contract provider manager as well as the contract receiver.

Tony:               We’re about to go through a major change in New Zealand health and safety with the new regulator, WorkSafe New Zealand about to come online in December. What are your thoughts on these changes? How are they going to affect your business or how should other people be thinking around these changes?

Mike:              Yeah. I think you got to be very careful when you are in business and regulations change. You got to be here just don’t relate to it like I’m being done to. Sometimes regulations can get in the way of running a good business if I could drop out that cliché.

What I and some of my colleagues worked very hard to do is to really understand why this is happening, what’s the content for it. If we really get connected to that then regulation or changing regulation can occur differently. We use the word context a lot in this as I’ve said. If you don’t have the context for something, what you’re being asked doesn’t always make sense.

We work pretty hard to understand the context. Then we work really hard in understanding what are we committed to here? Is it just meeting the minimum obligation or can this actually enrich what we’re doing? We are actually completing an exercise. We’re now going on a conversation on it tomorrow actually. We’ve done already some work to identify the gaps between our current H&S management systems and our strategies and our goals and our policies versus what we think is coming.

We think again by being productive on early on that it doesn’t feel like a club that comes along on particular day that you get beaten up by the regulator on. That’s the other aspect to it is I encourage people to be proactive so it doesn’t feel like you’re jumping, there’s a big stiff change between what you’re currently doing one day and then the new months there’s something else happening there.

Then I’d go back to that values perspective. I’d say within your company what really matters and how does this changing legislation, whether it be the requirements upon you as a director, as a chief executive, as a front-line safety leader, or just as a general employee? What about these matters to you? Because if you can’t find something in it that matters to you then I suggest you’re just going to come out of it again from a perspective of compliance.

Again we’re thinking quite carefully about in terms of the values inside Z or what matters to Z. “How does this helps us to get after what matters to us?” as opposed to, “Here are some more rubbish coming down the pipeline. It’s going to create costs inside the business.”

We are very, very connected to and actually the work we’ve done see there are some gaps. As much as we might have thought we have a reasonable safety record, we’ve got consistency, there are some gaps in the way we’re doing things and what is now likely to be expected under this legislation from the directors all the way down. We’ve already talked about it a couple of times in the board.

Tony:               There are probably business owners listening right now even potential chief executives who may not be completely sold on health and safety. People use many arguments from the moral, legal, or the increase in business productivity or a combination of those to convince people they need to be in health and safety. You’ve talked about those really but are there any other thoughts or arguments that you would like to put forward for people to embed health and safety into their business?

Mike:              Yeah. That’s a really great question. Actually I wouldn’t offer up any one answer. I just want to give a generic one where I would say you’ve got to find what works for you or what matters to you in such that you connect to it. For some people that might be actually and this is also my experience. If you run a really good safe operation it’s usually quite efficient which means it’s a lot of costs.

You can either come at it from the moral values perspective. I know ultimately if someone ever got died or died or physically hurt from something I’m responsible for, I’m going to face off to the family. That’s something that really gets me.

I think everyone has got to find a thing that gets them into the game or in other words what’s your game with playing around safety. It might be, “Well, if I get to be more safe we’ll be more efficient and we’ll make more money.” That’s a game worth playing for some people. For me my game was playing to make sure that when people leave Mike here during the day, they go home to their families at night in as good shape as they arrived.

I should also say by the way I don’t mind making money at running a safe operation either so it’s not one or the either, but again I think just really, really set a point what really gets you committed to safety and find the thing for yourself.

Tony:               Okay. Now is there anything else that you want to add or put in another way is there a question you wouldn’t want me to ask around health and safety?

Mike:              Yeah, there is actually and you could see of course I wasn’t this candid. I’ve got a document printed off in front of me and it’s written by a guy called James Reason who was sort of the person who first put up the concept of this swiss cheese model wherein all the slices wind up and you get yourself an accident. That was obviously written a number of years ago. He recently written about what he calls Safety Paradox or Safety Culture. Again I love paradoxes because that’s actually how the world works. It’s not as simple as if you do this, things will be safe.

He put down a couple of things here that I think if you hadn’t asked me what’s your safety record like, I would say, “It’s reasonably good.” You could have said to me, “Well, you should feel … you should feel good about that.” What James Reason points to is that, I’m going to quite from him. He said, “Safety is defined and measured more by its absence than by its presence. However so often in safety we concentrate on the things that we do wrong, lost time, injuries, first aid cases. So it’s the presence of those things rather than anything else.”

I think this whole notion of paradox is though when you say we are going after the zero harm workplace environment. Well we never get to zero. Now we want if we have our targets in the years ahead a good or a bad outcome.

What I say certainly to myself and to my team is that the number or the result is just a result. Let’s not get to whatever whether it’s good or bad but what are we going to do about it? I think it’s very easy in safety to treat it like any other performance metric and you tend to judge it. If it was three last year and it’s one this year you’ve done a great job. What I’d say actually one is clearly different to three but does that mean you actually got to safer or you actually risked life but you actually haven’t had the incidences to record.

Again it’s that whole notion of paradox. It’s never as straightforward as it seems. I think that’s where again I think safety leaders can get into trouble because they expect a good management system will make things better. New legislation would make it better. It’s going to be lots of different things and I worry as much about a month in which we have no safety incidents as I do about the months in which we do record something going wrong with safety.

Tony:               Great. Thank you and that’s actually a great place to finish in. What I’ll try and do is put a link to that article if we can get it online. But if people, the listeners do want to get hold of Mike or know more about Z Energy, they can do so through the website www.z.co.nz. Thank you very much, Mike, for your thoughts.

[Link to pdf article here]

Mike:              Great, Tony, and thank you very much for the opportunity to share them.

Communicating Safety and Gen Y with Eva Maria

 Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on itunes.
[leadplayer_vid id=”522FE3959DD8D”]

• 1:04 Is Generation Y a myth?
• 3:58 Generation SMART
• 8:40 Best way to communicate health and safety with young people?
• 19:03 Can you be too direct?
• 24:30 Safety Training Options

Tony: Welcome back, listeners.  Today I’ve got Eva-Maria, or Eva on the show.  Now Eva was born in 1990 in Russia and moved to Wellington, New Zealand as a young child and started a debt thing and watching how people talk and communicate while learning the English language.  She wrote her first book in 2007 as a 17-year-old teenager called, “You Shut Up” and more recently a bit more of a softer title in her second book called, “Shush Me” [Correction – it’s called “Shush, You!”]]

She’s done a lot more than that but her aim is to help improve relationships and communication between the generations.  So in terms of improving workplace health and safety, many businesses employ younger people and if we can learn to kind of communicate better then obviously we’re going to improve both safety outcomes and business productivity; so that’s why you want to listen to the show.

Eva, thanks for coming on.

Eva: Thank you very much, it’s fantastic to be here.

Tony: Great. So I thought we’d kick off in tackling this whole Y-generation or Generation Y thing and is it a myth?  Can we start talking about this generation?

Eva: Yeah, absolutely.  Always best to define it first, right?  Generation Y, it’s quite an interesting term; I personally try not to use it in my presentations when I’m speaking about the younger generations, partly because Generation Y has a lot of negative connotations that come with it.  Some people say that Generation Y are the laziest generation, some people say Generation Y are called this because they’re always asking why (laughter), “Why this?  Why that?” because they never want to do anything.  Basically I think Generation Y’s main trait is that it is a certain age of people and it’s about people … Generation Y are young people aged between 15 and 35 and the reason why I have a problem with this, I guess the term, is because say … If you think about yourself, do you really think you are the same person you were at 35 as you were at 15?

Tony: Absolutely not, as you get …

Eva: I think that this sort of generation, it’s grown so large; it’s so big that when people try and claim that they’re Generation Y experts or that the generation has some common traits, I do not think it is correct.  I guess apart from shutting everything down in the first couple of minutes of this interview; I guess for those listeners that are listening to this right now, perhaps if I can offer a different way of viewing this generation.  Not necessarily the 15 to 35-year-olds but I guess …  Viewing this generation in perhaps a different light and applying maybe a little bit better understanding or techniques around how to get along with them or how to communicate with them because I think that, for example, from my work with young people, the way that you’re words … As a teacher the way that you would talk to a 15-year-old is a lot different to how you would talk to a 35-year-old.  Certain techniques like, I don’t know, maybe showing a 15-year-old pictures of something to get them excited about a project you’re talking to them about, whereas the 35-year-old wants the facts in a PowerPoint or something.  I think it’s about, perhaps, offering sort of general ideas around how to best communicate and understand the generation.

Tony: Okay, I like that.  That’s good, remove the pigeon holing.

Eva: Absolutely, so I guess if we’re stuck about talking about, I guess, generation of young people, my sort of contribution is, instead of calling them Generation Y, I call them Generation Smart.  It’s not necessarily because they’re smarter than everyone (laughter), although [crosstalk 00:04:03]

Tony: We’re pigeon holing the older than 35s now are we?

Eva: (laughs) But Generation Smart is, smart actually stands for five words and the people that have been to my presentations, when they sort of learn what these words are, for some people it’s very hard to forget and I think that these words describe what the generation is.  The S in smart stands for Swift, young people are very, very … Fifteen to thirty-five year olds is very fast in the way that they pick up technology or the way that they think or the way that they want things done so this is the generation of people that are used to instant gratification.  They want to go out somewhere for dinner tonight, they’re not going to call around and ask their friends, they’ll head straight to Google and they’re expecting an answer straight away or if we’re … I recently had this problem when I bought a new computer and for some reason it’s got Windows 8 on it unfortunately and it was taking longer than 30 seconds to start up when you start up the computer.  For me I was just getting so frustrated because … It shows that we’re impatient as well.  We’re always looking for something that’s done faster.

The M in smart stands for “Mobile” so we move around a lot, we are always on the go.  Young people sort of prefer jobs that take them places, not necessarily to help them travel to other places but more so, more flexible jobs they get.  A lot of young people like to work from home if they can.  Just the fact that they move around perhaps a little bit more than other generations have and I think going back to statistics, just as an example, 66% of newlyweds, young families in New Zealand going to move to a different city so it’s not so much relevant to the workplace, although it kind of is.  It’s just that we’re not, I guess the generation isn’t so much scared of change; scared of moving around.

The A in the word smart stands for “Accessible” so you can probably track down almost any young person because of their use of social media because they’re always trying to tell everyone where they are (laughs).

The R in smart stands for “Ready” and I think that this is a very good point to take away is young people are full of energy and they’re very ready to do stuff and the big thing that I found very early on when I was doing a lot of work with teenagers and parents was that a lot of teenagers were starting to get bored or get into trouble because they were ready to do something and adults didn’t think to give them as much responsibility.  Hopefully this is a point that we’ll touch on later on about young people in the workplace as well about giving more responsibility to them.

The last letter of Generation Smart, so of the word smart is T, “Transparent”.  I think this generation is … One of the biggest differences of this generation is that, perhaps we’re a little bit, well, we’re a lot more transparent in the way that we’re honest but that honesty, we’re not really sure if it’s good or bad.  Just as an example, young people write about everything they do on Facebook; not all young people and definitely we’re not going to write every single thing on Facebook but we’re more open to the fact that anyone can know what we’re doing or anyone can know where we are or … there’s not as much secret keeping, this generation, just because of the technology.

Tony: Sure, less privacy concerns.

Eva: Yeah, and I guess this is a very, very long way of trying to explain where I’m coming from when I talk about the younger generation, or Generation Y as some people call them, but I think it’s a very good way to illustrate the key differences of this generation from other generations in the world.

Tony: That’s fantastic.

Eva: Well, in time, not in the world.

Tony: Okay, that’s a model and we want to be looking at how we can communicate better so we’re in the workplace now, we’ve got younger people, who are smart, and …

Eva: Absolutely (laughs).

Tony: What is the best way, then, to communicate with young people in the workplace in terms of health and safety?

Eva: So the best way … Well, I guess there’s a number of things that you can do to be better at communicating with younger people in the workplace.  Firstly, one of the things is just remember that even though they’re young, you used to be a young person once as well, right?  You know, whether it was a long time ago or yesterday, it’s still very, very relevant and I think a lot of managers perhaps tend to, not consciously forget it, but just not realize that there are certain ways in which they can empathize.

I believe that 15-year-olds, no matter whether we’re living in today’s world, in the 20th century, in the 19th century, 15-year-olds would have always been pretty much the same, like nothing’s changed and there’s so many different quotes from Socrates and Plato.  Back in those days they were complaining about young people and how young people are disrespectful and annoying and nothing’s changed.  I think one of the things is really looking back into “How did I want people to communicate with me when I was younger?”  That could be sort of a first step of empathy.

Tony: Okay, so empathy.  So, learn from history a little bit as well.  Not only global history around 15-years-olds and so on but your own history.  How were you at that age?

Eva: Yes, absolutely.

Tony: You mentioned earlier about, and maybe this is one of the things to tie in at this point, giving more responsibility.

Eva: Absolutely.  That … Giving more responsibility to young people.  At one of the ACC  forums that I was speaking at there was a lady at the very end who said, “Well, from everything that I’ve heard from you, I understand that I should probably be giving more responsibility to young people, but I’ve got this one problem and it’s about the young guys at work not wearing their safety gear and I really need them to wear it because, obviously it’s dangerous if they don’t and it’s on the rules and it’s … We’re trying to write it all, write it down, rules, on posters around the workplace.  We’re trying to make sure that the managers tell them that they need to do it but we just can’t get them to do it.”  And she said, I didn’t even need to answer this question, it was perfect.  She said, “From what I learned from you today was I should get one of them to sort of become the enforcer of the safety gear being worn?” and I was like, “Yes, that’s exactly it.”

Whenever there’s some sort of problem or whenever there’s something that you need doing, giving responsibility to younger people and taking into account that they have this energy, they want to be doing more, because let’s face it, a lot of young people, at work they are bored.  A lot of the time they might be quite bored.  They might be working on their computers or doing whatever but I think that young people really, really need to be challenged and obviously … We know that young people aren’t retainable, as retainable as they used to be.  You’re lucky if a young person stays with you for about 18 months these days; young people do tend to skip from job to job and it’s not necessarily because you’re a bad employer or it’s not necessarily always to do with money or where they’re living, it’s just that they want to be challenged more and more and I think that responsibility, given them some sort of extra task to do, or giving them … Just giving them something extra to answer for really can help them not only with their performance for everything that their doing but all of their work but also help them, I guess, be more excited about the job and be able to apply this energy that they have to doing something good, and hopefully there’s something good.

So for this lady that was at the forum, I guess for her now she’s going to be saving time because instead of her trying to run around after these guys to wear their safety stuff, she’s got someone else out there doing it for her so she has extra time to be doing important things.

Tony: So in this case we’re identifying a potential leader amongst that peer group to kind of lead the change or enforce it if need be.

Eva: Yes, absolutely.

Tony: What about those who don’t react to that kind of peer pressure situation?  Is there a different way of communicating with them?

Eva: Yes.  Another way that you can communicate with them, I guess one of the points that I try and stress very, very hard is, and I have a number of different examples from workplaces and even in my own life with my parents, where the way that people communicate sometimes they think that everything is obvious and what they say is [crosstalk 00:14:12].

Tony: Do you have a, Eva, do you have an example?

Eva: I guess, perhaps, a really easy one is when I was about, entering my teen years and the dishes, I don’t know for how many people that are listening if you are parents, most of you, but at our house, it was always the dishes that were never done and was the biggest headache for everyone because it would always fall on me or my brother and … Come on doing the dishes is just not fun.

Tony: Yeah, look I’m smiling here.  I had fights with my sister about who’s turn it was to wash and who it was to dry (laughs).

Eva: Yeah, so I think my parents, they never bought a dishwasher because they thought, I’m not sure, maybe it was some sort of torturing parenting technique they read about but we never had the luxury of doing this so everyone that has a dishwasher at home, you’re very lucky, your kids are very lucky.

Anyway, so my dad would try and come into my room and he would sort of stand there while I’d be on the phone or reading a book or something and he’d say, “Well, I noticed that the dishes were dirty in the sink.” and for me, at the point in time, it’s not because I was stupid or anything, but I think that this really sort of reflects how young people can be like in the workplace, for me that meant nothing.  For me it was like, “Cool, Dad, can you go away?” (laughter).  At that point in time it wasn’t really important to me whether the dishes were done or not and I was doing my own stuff; “That’s cool, Dad, thanks for letting me know.  Thanks for dropping by.  See you tomorrow.” But really, obviously, what does he want me to do?

Tony: That’s probably a young person’s thing.  My wife has learned to be very specific when giving instructions to me otherwise I’m sort of like, “Okay, and … ?” (laughter)

Eva: Maybe we have the same personality type but I do think from a lot of research that I’ve done with young people, whether it’s because they are trying to play stupid or whether … And it’s the alibi that they never actually got told to do something, or whether they were in that exact same position as I was with the dishes, I think it’s very, very important to clearly communicate and a really good technique to be able to do that is having a very set code of conduct in your workplace, especially around health and safety because … It’s kind of like in the army, there’s certain rules around how you’re supposed to do things or what you’re supposed to do and every time you’re given an order you have to sort of repeat it back to make sure that you understood and heard it.  I think it’s quite an interesting concept and I think for teenagers especially, it can really help them understand more what is expected of them because if you have a code of conduct you can’t really stray away from it.  If you break the rules you break the rules and when you’re communicating to young people, if you’re kind of not sure whether they understood what you were trying to say or not, ask them to repeat it back.

One of the girls that I interviewed before doing a presentation recently, I asked a number of young people around, “What could your employer do to make you more aware of the workplace health and safety policies?’ and one girl, Natasha, but there were a couple of other people from within the research that answered in a similar way, and her answer to this question was “Actually inform the staff members of the procedures.”

Tony: (laughs) Seems pretty obvious.

Eva: Natasha’s 19 years old, she works as one of the, she’s not like a sous chef or the chef but she’s in the kitchen.  She’s not the dishwasher or anything like that but she’s … she’s got a good job and things like that but I think it just goes to show that sometimes even young people are saying “We don’t actually know the rules.” and some managers might think, “Oh, my gosh.  We always tell them about this, why are they not getting this?”  But maybe this means … It’s an opportunity, maybe this means that actually there’s some opportunity to be able to communicate with them better or maybe present some other ideas in a better light for them so that they actually hear what you’re trying to say or what the rules are.

Tony: Okay, I relate to that around the code of conduct or clear instructions.  I used to be in the military so I understand that quite well; however, I’m just wondering, my thinking would be and you’ve got to challenge me on this, which is what this is all about (laughter), that if you took that too far and you’re almost instructing in a autocratic manner, that that would be to any rebellious young person, it would actually turn them off and make them go the other way.

Eva: Yeah, absolutely; I totally agree with you there, but I guess two things, one is when you’re communicating with them and when you’re actually spelling something out, when you’re trying to get things listened or to understand what you need them to do, I think that the secret to helping them to understand and actually listen to you, no matter how you’re communicating it, whether it’s in a demanding way or not, is always to back it up with some sort of reason.

I think the mentality that young people have, usually being brought up with is, it’s the old “Mom, Dad, can I go to the party?”, “No, you can’t.” “Well, why not?”, “Well, because we said so.”  I think young people are often faced with the situation where, while they were growing up parents they were tired or they  didn’t really want to cause a fuss so, “Because I said so.”  Young people are still quite close to that age when they had to experience their parents, hopefully not too many of them, but it’s the reality for a lot of young people and whenever they hear someone or see someone who is above them in terms of hierarchy in the workplace or someone that’s older than them and they’re getting told to do something but there’s no reason behind it, it kind of goes back to those days when, “Can I go to that party?” “No, you can’t go because we said so.” and there’s no reason for it.

I think backing it up with a reason so, you need to wear the safety gear, going back to the example of that lady, perhaps the way that she can explain it isn’t “You need to wear the safety gear because it’s written here in the rules.”  That might not actually be enough for young people.  Maybe saying “You need to wear your safety gear because … “ and maybe giving an example of what happened when someone didn’t wear their safety gear or giving a reason around, well actually, when the planes are flying down, I don’t know, they can only identify people with yellow vests and if you’re not wearing a yellow vest the plane is going to land on you or something because you’re going to blend into the runway.  I don’t know, I’m thinking airports.  So giving them, even if it’s the stupidest reason in the world, just giving them a reason; because that is perhaps what works for them in some senses.

I guess the second point is when you were saying the autocratic  manner maybe is it too harsh?  When do you know when to stop?  I think another property of this generation of this generation is that we were born to parents that were always trying to fight for their rights.  My parents’ generation they were fighting for women’s rights and there was the hippie movement and then there was the sexual revolution and all of these things, and a lot of peace activists and I think our parents really tried to fight for their rights so that we came into this world where we were allowed to be anything.  We didn’t have to fight for any rights, we were allowed to … In today’s world it doesn’t really matter whether I’m a woman or a man, I can apply for any job.  There’s no stigma tied to as many things, I guess.

But this means that our generation grew up with no boundaries.  Our parents grew up with boundaries that they knew they needed to push, whereas our generation, we have no idea where the boundaries are so for us, even though we’re getting told you can be anything, you can do anything, we’re just really lost because we have no idea how far we can aim.  We don’t know, why aim far when we can just stay here.  So putting those boundaries and actually giving rules is probably one of the best things I say parents can do in today’s world but I think managers, even more perhaps applicable, managers can give the imposed rules because we’ve always had this mindset that the world is our oyster and there is no end to possibilities but you do need to spell it out that there are actually certain rules and this is where you need to be.

It’s not so much suppressing personalities or skill sets or anything like that, it’s just about saying these are the boundaries and this is all the space that you can fill up with anything.

Tony: That’s fantastic.  Really good information there.  Related to that, are there any training models?  We’ve talked about clear communication and I’ve got a picture in my head of texting instructions to somebody, not a good model I don’t think; or iPads or we mentioned the Army, should we be barking at them like an army, we’ve kind of touched on that, but what sort of training demonstration, what sort of other training models that are more relevant and are going to make an impact than others?

Eva: In terms of health and safety?

Tony: Correct, yes.

Eva: In terms of health and safety I think young people really respond to peer recommendations.  So if it’s the peer that’s doing a presentation; so again going back to that example of giving the responsibility to someone from within the team.  I understand what you mean by training models.  I guess it’s not necessarily up to me because I’m not an expert in making these models, or necessarily making these training models but I think young people are a lot more visual in today’s world so, perhaps, the training modules that are online?  Giving them more pictures rather than text with quizzes that they can answer by clicking on buttons, but also a recent study that they did in one of the HR classes at Victoria University, they actually asked a group of third year HR students about how they would prefer to receive training in the workplace and a resounding number, a huge number of students said that they actually, whenever they’ve been in the situation where they were put in front of online or computer models or modules to learn, they, although they felt it was sometimes quite tough, it was the easier thing to do and they didn’t end up learning anything.  So they actually preferred to have someone at the front of the classroom or standing in front of them talking to them and giving examples rather than sitting behind a computer and reading information off there.

So in terms of health and safety and training modules, I think really, really important … I know that ACC has some fantastic models online and you’re going to download checklists and things like this but I think if you are able to do it, try and do an in person workshop or something with the younger people because you have the opportunity to be able to show them things; you have the opportunity to be able to get people to share information with each other and I think that perhaps it’s very interesting because I think young people today learn a lot more from each other than perhaps other generations have.  That’s sort of research that I’ve done in the past.  It would take a long time to explain but [crosstalk 00:27:40].

Tony: No, that’s correct, I was really interested about that, that Victoria University example; given that …

Eva: I actually thought that it would be the other way around, I thought it would actually be quite smart if a lot more workplaces were doing online stuff.

Tony: Oh, you love that word, SMART. (laughter) Hey, listen, is there anything else that we haven’t covered or not mentioned that you’d like to talk about?

Eva: Yeah, I think, just one last thing, relating to health and safety in the workplace.  A really quick example of when you were probably being interviewed for your first job, one of the questions that was probably bound to come up is where do you see yourself in five years’ time?

Tony:  Yes.

Eva: And … Is that correct?

Tony: Well, I was rubbish collecting, so not that job interview, no.

Eva: (laughs) But would you agree that most job interviews [crosstalk 00:28:35].

Tony: Absolutely, yes.

Eva: Especially office jobs.  Perhaps today’s young people if you ask them that, the answer that will go through their heads usually is “Well I’m going to be old in five years.” So it’s not … I don’t think that that specific question is very relevant for young people.  I know we’re not talking about interviews here but to put it into context.  What I think young people really excel in is, if you were to ask them instead of where do you see yourself in five years’ time, to ask them “What do you actually want to achieve during your time here?” So my two cents here is that instead of giving young people timeframes, give them milestones and I think in terms of health and safety it’s very, very relevant.

For example, in your workplace you might say, “In two years’ time we want half the number of accidents, right?”  Some workplaces might set goals like that, but for a young person to actually get on board, get involved and really help make a difference, being able to actually put it in such a way as well, we want to halve the number of accidents in the workplace, I guess as soon as possible would be a good way to put it.  I guess what I’m trying to say is, instead of giving a timeframe, giving a milestone, a goal.  Young peoples’ nature of being more competitive or trying to do more and trying to use up their energy somewhere, I think that is something that they are more likely to respond to.

One of the biggest problems for employers is that young people don’t tend to come on board with organizational goals, they just clock in and clock out every single day but to really get a young person engaged it’s about setting those milestones.  So, I think, especially in terms of health and safety, instead of saying “Our goal is to do this in this many years.” or whatever, perhaps maybe setting smaller milestones for shorter periods of time and I think that the attainable stuff is going to come a lot easier to young people and they’ll actually want to do it faster.

Tony: That’s a great place to finish off.  That’s fantastic.  It’s sums up where we wanted to get to with the younger smart generation and to the listeners out there who want to try and make a difference with their younger workforce.

So if anyone wants to get hold of Eva they can do so through her website, www.eva-maria.co.nz. I’ll put the link also on the website.

Thanks Eva-Maria for coming in and sharing your thoughts.  I think that was really fantastic, thank you.

Eva: Thank you very much, Tony.  It’s been fantastic to talk to you.

Tony: Alright, see you.

Eva: Bye.
—
Please add and share your comments or thoughts below. Have you had a good boss? How was safety taught, discussed or enforced? etc

Asbestos

 Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on itunes.

• 2:43 What is Asbestos?
• 3:38 Blue, White and Brown Asbestos
• 3:57 Why is Asbestos rock a heath hazard?
• 5:04 20-30 million fibres in a short pencil line…
• 5:20 Which damages the lung
• 6:00 The fibres can not be expelled once in the lungs
• 7:00 Diseases caused and health issues from asbestos
• 8:30 Where is asbestos found in your home?
• 10:41 Where is asbestos found in the workplace?
• 12:19 How to positively identify if you have asbestos
• 13:19 Asbestos is still being imported into New Zealand
• 14 :44 Get help to work out who should take the asbestos sample
• 17:26 How to remove asbestos
• 18:38 The Bra-Cup filter
• 19:18 LISTEN to this story – don’t take asbestos home
• 22:25 Get more advice

Quotables:
“20-30 million asbestos fibres could fit in the thickness of a pencil line an inch long…” – Tony – Tweet Me
“Asbestos is still being imported into New Zealand as part of a product(s)…” – Tony – Click to Tweet

Tony:               Welcome back listeners. Tony Collins here from Safety Hub and today we’re going to talk about one of the biggest health issues in the workplace. That is around asbestos. Today I’ve got Linda Dwyer from Capital Environmental Services. I met Linda about a month ago at a presentation on asbestos and I really valued that information because I am still doing home renovations at the moment. From her presentation and the information and knowledge I gained I was able to take action and pretty much assure my wife and myself that our kids were not going to be put at harm by the work we were doing. Of course asbestos in the workplace as well and this is a great opportunity to get an expert who’s had many years’ experience dealing with this particular health hazard. That’s why I’ve asked Linda and she’s agreed to talk all about it for us. Thank you Linda for agreeing to this.

Linda:             You’re welcome.

Tony:               To kick us off, are you able to just briefly explain to the audience a little bit about your experience and what you bring to the table?

Linda:             When I left school I did nursing. I did my nursing training and finished shortly before I got married. Got married and moved to the big city and didn’t go back nursing. I started work in my early 30s after I’d had my children, with the DSIR and I’ve worked in the asbestos lab since about 1989 through DSIR, EI, HFS, ESR. They sold us off in 1996 which is when we became Capital Environmental Services.

Tony:               Sure. These companies, for overseas listeners as well, are major …

Linda:             DSIR was internationally recognized. ESR still is by most people. We were considered not core business, being an analytical lag, but not really into research, so they sold us off.

Tony:               Sure. Do you have experience out in the field as well?

Linda:             I was a lot younger when I started and yes, I used to go out and do the testing and taking samples and doing surveys. I’ve got a little bit long in the tooth and a little bit wide in the beam and I no longer do that, but we’ve got young men in the laboratory that go out and do what I used to do 30 years ago basically.

Tony:               Okay. For people who don’t know anything about asbestos, can you tell me a little bit about it?

Linda:             Asbestos is rock. It’s dug out of the ground. It’s a naturally occurring substance. It’s not that common in the ground in New Zealand because it’s made from very old rock and New Zealand is pretty new, but it’s got some very useful properties. It’s nonconductive; it’s insulating; it’s easily gathered and used; it splits into fibres, and it’s just a very useful mineral.

Tony:               Cheap?

Linda:             Rock out of the ground is pretty cheap, yeah.

Tony:               (Laughs).

Linda:             There’s no real manufacturing cost other than the crushing and milling. Blue asbestos was mined extensively in Wittenoom in Australia and if you do a search on Wittenoom, you’ll find they closed the place down. The town’s been abandoned and I don’t think anybody lives within a 50-mile radius. It was pretty bad. White asbestos is taken from Russia, China, United States, Canada. Brown asbestos is mostly South Africa.

Tony:               Okay, so why is this rock a problem? How can it hurt people?

Linda:             It’s fibrous. This had being developed by great pressure and great heat. The crystals have lined up in lovely friables, rather than crystallizing into little shards and lumps and bumps. They line up for amosite and crocidolite which is the brown and blue asbestos. They line up to crystal structures very much like I-beams in a building only a lot, lot smaller, so they split along the length rather than break in half and you end up with very fine … very, very fine friables. Amosite, which is serpentine, is a bit more corkscrewy, but it still breaks lengthwise rather than breaks in half. You end up with very long, very fine … less than 2.5 microns into the bottom of the lungs, breathable fibres.

Tony:               Sure, sure, so what’s a hair normally at?

Linda:             5, 6, 7, 8 microns, depending on what nationality you are. If you draw a pencil line, in that pencil line you could fit … if you made it an inch-long pencil line … you could probably fit 20 or 30 million of these fibres.

Tony:               Okay, okay. We get an awful lot of these tiny fibres potentially reaching into the bottom of the lungs. I’m assuming because your body can’t eject it that small.

Linda:             It gets caught in the bottom of the lungs. You’d breathe in dust and it gets into the lungs. You’ve got things called microphages and enzymes that deal with the stuff that goes into your lungs. It basically cleans it out and you cough it out, but asbestos being sharp and being not affected by acid, stays there. Through many different processes it causes three or four different types of disease. I’m not up on the process that much, but we can’t expel it. We don’t expel it. It gets into the bottom of the lungs and it stays there. It doesn’t dissolve.

Tony:               That’s pretty important. Once you’ve taken in a sufficient amount, whatever that is …

Linda:             It’s different for everybody. It is dose related, but for some people the dosage is a whole lot lower than it is for others.

Tony:               Once it’s in your lung, there’s no way to …

Linda:             … get it out.

Tony:               … get it out and over a long period of time …

Linda:             … if you work with it with a long period of time and you get a little bit every day, it’s not so good. If you get one exposure, it may not be an issue for you or it may. There are people that die of mesothelioma which is the real killer that comes with asbestos, with no known asbestos exposure, so those people don’t know where they’ve been exposed to asbestos. There are people in their 20s and 30s dying of mesothelioma, so they’ve been exposed somewhere as children.

Tony:               What sort of disease does it create and how big of an issue is this for the population and therefore for an individual listening to this and apply it looking at their workplace?

Linda:             The stats are available on New Zealand on the old Labour Department’s website. They put a paper out every year on lung disease in New Zealand. Asbestos figures in that quite largely. At the least you may end up with pleural plaques, which is basically just scarring of the lungs. You may get lung cancer, you may get asbestosis or you may get mesothelioma. Mesothelioma, once it’s diagnosed, they say if you last six months after diagnosis you’re doing quite well. Once you’ve got it it’s pretty much a death sentence.

It was traditionally thought to be only caused by blue asbestos, but in the late 1970s, early 1980s; they disproved that, that white asbestos also does it. A lot of people go through this fallacy that white asbestos isn’t bad and blue asbestos is really bad, when in actual fact they should all be treated the same and under New Zealand regulations they are.

Tony:               I guess we need to really look at how much exposure potentially is out there in the workplace and in the community. Can you tell us a little bit about where asbestos is used? What products could you be exposed to it in?

Linda:             We look at up at my ceiling and I’ve got a lovely [inaudible 00:08:25] asbestos roof. It’s in a lot of domestic homes much like it is here, as a textured finish on the roof. If you know what it is and it’s in good condition, such as this is in here, then it’s not really an issue. I’ve lived with this 20 years knowing what it is. I’ve got damage in the hallway after the storm. I’m having that removed. Once it starts to deteriorate it’s time to get it fixed. You’ll find it in textured finishes on ceilings and walls. You will find it on the floor … vinyl’s that went down between 1950 and the mid 1970s were backed with asbestos.

The glues that were made by ADOS for about 10-12 years contained asbestos in the mastic that they used. It is in butanol-type products that they use as flashing on fancy architect-designed buildings where you can’t put metal flashings. If they were the right period, that may contain asbestos. It’s in [Inaudible 0:09:26] tar-type roofing. It’s in lino tiles, but it is not in long-run linoleum, as being different from vinyl’s. It’s in concrete cement sheet products. It is in lathen plaster and some lathen plasters, mostly only in the good quality lathen plaster, it wasn’t used … we found it in government buildings more than we found it in domestic buildings in the lathen plaster.

It is in the glue around a fire door, on a fire, on a chippy. It may be the tile that the fire is sitting on. It may be the backboard behind the fire in older homes. It may be in the flue. It may be the chimney. It may be the guttering, the down pipe, the ridge pole, the [supersitch 00:10:19 roofing, the tiles on the deck.

Tony:               We’ve covered the house.

Linda:             Pretty much.

Tony:               (Laughs). What about in the workplace?

Linda:             In the workplace it’s in much the same types of places and in some offices you will get textured finishes, depending on what kind of buildings they’re in. Tiles in commercial buildings sometimes are asbestos. In fact, they’re particularly nasty, the ones that do contain asbestos. It will be in the heating system if they’re in an older building and they’ve got radiators. The radiators may be backed with asbestos. The water supply carrying the hot water to the radiators may be covered in asbestos.

Tony:               You mean the piping. All the piping?

Linda:             The piping. All the piping.

Tony:               That’d be miles probably.

Linda:             Miles and miles of it. There is less of that around now, but it is still there. Schools, hospitals and ex-government buildings are still full of it. I’ve had photos this week that show a mess under a school and it’s public buildings. The private buildings have got it in too, but it’s the big public buildings that …

Tony:               Did you say under a school?

Linda:             Under a school.

Tony:               We’re out in the community?

Linda:             It’s out in the community. It is out there. It has been damaged and taken off and not been removed and left lying under the schools. Nowadays everybody’s putting fancy cabling in for the broadband and Internet and power and upgrading everything, so they go underneath the school to put wiring in or into the roof space to put wiring in and they come across all of these asbestos-lagged pipes.

Tony:               I guess the challenge is for someone listening to this, if they’re looking around their workplace … and you mentioned the different colors of asbestos … that it may not be that easy to identify. How do people actually looking at a product go about identifying if they’ve got a potential hazard?

Linda:             If you’re working in an older building …I if you’re in a brand new building theoretically there should be no asbestos in it, so anything pre-1995, say, should not contain asbestos. I won’t say it does not because they’re still importing the stuff in building product. We’ve have had a Skyline shed built in 1992 that tested positive in the cement sheet for asbestos. Realistically that should never have occurred because asbestos was removed from cement sheets made in New Zealand in the late 1970s. We have homes from 1984, 1985 that have got textured finishes that should not contain asbestos, but they do.

Tony:               Are you saying that while there may be controls around manufacturing in New Zealand, that there are no controls to import products with asbestos in it?

Linda:             No, there’s not.

Tony:               There are none?

Linda:             You’re not allowed to import asbestos to make into a product, but if it is already incorporated into a product it’s allowed in.

Tony:               Okay.

Linda:             You can still buy gaskets that contain asbestos, so if you’re a car junkie and doing your own gasket cutting for your custom-made car, then you need to check that what you’re getting is not asbestos gasket material because you can still buy it.

Tony:               Right, so if people out there think that asbestos has been identified and controlled within New Zealand and eliminated from the supply chain and we’re dealing with a legacy, that’s not the case?

Linda:             That’s wrong. No, that’s not the case. Two years ago we had a sample from New Zealand Customs of a cement sheet product coming in from where a lot of cheap stuff comes from and they sent it to us because it was labeled as non-asbestos-containing, but it was called Asbestine. Of course it did have asbestos in it. I don’t know whether they let the shipment in. That’s not what we do, but we definitely identified it in this product that was heading to New Zealand.

Tony:               Identification, back to that. You may be at work … your school might be your work and you’ve identified a problem under the school like you’ve had …

Linda:             Something that looks suspicious, yes?

Tony:               … or your workplace or your home because everyone goes home I suppose, so let’s widen it out. How do people go about identifying if they have a problem?

Linda:             If it’s something like a textured ceiling or a cement sheet or a piece of vinyl, it’s not a big issue for the people to take the sample themselves, but if it is in a product that is really friable, really dusty or that breaks up really easy, then I would suggest that they get somebody in that knows what they’re doing to do it. Really they need a specialist contracted to do that.

Tony:               Before that step though, they need to confirm. For example, this is what I did based on your advice a month ago from that presentation.

Linda:             Your porch ceiling.

Tony:               Yeah, I took a sample.

Linda:             That’s fine for a sample, but if you come across pipe laggings that are hanging off a pipe, as soon as you see them, I would back out and shut the door. The fibre release off that kind of product in a draft is enormous.

Tony:               Got you.

Linda:             The potential for contamination from a very friable pipe lagging product is huge, so even a draft will cause problems.

Tony:               There are two things there. When you need to identify it is asbestos and how big that problem is, it sounds to me that you should be taking advice first before you did what I did, which was … I’m grateful for the advice … took a sample off my roof and it came back negative, so that was great, but I did that on advice. I made sure that that was okay to do. It sounds like that’s what people should be doing first. Getting advice.

Linda:             Taking a ceiling sample is not a big issue. The chances of you causing yourself harm taking a teaspoon from a product off the roof is pretty small. It’s the really friable as in pipe laggings and stuff like that, and going to cut things with a power saw or a power drill on cement sheet products that causes the problems because you’ve got a big release of fibre. The fibre is broken down into very small fibres.

Troy:                We’ve now identified we’ve got a problem, whether that is by someone taking a sample and coming back with a positive or getting a person in and they tell you, “Yeah, you’ve got a problem here.” Obviously if you’ve identified a problem you want to take the next step and that’s to remove it. I’ve heard some horror stories out there, but what should we be doing at this point?

Linda:             You should make sure that you are getting somebody that is a reputable asbestos contractor. That’s what he specializes in is asbestos removal work. There are a lot of people out there that are allowed to take off … it’s not restricted for cement sheet. Cement sheet is considered non-friable which I would argue, so it can be done by a builder as long as they follow the health and safety in the workplace and asbestos regulations.

As long as they do it correctly they can do it, but more often than they not they don’t clean up your mess when they’re finished. Though they remove all the cement sheet or the  roof, they don’t clean out all the Pink Batts in the roofing space that’s now completely contaminated with broken bits of asbestos, so you’ve still got residual problem. In fact, the residual problem in the ceiling void is probably a lot more than the roofing was originally.

Troy:                I can almost hear people listening to this saying, “Yeah, I get that, but our business … let say they’re not a large one … can’t afford to get someone in,” or “I’m at home at I’m just going to do it myself,” and they may get one of those bra cup mouth filters that is next to nothing …

Linda:             You need a P3. Unless you’re clean-shaven you’re wasting your time wearing one. For a man he needs to be clean-shaven.

Troy:                Because the fibres are so small …

Linda:             They will get through …

Troy:                They are smaller than their whiskers.

Linda:             More than a day’s growth and you’ve got a problem.

Troy:                I get the argument people will have out there, “We can’t afford to do this,” and what they’re actually saying is, “We’re going to sacrifice our health potentially,” so do you have any … is there anything you can pass, any stories that you may have heard, so we can shake people up to take action?

Linda:             The story I tell most is that asbestos is the only problem in the workplace or when you are renovating your home that you will share with everybody you meet if you don’t take proper precautions. You will carry it in your tread of your shoes into your car, whereas it may start off as a piece of fibre that you can see … and the potential of a piece of fibre the size of the hair, say an inch of hair, is quite literally 10 or 15 million fibres if you drop it on the floor and then walk on it. A little bit will come off today and a little bit tomorrow.

If it’s in your clothes, your wife and your children are going to share it or husband, because I shouldn’t be sexist and consider that only men do this work. It’s the one workplace hazard that people that are working … builders and plumbers and electricians, that if they start puddling in it that they’re going to take home and share.

Troy:                It sounds to me that it will be invisible, so you won’t see the problem.

Linda:             You can’t see it. I had a gentleman come in last week, was in a roof space … it’s very unusual, but they had had asbestos insulin sprayed into the roof space and he came in to bring a sample in. He says, “Everybody’s told me no, no, it’s rock wall,” he says, “But I thought I’d better get it checked.” He came in. He’s an electrician and he brought in a little bag of stuff. He says, “Oh, it’s broken up in the bag since I took it off, because it was quite … it was stuck together and quite hard.” It turned out to be 100% chrysotile. His trousers … his knees were white and his elbows were white, and he says, “Oh, just dusted myself off,” so the advice was go and dump your clothes. Wash your shoes well. You probably keep those, they’re leather, but he basically went back to work, took all his clothes off and dumped them and got changed.

Troy:                This was probably a relatively informed tradesman.

Linda:             He seemed to know what he was looking at. He was sure enough that it wasn’t rock wall to get it tested. It was last Friday.

Troy:                Good on him for following his instincts. Hopefully this will help other people take notice.

Linda:             Men are notorious for not washing their hands. If they dust off their knees and then wipe their hands on their jersey or their shirt or their coat; you’ve got trillions of fibres potentially sitting on your clothes. You go home and give your wife a hug or your child a hug and they’re going to come up to your shoulder and they’re going to get a lung full, quite literally a lung full.

Troy:                Okay, that’s scary.

Linda:             That’s firemen who’ve been through a fire where there’s asbestos in their boots and their gloves and …

Troy:                We’ve got a problem in the workplace and in the community and it’s going to be here for a long while. We need to be informed and make good decisions. If people listening to this want to find out more, someone to talk to. Perhaps take a sample and get it tested and get further advice, how do they get in contact with you and your company?

Linda:             We’ve got a website, www.fibres.co.nz, and that’s the English spelling of fibres, not the American, so it’s with a “bre” rather than “ber.” I am usually the one that answers the phone at work because I can answer most of the questions, but we give advice over the phone.

Troy:                Great. Thank you, Linda. I’ll put that link on my website, safetyhub.co.nz, so really grateful for that information. You helped me and hopefully will help other people.

Linda:             You’re welcome.

Troy:                Thank you.

Linda:             Bye.

Link mentioned in podcast: Capital Environmental Services website.

Please share this page to get the word out! Thanks

How Large Businesses Will Improve Contractor Safety Performance

 Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on itunes.
[leadplayer_vid id=”51D92CE1249E2″]

• 0:51 What is the Business Leaders’ Health and Safety Forum?
• 1:47  Why was it established?
• 5:34 How will this Supply Chain project affect me?
• 12:10 What are the possible measures?

Quotable:
“How CEO aim to influence other businesses through their supply chain” – Tony –  Click to Tweet

“Improved safety performance will happen when contract work is treated as an extension of their business”- Tony – Click to Tweet This One

Tony: Gidday listeners, Tony Collins back with Julian Hughes who is the Executive Director of the Business Leaders’ Health and Safety Forum. I’ll ask Julian about the Forum in a moment and I’m sure he’ll correct me if I’m wrong.

But basically to my mind the Forums is about working with CEO of major a business to influence and improve Health and Safety performance. And today we’ll talk about how this could affect you and your business. So, welcome Julian.

Julian: Thank you, good to be here.

Tony: So can you tell me a little bit about the Forum to kick this off.

Julian: Well you’re right, the Forum was established with the intention of improving safety performance by engaging and improving the effectiveness of Senior leaders.

And when you think of leaders in a business, the most important id the CEO or the equivalent whatever that role may be for a NZ based business. I guess our members are made up CEO, Managers Directors, General Managers and it really depends upon the company structure.

But that’s essentially the idea, is that senior leaders have a huge role to play. They set the tone and can create positive safety cultures and we felt we could provide a mechanism and an avenue for them to improve their safety knowledge and understanding so that they can become more effective safety leaders themselves.

Tony: Great, so why was the forum established.

Julian: That’s an interesting idea in where did it come from. It’s origins were in 2009, and to give credit to the Ex-Minister of Labour, the Honorable Kate Wilkonson, she lead a number of discussion with CEO in that year, and essentially asked them a question, or two questions. One is our safety performance acceptable, and the short answer is no it’s not. And do CEO of New Zealand businesses have a role to play in improving that. And there were a couple of forums and meetings and at the end of it there was enough momentum and enough CEO who said of course we have a role to play. We’re not sure quite what that looks like but we have a role to play in improving that.

So cut forward a year to June 2010 and the forum was officially launched. It was launched by the Prime Minister in Auckland and about 100 CEO of New Zealand businesses signed up to the forum’s pledge. So essentially they came together with a common vision of what they believe their role should be in leading Health and Safety in their businesses.

Tony: And fast forward to 2013, I know there are a number of different work streams and projects underway, and the one I thought most relevant to talk about today is how the forum, which represents a number of large businesses, aim to encourage contractor or subcontractor to improve H&S through the supply chain. Can you explain a little about this supply chain project and actually, what does the supply chain mean?

Julian: I’ll just rewind slightly before I answer that. The key change that happened between 2010 and 2013 was that the forum set itself up as a membership organsiation, so we’re now a not-for-profit incorporated society and we have approximately 140 CEO who are our members. And that provides a slight change from 2010 where we have a revenue stream, which means we can now do some work. The work we are doing is some of those projects you described.

So then to talk about the supply chain project. I guess the idea of the forum was to improve safety across the New Zealand economy. Not just for the forum members who sign up but there was a greater good concept, could CEO influence others to improve health and safety performance right across our economy. And there are a couple of ways we thought of how we can actually do that. One is to get every business leader in the country to sign up and I think we’d still welcome that approach. But we actually thought the way the forum could be most influential would be how could forum members influence other businesses through their supply chain.  So we signed up or we approach leaders from large New Zealand businesses, as opposed to small to medium sized, or those businesses that have a particular high risk. And then we said for you, you often interact with a lot of other companies, to manage your business. In some cases you purchase good and services or contract people in to work in some areas of your business. In some areas you actually contract out large chunks of it.

So one of the concerns in that whole arrangement is if you contract out a piece of work or you bring contractors in and you delegate health and safety responsibilities, the concern is if those companies don’t share your values, views and approach to health and safety, then you won’t have great performance. So our view was could we get CEO to understand what it is, what are the things they need to do to ensure safety performance is not only important to their business but also important to all the business they interact with. So we use that concept of the supply chain. We’re using it in a reasonably broad sense but in many ways what we are talking about is the health and safety performance between a business and it’s contractors.

Tony: What that means then if I am a business or a contractor supplying goods and services to a larger business. What does that mean for me?

Julian: Well lots of businesses will already be experiencing what we are trying to promote in this space, and that is a company purchasing good and services puts in place an expectation of what they expect that company to be able to provide and they’ll often do that in the negotiation phase of tendering for a piece of work. They’ll potentially have requirements that companies will have to come up to. But there is also a range of other steps that we now know from research and experience that is required to ensure that it’s not only assessed prior to awarding the contract but there is an ongoing assessment and engagement with the contractor, to make sure the company contracting the work out is confident they company is maintaining the deal, basically, what they set up to start with.  And that is kind of a relatively easy concept to understand and there are some intricacies within that relationship and how you do that, which are not always easy to do.

Clearly there is an understanding that they are separate companies and that there is a contractual arrangement between those companies and so there needs to be a level of understanding, particularly at the leadership level about how that relationship works. So what we want to uncover in our project is what are the leadership behaviours and leadership values that promote the best performance within that contracting environment. And we think there are some really fantastic examples out there that is happening and what we’re really trying to do in uncover those and then find out how people are going and then promote others to adopt those practices.

Sort of like here’s the best practice model that we know works out there in the business and recommend you having a look at this model. Is that the sort of approach?

Julian: Absolutely. I don’t think the forum will be getting into the approach of requiring businesses to do certain things, that are not the approach we’ve taken in the past. We’re really trying to expose what good practice looks like and then encourage people to pull down that and then adopt to make best sense for themselves. So for small to medium businesses and I guess I’ll make the point they are not going to see the forum suddenly changing anything in particular but there may be some changes in that relationship if they are working with members of the forum who adopt the approach the forum takes. But it will soon be in the relationship that they are used to. So you’re not going to suddenly have a third party or anyone playing any role in that process. But the forum will be trying to uncover best practice. And there are some really good examples and recently the forum hosted Lawrence Waterman who was in New Zealand for a range of engagements. We hosted him at a session at Sky City to talk particularly…

Tony: Sorry, who is Lawrence Waterman?

Julian: Lawrence was the head of Health and Safety for the Olympic Delivery Authority and they were the organisaiton charged I guess delivering the Olympic Games facilities in London.  And they’ve got a fantastic story to tell. It was the first Olympic build in modern times when no one was killed, in the construction phase. And they had an injury rate that was lower than the UK industry level. So they were working in a high risk, high-pressure environment and they did not kill anyone and they had a lower injury rate than the rest of the economy.

Tony: I’ve heard Lawrence speak about that project and I think it was 300 million pounds of building per month, at the peak, and I love the stories that underline how that actually happened and how it was not just fatalities but a real commitment at the leadership level not to have any serious harm accidents as well. [listen to the serious harm legal interview]

Julian: Well I think that’s the story and without trying to paraphrase Lawrence’s story and that’s one of the reasons we wanted to understand what they did because we’d heard this great story that was unfolding. And to cut to our example, Christchurch Rebuild in many ways has some parallels. It’s a very different type of project and arguably much more complex, but there are some principles that we thought the London build uncovered which were equally relevant in the Christchurch Rebuild and then clearly equally relevant in any contractual arrangement.

And what was interesting about what Lawrence said was the leadership that was required to deliver that result was strong from day one and right the way the project. But it wasn’t just about the Directors or the CEO of the authority running around saying that they were committed to safety. It actually translated into real tangible things they did on a day to day to basis. So, we think there is plenty to learn from that and that’s why we hosted him and have got a project team and are looking at those things that happened in London, what’s potentially happening in Christchurch and what else the research and experience tells us works.

Tony: Sure, so with this commitment of Directors and CEO to influencing the supply chain, the aim is to increase the performance of those contractors or businesses that potentially are supplying or working for them.

Julian: Absolutely, so it’s to say we believe the mindset. If a business leader has a mindset that the work they contract out is an extension of their business, then we think suddenly we are in the right frame of mind, we are in the ball park. So, how would that translate, what would that mean?

Well it might mean they measure safety performance of their own business, but they use the same measures to measure the safety performance of their contractors. And that’s not always the case. In some cases it is but it is not always the case. So, it’s not just about saying I’d like them to be good, there are some tangible things you might start doing. You’ll be asking them to report on those things. You might have ongoing engagement meetings with them, at a senior level, asking how they’re going, what they are doing. Anyhow, we’ve seen some fantastic examples of this. Mike Bennett’s who is the CEO of Z Energy hosted a peer learning event for the forum late last year. And one of the key stories was when they were rebranding from the Shell Service stations to the Z service stations. There was a period where they didn’t have any incidents, they didn’t have any injury but there was a period where they were concerned about how the contractors were working at height in a couple of projects that were going on. And because of those concerns Mike actually closed the contract down for a period of time until he was satisfied they could do that [satisfy concerns]. And that was a tough call; they were under lots of pressure to deliver in a certain timeframe. Stopping a project is never helpful to anyone, generally, but what that shows you is safety is absolutely, when talking about top priority, it was the top priority and as the leader of Z Energy he wanted to make sure he could do that work safely and the contractors are working safely. So that sends a very strong message and when they were satisfied things were back on track, the project started. And I don’t know the detail but by all accounts it sounds like they delivered on time and on budget and that the impact suddenly derail the project. In fact, it sent pretty strong messages about what was expected.

Tony: Is there a timeline to the launch of this project or a gradual emphasis and agreement across Directors and CEO to aim to affect the supply chain.

Julian: Well, we want to deliver things and we have delivered stuff to date. So we’ve delivered around a couple of other projects around what we believe safety leadership is and we’ve got assessment tolls around that. We’re in the process of developing a safety leadership development process for CEO so, we’re about doing stuff, nit just sitting around and talking about it.

But I guess to answer your question, we see this as a rolling set of deliverables. It’s not going to be all suddenly delivered on one day. I think what we’ll try and establish up front is what are the key principles that CEO need to aspire to or have to ensure that health and safety performances are emphasized through their supply chain. We’ll then attempt to engage CEO to ensure that they are espousing to those principles or have those principles in place. We will then try and help them try to understand how they can deliver on those things. But ultimately where we won’t be, I should be careful, but my feeling is we won’t be saying, this is the way you have to do it. And everyone follows the same process. I don’t think that’s what we’re doing because I don’t think – I think that could be counter productive. You know, different businesses are at different stages, they have different ways of doing things, so what we want them to do is take a principled approach but then apply it within their business and how that makes best sense to them and their suppliers. So, I hope that answers your question and I think we’ve made some good progress to date. We are a little bit behind where we want to be. And I think we will be having a rolling set of deliverable actions between now and the middle of 2014.

Tony: Is there anything else that you’d like to add on this or have I not asked you anything you’d like to add to the conversation?

Julian: Just the fact that the forum presents a fantastic opportunity for New Zealand to improve Health and Safety performance but it is, at this stage, an opportunity. And we need to embrace it and do what we can with it. It certainly provides that opportunity for CEO to engage with other who are facing very similar challenges, share their knowledge, understand how they can improve. And how they can be part of the health and safety conversation. One of the concerns I guess I’ve had, as someone who has worked in this area for some time, is that the people that can often make the most or have the most influence about health and safety performance haven’t always actually been the people involved in the conversation and influencing outcomes. And so we think we have a role to play there as well. And we are particularly proud our involvement with the taskforce review and the fact that our Chair, Rob Jager was asked to Chair the Taskforce Review, and so suddenly we had a large significant review, often referred to as a once in a generation review of our health and safety system, which had input from people who are dealing with these issues on a daily basis. And who are providing strong leadership within their business. So, we think there is a role we can play in that space as well. But we are very encouraged by where we are so far, and like many things there is a long way for us to go.

Tony: And Julian if people want to find out more about the Business Leader’s Health and Safety Forum, how do they go about doing that?

Julian: We have a website www.zeroharm.org.nz so feel free to check that out. And feel free to give me a call or contact me on my email. My email address and phone number is on the website. So more then happy to chat with anyone about what we’re doing.

I said at the start that the target audience was large or high-risk businesses. We don’t actually have a criteria. If there is someone out there who is running a business and wants to understand how they can get better, or are leading a business sorry and wants to get better, absolutely give me a call. There is no reason why you can’t be part of the forum. We have some of New Zealand’s largest businesses engaged and we have even have some reasonably smaller businesses involved as well. So there are no criteria, give us a call, we’ll welcome all comers at this stage.

Tony: Great, thank you Julian for coming in and sharing your knowledge and might catch up with you another time.

Julian: Thanks very much Tony, good to be here. Cheers

 

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Accident Investigation and Critical Legal Advice

 Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on itunes.

• 1:46 What should a business do following an accident?
• 3:01 What you legally need to report (Serious Harm)
• 4:06 Practical support for the employees
• 5:14 A communication plan is key
• 7:13 Lessons from Pike River Coal
• 10:14 What is the next step after reporting has been completed?
• 14:05 What rights does the regulator have to request your report given you could be hanging yourself?
• 15:36 The ONLY WAY TO PROTECT YOUR INVESITGATION report from the regulator.
• 17:09 Understand the H&S regulator’s thinking and mindset
• 19:42 What is ‘reasonable’ access to you business?
• 21:04 Access to employees and what you should be advising your staff
• 24:25 Taking samples for testing
• 26:37 Getting outside support to run an investigation
• 27:50 Grant’s contact details

Quotable:
“How to protect your company’s investigation report from the regulator” – Tony – Click to Tweet

Tony: Hi and welcome back listeners, Tony Collins here and today I’m joined by a well
know New Zealand H&S lawyer Grant Nicholson. How are you going Grant?

Grant: Very well, how are you?

Tony: Good thanks. Look Grant is a partner with Kensington Swan and I’ve heard Grant give a really great presentation a couple of years ago, around the whole process of investigation of a workplace incident, which could ultimately wind up in a court situation, and what you as a business should be around managing this whole process. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today and focus on a workplace accident scenario. Are you happy with that topic Grant?

Grant: Perfect Tony, ready to go.

Tony: OK, lets say in a business out there and accident’s just occurred, and they’ve worked through their emergency response plan and the people that are injured are now getting their medical treatment and the site is secured, so no more people are going to be injured. And people will now start to turn their mind to their legal requirements. So, what should a business be doing from this point on?

Grant: The first thing they should do is assess if serious harm has occurred and there is a statutory definition in the Health and safety in employment act. But basically you can almost follow your gut instinct. If it’s anything more serious where somebody’s had something chopped off or whether they have been taken off to hospital and they are likely to stay in hospital for a period or they become unconscious. Those would be common indicators that you have had serious harm. If people are not sure if they’ve had serious harm or not they can go online and look at legislation.govt.nz, that has the HSE Act on it and they can look up the definition which sits in Schedule 1 to the Act and get a sense for themselves. Or they can contact a lawyer to ask whether in fact they have any obligations under the Act in relation to the accident. That may seem like it is self evident but I did, a number of years ago now, have a client had a worker working on a construction site with a nail gun. And he fired the nail gun and the nail rebounded from a very strong surface and embedded itself in the guys lung and they rung to say well that doesn’t sound like serious harm to them and I had to say more or less, terribly sorry but actually it is. So don’t always trust your gut on that.

The reason that whether it’s serious harm or not is important is because if it is serious harm, there is an obligation to report to what is current known as the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, which was formally the Department of Labour and in a few months time about to be known as Worksafe New Zealand, as the prime regulator. And you need to make an oral notification as soon as possible. In large centers like Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch you will normally get a few hours before reporting becomes an issue to the Ministries 0800 call center, but in smaller centers particularly in provincial towns are notorious for this. What often happens is if you’ve called the ambulance to look after somebody the emergency services will take on themselves to call either the Police and or the local Inspector and what happens is firstly you lose control over the process and who is saying what to whom. And also run the risk of an inspector taking umbrage at the fact that haven’t notified as properly as you might, and also run the risk of an inspector turning up on site before you are ready for them to be there.

Once you’ve done that and working on the basis that the scene is secure, on a practical level there are two things that you need to do. The first of those is to just think about employee assistance to not just the person who is injured. But actually towards their work mates as well as anybody who may have actually witnessed the accident or otherwise be affected by it. You’d be surprised how often that is a material concern particularly when you’ve got more significant injuries. And I’m thinking about not just fatalities but actually cases where people may have actually seen one of their work mates potentially lose a limb or have fingers or a hand de-gloved, for example, so you see some pretty messy, for want of a better term, accidents where the people left behind are going to need support. Because the person who is a victim is also a friend, or a workmate and even if it’s a contractor or sub-contractor situation, it’s going to be someone that they sat down with at smoko and had a cup of tea or coffee with. Perhaps had a cigarette so it’s going to people that they know and so one of the first things to be thinking about is can anybody else safely go back to work. Or are they going to be distracted and do we need to be thinking about what we can do for all of them.

As well as having an onsite communication plan around what you are going to be telling people because on larger sites you are going to have a large number of people who are not necessarily going to know that there has been a serious accident happen. Until the jungle drums tart beating around the site and all of a sudden you’ve got a lot of people who are hearing part of the story but not the full story and who will have a lot of questions about what is going on.

More importantly you’ve also got to be thinking about what you are going to be telling more senior management for larger business. Or particularly businesses where you’ve got more than one site, and where you don’t have the ultimate bosses, on site working where the accident occurred. They are going to want to be notified to what’s going on and thinking about whether there is any sort of PR or media support. Particularly in any incidents that are high profile even when it may be small contracting businesses. Often they will be involved working with larger organisations and again, provincial centers tend to this is more an issue for them rather than the big centers. But where there is not much news going on, reporters from the local press are very good at having local contacts with the police and ambulance and fire services and sniff out that there might be a story splash to their editor to put into the local paper for the next day. And companies need to be thinking about what is it that they are going to do in terms of offering some sort of public comment. And generally speaking, I tell them look, say some sympathetic things about how awful it is and how you are looking after the victim and doing everything to protect and support the other employees otherwise it’s inappropriate to comment until the investigations, internal and external, have been completed.

Tony: There is a lot of information there and it sounds to me that the key thing, we talked about reporting, reporting requirements, the oral the written, but then moved into potentially having a communication plan already thought through. Who are you going to talk to, whether you’re a large business, or a medium business in a large city, or are you rural so, the sense I’m getting from the first opening statements there is that preparation is key, even before an accident.

Grant: Look absolutely right and look if you talked at the outset about companies starting to implement their emergency response plan and really the best example I can give you of that is Pike River Coal. With the Pike River Mine Explosions in 2010, where they had an extensive range of roles that were identified, they had done some training drills, so that people who were likely to have roles in the case of an emergency actually knew what they were supposed to be doing.

There were only two very significant problems with the plans that they had. One was that they didn’t give any consideration in the emergency planning to what happens if you have someone in a senior position that may actually be caught up in the emergency. Or in the case of Pike River where you had the National Health and Safety Manager for Pike River Coal whom had two sons trapped in the mine. Well obviously that immediately that took them out of play in being able to participate in the implementation of the emergency response plan because he had more pressing personal concerns to attend to.

But you also had situation where, in the Pike River Royal Commission came to look at the problem, they asked every man and their dog from the Police to the Fire Service to people from the company from Pike River Coal and others whether there was an emergency plan being implemented and they all gave different answers. So people from Pike River Coal said yes we had an Emergency Plan and we were implementing it and we had people who had the right checklists and were wearing the rights vests to say what was going on, but when you asked the Police and Emergency Services the same question, they all said no, we had no idea Pike River was doing anything. So there was not any degree of co-ordination, there wasn’t any advanced planning and so any business operating in a high hazard environment, there is a real need do we need to think about emergency drills not just with our own people, but actually involving Emergency services from our community and just thinking about how it is they might have to come out.

The story that comes to mind for me is oddly enough my father-in-law who, at the time, was working for a company up in Whangarei where they were refurbishing Marine vessels. And they had somebody who was trapped in a confined space and when the ambulance turned up to get somebody out of a confirmed space, they had not actually gone through and practiced and the emergency services personal we not able to actually enter the confined space because it was too small for them. They were larger figured ambulance officers and so the whole process ground to a halt. So it’s great to have an emergency plan, so you know what your response is going to be, but you also need to think about how practicable and what’s really going to happen something does go wrong. Because when it does go wrong it needs to be seamless and ready to go.

Tony: That’s great and thanks for hammering home that point about being prepared and I’ll put links to the legislation you referred to before, the HSE Act just for the listener, so that they can easily get there. [links are at the bottom of this page]

But if we move a step down now. We’ve responded appropriately for the emergency, and the site is secure, we’ve done our reporting. What is likely to be the next step from the oral and written report being completed – what normally happens then?

Grant: Sure well I guess the starting point is the oral report begins on the day and the written notification to the Ministry is then due within seven days. That’s a 1-page form that you can download for free again form the dol.govt.nz website and you might be able to get a link for that as well [posted at bottom of page]. Often the inspectors will be pushing for that to be made available within 24-48 hours. They have no statutory right to do that but given it’s a 1-page form and it’s very bland in what it says, there is often not a lot of downside in doing that.

Beyond that, probably the prime consideration is to actually start to investigate internally. So what the legislation requires is that when you’ve had a serious harm accident a business is obliged to investigate and to determine whether a significant accident caused or contributed to the incident. In practice what tends to happen is that the inspectors will want businesses to undertake a full investigation to identify what was the cause of the accident and to give them conclusions that often read like a checklist of practicable steps not taken and identify for the inspector every possible thing could have be done and was not done. That isn’t the legislative requirement and obviously what it does is expose businesses that prepare that sort of report to the potential for prosecution or other enforcement actions.

So we say is stop and draw breath and make sure right from day one who are the right people to be involved in an investigation team, and then actually work out what investigation you need to do. And that, generally speaking, require speaking to everybody who was on site and who was a witness to the relevant events and to be speaking to them sooner rather than later. It’s particularly important to balance up talking to the people on the day when their recollection is freshest, to also talking to them when they are under significant emotional stress and strain and their recollections might be somewhat clouded from the emotions of the day. And so giving people a little bit of time and space to gather their thoughts before they then actually commit anything to writing, particularly when giving a statement to the investigation team. And bear in mind when doing that kind of interview process about what it is you are going to write down. The common bugbear I find is people will write down very indiscrete and unhelpful statements that aren’t necessarily bound in fact but are more matters of opinion or heresy because employee number one talks to employee number two who spoke to employee number three and suddenly they all take as gospel what employee number 4 is reported to them as having said or seen, when they haven’t spoken to the other employee and in fact that may not be the case. So it’s really important to separate out the speculation and hearsay from what people actually saw and heard and said and did. Because those are they key things that need to be identified as part of the investigation before you actually get down to write how was it the systems and processes that were in place in the business allowed the incident to occur.

Tony: OK great summary of the investigative process there from the businesses point of view. And there are probably varying degrees of capability within a business and to what degree they can gather teams together and what specialist training they have. But lets say they did the best job they could and did everything that you spoke about. I’m interested in the tension there between the regulator and the report that is produced for the business. What rights does the regulator have to request that report given what you mentioned that you could be hanging yourself?

Grant: That’s a really good question. In simple terms the regulator has the rights to call for any documents within the workplace that either relate to the workplace or to the employees that work there. The Ministry’s position on that is that it’s a very broad power, it’s fair to say that it hasn’t been particularly well tested by the courts as to what the exact limits of it are. But it doesn’t really matter for particularly small businesses that don’t have a lot of experience dealing with regulators because the regulator will say I’m entitled to your report and I want you to give it to me and will put a lot of pressure on saying make sure you hand it over. Generally speaking what I get clients to do is almost apply a sniff test to it at the start. So you generally speaking will have a bit of an idea right from day one as something that is not likely to excite much interest. Say for example, somebody who is walking across a yard somewhere outside a warehouse and trips over a step and falls down and breaks their wrist, which nobody’s really going to give an awful lot of consideration to. Versus say the Tamahere Cool Store, which exploded and killed a fireman and burned a number of other Fire Fighters where clearly right from day one people knew there was going to be a lot more interest in it. The only way that companies can protect themselves against having to disclose their investigation and report to the Ministry and to the Inspector is if they have done it under the basis it was being prepared so that the company’s lawyers can give them advice on whether they have any liability. And that requires actually engaging lawyers at an early stage so I put in a plug for my lawyer colleagues up and down the country around that. But it really is just a protective measure and isn’t necessary in many cases but the problem we have is that if you don’t at least think about it at the outset, you can’t do it retrospectively. So if you don’t engage a lawyer at the outset and say hey, I’m going to want some advice when this is finished, you can’t magically wave a wand at the finish [of the investigation] and say actually all the things we’ve prepared we now want to put privilege over. Where as it does work in reverse. So at the outset you can say to your lawyer look, I think I’m going to need some advice. Lawyer can say in that case please do a report for me so that I can then consider it and provide the advice as to whether you have a legal liability. And if you go through a process internally and actually decide, we don’t really want to spend money to get a lawyer to do anything once we’ve sorted out and understand for ourselves what happened, then that’s fine. The privilege just falls away.

Tony: Right. I think that’s a very important point. Especially if a business is concerned around where this is going because if you do and really are motivated to do a great job to get to the bottom of the problem. And I think most businesses will come from that point of view, they don’t want it to occur again. But on the other hand if they have this real concern, then this is a way to manage the process.

Grant: Look I think so and I think from my perspective things have changed just over the last year to 18 months and so while in the past it was really important to have a strong relationship with your local inspectors and to be seen to be a company of any size really who actually looks to be cooperative and to been seen to be somebody who is responsible and doing the right thing, did actually assist Company’s to avoid any enforcement action being taken against them. Even when they might have technically breached their legal duties. Post Pike River and all the criticism that the Department of Labour, as it was then, took about the light handed regulatory approach, we are seeing a far more aggressive stance being taken by Inspectors in terms of saying we are going to do more enforcement actions, but also actually looking to really test the boundaries of their powers and make demands on businesses that are really right on the cusp of whether they have the legal ability to do it.

I’m not saying that to be critical of them because clearly their role is to ensure the safety of workers and others involved in the workplace, so they’re really looking to just do their job. But it creates more of a tension then it did in the past and it would be naive I think now for businesses to expect that trying to maintain that cooperative sheen with the inspector is going to be the panacea which means you aren’t then going to face enforcement action. Some of the Inspectors are, frankly a little bit sneaky in terms of trying to develop a rapport with the owners of small or medium sized businesses and be saying look, I just want to make sure you were doing the right thing. And then getting people to say things that are incriminating of themselves, and then saying a-hah! My boss is making me, but I’m going to have to go away and prosecute you and you are going to get a fine and potentially have to pay tens of thousands of dollars or more in penalties. So people do need to be thinking prudently and what is best for themselves and in my view, taking a very measured and often a narrow view about what is it they are going to disclose.

Having said all of that, it is still really important to at least give the appearance to be cooperative with the inspectors. There is any offence for obstructing an Inspector and you don’t want to get into a situation where that is either threatened or becomes an actuality, to the extent that the Inspector is making reasonable requests and the requests aren’t going to involve you saying anything that is going to incriminate, then there’s no reason not to cooperate. Because the starting point is both the employer and also the Inspector are really just looking to actually work out what happened to make sure it does not happen again. So to that point at least we’re all on the same side.

Tony: OK so what do we mean by reasonable. Does that mean giving them access to any records you have got or the people for interviews, or where or what are the bounds of reasonable?

Grant: It really depends upon the circumstances. So if you take those aspects, people and documents, in terms of documents while the law is not particularly clear on the issue by and large we all work on the basis the Inspector can ask for any documents in the business that is not legally privileged or isn’t going to incriminate you and create some sort of legal liability risk. So that if the Inspectors asks for a document that the company already has, then subject to reviewing it and deciding it’s going to say something unhelpful and see whether there is a justified basis for not disclosing it, then it does need to be disclosed. And that can be right down to the level of an inspector saying he or she wants a copy of an employment contract for an employee. In my experience the inspectors are reasonably good at accepting that sometimes there will be some commercial limitations. So for example, if an employee doesn’t want to have their salary exposed then it may well be that you give a redacted version of the contract that has some bits blacked out. Because it’s a balancing act between privacy and the rights of the inspector.

When it comes to talking to people it becomes difficult. Again, there is no automatic right for the inspector to be able to talk to all the people that were on the site at the time an accident happened. I have seen companies say no, we’re not going to give you access to people. It’s fair to say it drive the inspectors crazy and I know of at least one occasion where a company refused to do that, was subject to an enforcement action on the basis that they were obstructing. I don’t think that was well founded but that is what happened.

But employees need to be told that they don’t actually need to talk to the inspector if they don’t want to. And the inspectors are in my view are somewhat poor in pointing that out to people and so they put a fair degree of pressure on people saying I want to talk to you I want to understand what’s going on and try and force people to give an interview when they can just say no, I don’t want to talk to you. And so it’s important for employers to be thinking about reminding their employees that they don’t have to talk if they don’t want to. But equally it’s important for them not to be saying, I’m telling you not to talk. Because I think that’s a terrible look and frankly socially irresponsible for an employer to be doing that and trying to keep the employees away.

But it might well be the case that what you want to say is yes, we’re very happy for you to talk to our employees but they have been through a very traumatic experience and as part of our role as a responsible employer we’re supporting them at the moment so you can come and interview them at our workplace and we’re going to remind them that they have the opportunity to have anybody that they want present in the interview with them. And that might mean a friend, a family member, a union rep or it might actually mean the company’s lawyer actually sits in to actually protect the individual and make sure they don’t say anything that is incriminating of themself as to anything they did or didn’t do that might have contributed to the accident.

Again, that is an issue that causes some angst with the inspectors because their view is that there is a conflict of interest when acting for an employer, and say one of it’s employees. We generally just tell the inspector that well, that’s just the way it is, and any conflict issues are between the employer and the employee. And as long as actually they are all just telling the truth then there shouldn’t really be any conflict between them. But there have been cases where I’ve been involved where a conflict has arisen and we’ve had to stop interactions and say look actually, at this point you now have a conflict. A conflict has arisen and we can’t continue to act for somebody. I did a case last year, which was effectively a he-said, she-said with two guys working on a construction site, where they each blamed the other for an accident that occurred that led to somebody to fall 5 or 6 meters through an unguarded penetration. And once it got to the point where the each wanted to point the finger at the other, the obviously there was a conflict and I wasn’t able to continue assist. But until that point you can actually, as an employer, say to your people look we’re very happy to have the company’s lawyer help you and just remind you of your rights and then it’s really over to you what you have to say beyond that. The advantage of that of course is that it gives the employer an ability to have eyes and ears inside the room and to know what it is that is being said to the inspector so they’ve got a better sense as to what the inspectors approach to the whole thing might be in terms of lines of questioning but also what the inspector’s being told.

Tony: Is there anything else in this scenario around workplace accidents that we haven’t talked about in terms of legislation changes being proposed, or anything else I haven’t asked you?

Grant: Probably the big thing we haven’t talked about yet is what rights does the inspector have to actually take samples, or do destructive testing. And it may be the case if you’ve got a workplace accident has occurred involving a piece of machinery, for example they are going to want to take photographs or measurements of it, they might want to do some sort of scene reconstruction. Generally speaking they are able to come in and have access to the equipment that was involved in any accident and to have a look and work out for them selves what was going on. But, the employer is not obliged to do a recreation of the accident or try to speculate and recreate what might or might have not gone on. Likewise, to the extent that any destructive testing is required, so if you’ve got a piece of equipment that needs to be broken up, for example, in order to assess why it is that it failed. Normally there will be an opportunity for the owner of that equipment to liaise with the inspector and make sure both sides are represented when any testing is being done. So that there is an understanding what testing processes have been followed and therefore the accuracy or otherwise of the tests being undertaken can be properly monitored and judged on whether they are giving a good and fair outcome.

In terms of what the future holds, my expectation is the law is going to largely remain the same, once the Health and Safety in Employment Act is repealed and replaced later this year, bit it is a little bit of a moving feast at this stage. We haven’t seen a lot of recommendations for change from the Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety in this regard, and the Australian law is broadly speaking consistent with what we have now. But until the end of July when the Government is due to put a bill before parliament, really it’s anybody’s guess.

Tony: Grant I think we’ve covered a lot there and maybe if it works out for you, later in the year we’ll get you back to actually talk about the changes that have actually occurred in the HSE Act.

Grant: I’ll be happy to Tony, not a problem.

Tony: So generally we’ve talked about preparedness to me that came through well and truly that you need to actually be prepared and practicing your emergency response and communication plans.

Reporting is important, both orally as quickly as possible and 7 days for the written side. The investigative side of the process, to me it’s pretty clear you should be considering getting legal advice. I’m talking to a lawyer of course you’re going to say that. But it’s clear there are some really good reasons to do so

Grant: Yeah, and with no hint of self-interest, that’s definitely the case. That doesn’t mean though you actually need to have your lawyer running the investigation process or doing it all for you. That would sometimes be appropriate and expensive and lawyers don’t always have the right skill set to be doing it. It may well be best to do it within the business, or engage a specialist H&S practitioner from outside who can come in and have a look and help you with that, where you get some pricing certainty with what’s going on with it.

Probably the fundamental thing from my perspective at least when you do an investigation report is thinking about firstly making sure it doesn’t come across as just blaming the victim. That’s a common trap that people fall into because for inspectors generally speaking they don’t want to hear it’s the victims fault, we had perfect systems and they just managed to circumvent them. Because the fact that you can circumvent them rather indicates they weren’t working in the first place.

Tony: Exactly. Grant it’s a very complicated and complex area. If people need to get hold of you for more advice, how do they go about doing that?

Grant: Sure, I’m always happy to speak to someone on the phone and if there’s a quick question somebody wants to ask me and I can give a quick answer I’m happy to do that, as part of my contribution to the Health and Safety community. Probably the best ways to get hold of me are either on my mobile, which is always on 24/7 given the nature of Health and Safety, that number is: 021 378 524 or alternatively you can email me here at my Auckland office which is [email protected] And I’ll be happy to speak to any of the listeners about any issues they have got.

Tony: Hey thanks Grant for coming on and hope to talk to you later in the year.

Grant: No problem Tony, take care.

Tony: Cheers

——
Helpful links:

HSE Act and search for HSE Act

Definition of serious harm

Serious Harm reporting:

Phone 0800 20 90 20 (24 hours) for serious harm

Template Form for reporting serious harm

Grant Nicholson:
Cell phone: 021 378 524
Email [email protected]
Website Details

Hazardous Chemical and Biological Tool

 Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on itunes.
[leadplayer_vid id=”51C1820B8F5EB”]

• 0:21 The URL for the hazardous materials database
• 2:57 Benefits of this database

Quotables:
“A great online database so you can work out what could be dangerous in your workplace and your home” – Tony – Click to Tweet

If you’ve ever struggled with getting information about chemical or biological hazards, then I have found a great online database so you can work out what could be dangerous in your workplace and your home, and what to do about it.

If you are listening to the podcast I recommend you follow along with the website, which is called hazmap.nlm.nih.gov

This is a great tool because by just selecting a few icons, you can drill down to the chemical that you may have in your home or workplace, but don’t know how to manage. The orgnsitions that have put this together are credible and the links of chemicals and other diseases are based on scientific evidence. What that means is you get a lot of brain power in the background with an easy to easy interface.

Let’s do an example, starting with the home page., and I’ll click on High Risk Jobs. On then select alphabetically or by job type. So I’ll pretend I have business in farming, and then select  [Farming, Fishing and Forestry Workers, All Others].

The description is pretty obvious in this case but for other jobs, there are more detailed descriptions. It’s important there is minimal confusion here as the information below relates to the work described in this description, so have a wick read of the description to make sure you are looking at the right task!

Now we can scroll down and look at the type of tasks in the job – [Handle infected animal carcasses or placental tissues]

And now we find we are exposed to a number of pathogens which causes a number of diseases. So what, let say we want to find out about preventing these, and starting with Anthrax. And in this case we find another link to a great website and everything you wanted to know about Anthrax.

What I like about this database of links is that they are linked to credible sources of information, all form the one place. You don’t need to navigate through Google and get all the opinions etc around the world – a one stop shop for chemical and biological information. Thus will really help you confirm or put in place hazard management procedures based upon quality information.

If you know of any other tools please share in the comments below, Cheers.

Fatigue Risk Management Solutions with Rachel Lehen

 Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on itunes.

• 0:25 Who is Rachel Lehen?
• 0:58 Why do businesses need to worry about fatigue?
• 2:20 What is fatigue? Is it the same as sleepiness or stress?
• 4:16 What you should do to manage fatigue
• 6:37 Alcohol comparison to fatigue levels
• 7:50 Circadian Rhythm
• 8:45 How do you design the perfect roster?
• 14:03 Microsleeps
• 14:41 The only way to reduce fatigue and risk
• 16:51 Sleep Napping
• 17:38 Educate Senior Management
• 18:14 Pajama Sleep Management
• 18:50 Sleep Debt and the Bank Loan
• 19:34 Obstructive Sleep Apnea
• 21:20 Rachel Lehen’s contact details

Quotables:

“…The difference between being tired and fatigue” – Tony – Click to Tweet
“…Pajama Management for workplace fatigue” – Tony – Tweet Me

Tony: Hi Listeners. Today I have Rachel Lehen on the show talking about fatigue in the workplace. I met Rachel years ago and when I was thinking about Fatigue in the workplace I immediately thought of Rachel because she is really passionate about health and wellness and very focused on fatigue and she understands business. So Rachel is a perfect fit to offer great advice in this area. So Rachel, how are you doing?

Rachel: Hi Tony, I’m good thanks, how are you?

Tony: All Good!  Why do businesses need to worry about Fatigue?

Rachel: There are a couple of different angles you can approach when you are looking at fatigue as a risk in the workplace. In the first instance, under the Health and Safety Act fatigue has been identified as a risk that companies need to mitigate.  As far as their obligations are concerned it makes sense that they have a sold policy and procedures that everybody can follow to better mitigate that risk.  This is from a business point of view but what we are really more concerned about is the fact that when you have tired staff , you have an increased risk of accidents and incidents. We know that when people are tired the rate of absenteeism goes up or what they call presenteeism, which basically means they are physically there but really their productivity is low. So it makes sense to mitigate this and introduce some strategies so that we can have a higher level of performance and safety out of our staff.

Tony: Ok. You mentioned a level of tired there and I know this is a common thought. Can you explain the difference between being tired and fatigue? Are they the same thing?

Rachel: Fatigue is more than just sleepiness.  It would be normal for us to have varying levels of alertness over a period of time or sleepiness for lots of reasons such as there is a new baby in the household and you’re not getting enough sleep or you’ve just come back from a holiday etc. so daytime sleepiness is something that we all experience. Fatigue is an ongoing level of sleep deprivation. If somebody is working long extended hours or working nightshift where their opportunity for restorative sleep is reduced then they are fatigued. With fatigue you start getting all of these other health symptoms as well. So often is looks like depression or stress. Often fatigue and stress exacerbate each other so if you are fatigued then you get stressed out because of course you’re thinking I must get more sleep, I must get more sleep…

Tony: There’s nothing worse is there!

Rachel: Exactly and you start watching the clock and wake up every half an hour going I need to get up!  So this really affects your ability to get good sleep so fatigue is more than just being sleepy and this is where the real risk is in regards to employee safety.

Tony: I’m trying to think from a listener’s point of view here and they may be thinking what do I need to do about managing fatigue in my workplace.

Rachel: The first thing is for an employer to understand how fatigue is actually affecting their business.  Maybe they haven’t already had an opportunity to look into it or start measuring it and including it in any sort of incident reports. Fatigue is often under-recognised so really the first thing a business needs to do is start to create some awareness around it and then start to measure it. So put in measures to identify what fatigue may be costing their business. For example if someone falls asleep at the wheel and crashes their truck we want to be able to attribute what does that cost back to the business and what does it cost. So once we measures what is costing the business we can continually measure and monitor and work out what is working.

A lot of times the fatigue is not even recognized as the underlying cause of an accident and blame inattention or environmental factors but it is all about human factors and how humans beings when tired make poor choices and that can lead to higher levels of distraction and inattention.

Tony: You and I met when I was in the Air Force and were looking at fatigue and were looking at the US Air Force and they had some modeling software to help plan operations or flights but I found it difficult to explain how fatigue can really affect your output and a really good model that you can probably add to, was that if someone woke up at 8am and worked until 2am in the morning, they were operating at the equivalent of driving while being illegally drunk. Is that right?

Rachel: Yes, that’s absolutely right and that if you have been awake for 17 hours you have an impairment level of a blood alcohol level of .08 and if you have ever been so tired that you do feel drunk you’ll find you start bumping into things, tripping over things or can’t speak clearly just from being really tired so it has the same level of impairment on the CNS and its such a big a problem as compared to sending guys out to work having just been to the pub for a few drinks.

Tony: Now the thing is people wont start at 8 in the morning and work until 2 in the morning, I know some will, will still be affected by shift cycles and so on.

Rachel: Yes, we have a thing called the circadian rhythm which as human beings is just how we operate so we have periods of the day where we are more alert than other times and essentially we should be awake during the daytime and asleep during the night time and this is how it has been since day dot really and our body stays in tune with the rise and fall of the sun. So, when we are working when we should be sleeping than we have a whole other ball game as our body is working against how we should be operations.

Tony: Ye, but the fact is people are going to have to work against those dips so for someone designing a roster, what should they be doing?

Rachel: Well yes, the thing is there is no perfect roster and if I could invent the perfect roster I would make a lot of money and this is where it comes to the individual being educated and aware of how their body feels given the work they are doing. In an ideal world we should not have someone working at nighttime but that’s not the reality of it so we need to monitor and determine what fatigue looks like in your business. There is software and predictive levels of fatigue so you can out in a schedule form 8a-2am or whatever and the algorithm and predict levels of fatigue based upon prior sleep but these programs do not take into account is that we are all human beings and my ability to cope with shiftwork is different from you individual dispositions and also how hydrated are we, are you getting good food, exercising, are they on mediation what else is going on with them. That’s why a company can’t just get a piece of software which creates a roster you also have to empower the individual to take better responsibility for managing themselves through the shift. And my belief it is in the employer’s best interest to provide the information and awareness because at the end of the day its going to be their staff that will perform better because they understand how their body is performing.

Tony: Great, I really like that predictive type of approach to working out your alertness level than your fatigue level. It’s probably the saying the same thing but this thinking is for forecasting and allows you to make a change today to influence how you could be feeling and the risk that you are posing to the business in the future. And it’s really important the company policy wrapped around this too isn’t it?

Rachel: Yes, and it’s really important for the person looking after the schedule or roster design is aware of fatigue and the affects on the body as well. It has to come form the top and everybody needs to be engaged in the process and it’s really easy to sit in the office and say we need we need to work this schedule because we need to get from A to B in this period of time and I understand that, but it’s best that the person creating the model is aware of the impact on their staff.

Tony: I have my own experience because I designed a 24/7, 365 days per year roster, and originally there were 2 people assigned to work this roster and I argued we needed more! But that was when I was in the Military and we had different cultures. We had the Air Force culture, Navy and Army culture and at any one time one of us was working the 5-person roster. My background was as a pilot and they way we managed fatigue while flying was you were allowed to go and have a sleep. People probably don’t want to hear that but it was a technique to be alert because people want people to be alert when they need to be alert. So while working on this roster I would say to my peers I am going to be sleeping at night and I would bring in my roll-bag and sleeping bag. But for the guys from the Army in particular that was, form their cultural mindset, because from their mindset, I was sleeping at my post. And I understand why they thought that but it was a really different cultural mindset around working this roster. I could never convince them and they could never convince me so I would nap during the night and I would be relatively fresh in the morning and they would be falling asleep at 8 in the morning, but they stayed awake!

Rachel: The thing about being fatigued is that they may have gone ‘I’m awake’ but their brains are taking micro-sleeps so their eyes could be open, you can look like you are awake but you are actually asleep and that’s where the risk comes in. So if you were at war, lets day, and you have all these guys having these micro sleeps and then suddenly they need to be alert and make great decisions, they are absolutely not able to. And they will put other people at risk as a result of not being able to make good decisions.

Power napping is one of the key strategies for mitigating the risk of fatigue. There is no other way other than getting sleep to reduce your sleep debt. Lots of people will look at using other things like stimulants, caffeine and drugs and all of those things. Even those campaigns on the road over long weekends and how to stay alert and the driver-reviver stops are great, as they raise awareness, however they don’t provide an opportunity for people to have a quite space. They say have a coffee, walk around your car have a hot-dog, whatever that’s actually only delaying the affects of fatigue by about 20 minutes but the best thing you can do is take the power naps.

I work with a number of companies who have power napping as part of their procedure.  One company in particular allow their truck divers to take a power nap whenever they need it and the only criteria is that they alert their manager that they have pulled off the road into a safe place. They know how to power nap – they get into the passenger seat, take the keys out of the ignition and they time it. That is they key – to have it for no more than 20 minutes. So these guys are educated on how to power nap and it is making a significant difference to their business.

Another business I worked with, prior to integrating this strategy, was having 5 human related errors every night. Nothing blew up, nothing too outrageous but enough to have an affect. So we set up napping stations and a napping log about how they felt prior to and after the nap and they went from 5 errors to zero errors. This was over a night shift and some would even have a 90 minute nap, which is a full sleep cycle, and as long as it is managed, and it’s not somebody sneaking off, which is a risk in itself, but if it is a managed nap then this is a key strategy I can recommend.

Tony: So all of a sudden we have a business benefit because you are more effective if you are not making errors because one day that error could cost a lot of money or hurt somebody and who knows where it could go.
Rachel: Absolutely, if you look at some of the large global disasters like the Exon Valdez or the Challenger or other catastrophic incidences that are related back to fatigue and people making bad decisions.

Tony: So what I’ve got then is education is key and it really needs to start at the top end within a business and they need to be convinced the business benefit. Not only in terms of financial but risk to people and their resource and why they need to manage fatigue. And then the culture and I gave the example around the Army culture, and I understand why that culture exists, which comes back to education as well. If they can be convinced and told why you need to manage fatigue, and maybe there will be an Eureka moment.

Rachel: hey Winston Churchill won the war and he power napped. In fact, he would sometimes go to meetings in his pajamas.

Tony: [laugh] So we are advocating pajama management?

Rachel: Some of the greatest people of their time used to power nap. It is not a long-term strategy but for a short-term technique it is fantastic.

Tony: I really like the idea of a bank in which you take out a loan. And in this case if you are not getting enough sleep, you owe it back and if you don’t pay it back you will pay it back in another way.

Rachel: That’s a great analogy.

Tony: OK, is there anything else you wanted to mention or put another way, what were you hoping I would not ask about fatigue?

Rachel: [laugh] Well, I’ll tell you something interesting we’re discovered over the last few years of talking to people in our workshops. One of the biggest things identified is sleep disorder called Obstructive Sleep Apnea(OSA).  As we have been going around, particularly with the demographic we have been talking too, these particular people have more of a sedentary job with long irregular hours with a reduced ability to exercise and eat well, these poor guys have a higher risk of having this condition. This is supported by international research in this field. So one of the things we’re passionate about is creating some awareness in this area. We know in the commercial transport sector that at least 25% and probably closer to 40% of this market have Obstructive Sleep Apnea. When you have OSA is mean your daytime sleepiness is elevated and that is where we start seeing all these traffic accidents. People having micro sleeps at the wheel and having head on collisions is quite typically what would happen. We think that OSA is something that people really need to pay attention to. That is a key strategy that someone can implement into his or her annual health checks. It is no different then checking for blood pressure, cholesterol, cardiovascular, diabetes and all these other things, we need to start looking at sleep disorders as well.

Tony: There is a lot there and if people want to get hold of you to get more advice on managing fatigue, how do they go about doing that?

Rachel: We’d love to talk to anybody as you can probably tell I can talk about this all day long but we have our website www.frms.co.nz and my name is Rachel so, [email protected] all the details are on our website

Tony: Thanks Rachel for coming in.

Rachel: Thanks Tony for having me!

Worksafe New Zealand

 Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on itunes.

[leadplayer_vid id=”51B043A121897″]

• 0:14 Minister announces new agency name – Worksafe New Zealand
• 1:22 How will this affect your business?
• 2:20 How I can help you now

Quotables:
“…Biggest NZ Workplace Safety Change in 21 Years, and what you can do about it” – Tony – Tweet-Share This One!
“…Get latest updates on NZ safety and the new agency Worksafe New Zealand” – Tony – Click to Tweet

Hi, Tony Collins with a quick update letting you know the new Government standalone H&S agency has been named Worksafe New Zealand.

At a recent national health and safety conference, the Minister announced the name of the new H&S organisation – which will be called WorkSafe New Zealand. Now we’ve had the Pike River enquiry and a national taskforce on workplace Safety and one of the strong recommendations was to set up this new health and safety regulator. You will remember the old name of OSH, which was under the Department of Labour, which then moved into another organisaiton called MBIE. Workplace safety got buried in these Government organisaiton’s and we’ve seen that in the stats and how we have been performing poorly to overseas statistics.

The name change signals a key change in NZ history around health and safety and Worksafe New Zealand will be up and running by the end of this year.

What does all this mean for you? There will be changes to the HSE Act and there is talk around moving away form a hazard management framework to a risk management framework. I need to be able to explain these changes and what this means for you. The regulator may have more powers, meaning they can move in and out of workplaces differently. Employees may or may not have the ability for more enforcement. My update today is to telegraph the changes to you and interpret them as they come. Worksafe New Zealand is not planned to open it’s doors until 01 Dec 2013, but the next 3-4months will be quite intensive and if you keep watching and listening, my aim is to help make the transition easier. And if you take action, you could gain a competitive advantage by being in front of these changes.

All of which means you’ll also become more safe – which is my ultimate aim for you. This is Tony Collins and www.SafetyHub.co.nz

Running a Safety Management System

 Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on itunes.
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• 0:19 A Safety Management System is…
• 0:38 An example of a working component
• 3:14 The Acid Test of a working Safety Management System

Quotables:
“…the acid test for a working safety system” – Tony – Click to Tweet

Tony Collins on Running your Safety Management System

People talk about a Workplace Safety Management System or SMS. There is nothing mystique about any safety system, and you don’t need the latest software to run a system. Even a word document can be your system.

All we are trying to do is document a series of steps that lead to a certain outcome. The action, events and activities you plan and complete will turn your system on, and make it work.

Here is an example. All system will have some reporting requirement. When a person is injured obviously you take care of the person and so on, as detailed in the free reporting chapter, but the point of reporting is that it leads to an investigation. You use the opportunity to learn from the incident.

I have seen so many times companies that will fill in a reporting report, and th en the investigation will go something like ‘the widget has been replaced’. Why not have a step-by-step process, a series of questions or an investigation model that will help you learn from the event. I was talking to an overworked HR person and looking over a report, asking about the process. The person injured was not even asked for their thoughts on what went wrong. So I found this person and asked them what did they think the problem was.

This guy knew how to fix the problem, and in fact had known for years. He was rather miffed at himself that he got caught out with a known problem and when I asked why hadn’t he already pointed out the problem, his response was ‘No one had ever asked’. So a reporting system could include a series of questions that force or remind you to talk to the employees.

Good safety management is so often just better workplace management because if you create an environment where people will talk about safety, you will get a bunch of other business improvement ideas. So the acid test – could you hand over your safety system to a new employee and they would know what they need to do, without your there?

Noise Induced Hearing Loss

 Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on itunes.
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• 0:25 How to save money for real safety issues
• 0:44 When you don’t need to manage noise
• 2:33 Good rule to check for harmful noise levels
• 3:16 Actions in your workplace

Quotable:
“…a quick test for a harmful level of workplace noise” – Tony – Click to Tweet

Tony Collins here and today we’ll talk about Hearing loss or as it is also called, NIHL or Noise Induced Hearing Loss.

As with anything that can hurt you in the workplace, including noise, we need to have a plan in place to minimise the chance of harm to you and your employees. I have found though that people can raise noise as a safety issue when it is not.

For example, if there are machines running or background noise levels that are annoying, but are not actually harmful to the ears – you are not going to go deaf.

The fact is, you do not need to mitigate the noise for safety reasons, if it is not harming people. The best example, I often see if people playing a radio loudly. It still may not be at a harmful level, but people make not like the music on the radio station. One person’s music is another person’s safety hazard. What you do have here is a management issue and need to work out how do I solve this so people can get on and enjoy their work.

But how do you know how noisy it has to be before it becomes a problem and know if it will damage a persons hearing? I’m not going to give you the decibels ratings – you can look them up but they are only a number. The rule of thumb is if you have to shout from 1 meter in order to be heard, then you probably have a problem. Or any loud impact or banging noises, you may have a problem here.

If you do have this situation, then you going to have to get in a technical expert who can analyze and document the noise amplitude and maybe even the frequency.

So to put this into action, take a walk around your workplace using your ears as the first cut in identifying those areas that need further investigation.

This is Tony Collins at Safetyhub.co.nz

Leadership and Workplace Safety

 Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on itunes.
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Leadership in safety is critical to drive workplace safety improvement and we’ve talked previously about this under the blog called workplace safety model.

• 0:17 Who are the leaders?
• 0:37 The story of the senior manager
• 1:29 His Eureka moment!
• 2:55 What you can do

Quotables:

“…leadership is key to improving safety” – Tony – Click to Tweet

When we say leadership, of course I mean the people in the organisaiton that can drive change. Very few people have more influence than the supervisors. These people set the tone within the business. An supervisors will take their lead from Senior Management.

I remember a story about a safety performance company in the US who were brought in to a large to assess the attitudes and culture within a large American business, and they noticed an unusual result that kept being reported about one senior leader. He was a high performer in all the safety performance areas relating to attitude, midset, communication, walking the talk and so on.  This was really unusual and the safety company had worked with many large organsiations like NASA and never saw these results. And eventually they came to interview this guy and asked him, why are you so focused on safety. What makes you outstanding?

This manager replied for years he had been a plant manager and knew when he got a call at 2 in the morning, it was not good news. And if it was an incident with an employee, he’d act appropriately and do his best by that person. However, his twin daughters had just left home to go to University, when the phone rang at 2 in the morning. As a parent, his first thoughts while running for the phone were his daughters. What has happened to them. His was struck with relief when he found it was someone at his plant who had suffered a serious injury on the job. And he was struck with a massive conflict of feelings. Relief that his daughters were safe. Guilt that he was happy it was someone else injured. And then it hit him emotionally this injury just happened on his watch, and that other families were going to get that phone call he dreaded.

Right then there was a massive mind-set change.  He made a pledge to himself. For this injured person and from them on, he treated people as family despite the protests of PR or the Legal teams (remember we are talking about the US) and went out of his way to help them get back to work and fix the problems.

So, how does that help you? If you’re trying to work out how to improve your workplace safety, then I’d start by talking to the head of the business, the director or CEO, and find out where they sit with respect to safety. Obviously not everyone will have the type of experience I just described, nor do you want those to happen in order to get your boss engaged. What I suggest you can do is book a time to chat with the boss of your company, and do a stock take. What is her knowledge and attitudes to safety; Does she manage for compliance reasons, increase profits or are their some emotional motivators.

Know where you sit and what are her hot buttons because once she turns on and applies leadership to workplace safety, then you can focus on the other leaders and everything will become so much easier to lift the safety performance in your workplace.