Taranaki Branch Update

Health and Safety at Board Level - Taranaki Branch Event co-hosted with the New Zealand Institute of Safety Management (NZISM)

With the shift in legislated responsibilities at Board level within the health and safety domain, nearly 40 HRINZ and NZISM members were extremely fortunate to hear about the work that Carlie Cossill, (Risk and Business Improvement Manager at Port Taranaki), has undertaken for her Master's thesis on how Directors in New Zealand are approaching their health and safety governance.

Carlie's work investigated the perception of governance in relation to the four abilities proposed by Hollnagel in relation to 'Safety II' concepts. Carlie shared with us the perceptions of what type of activities board members believed safety governance consisted of and what approach they took to strategising safety within their organisations. There were some interesting relationships identified between an organisation's short, medium and long term strategic goals and how these aligned (or not) with their time-frame planning for safety at the same strategic level.

Carlie's thesis was then supplemented by a Panel Discussion on the views and experience of navigating an organisation's health and safety at governance level.

Andrea Smith (GM Organisational Development, New Plymouth District Council), began by reinforcing that safety is not a separate function within an organisation but is fundamentally intertwined with its employees' wellbeing. This makes it absolutely vital to ensure the Board's understanding of what is required in the health and safety space.

Fiona Ewing's (National Safety Director, Forest Industry Safety Council), recommendation was to promote working together as a team, fully involving and consulting with your workers to develop health and safety strategies that contribute to keeping an organisation safe. A shift away from focusing solely on compliance and control to caring and consulting, as well as to give all in the organisation, the tools to anticipate what needs to be done, with the Board facilitating health and safety interventions and actions.

Craig Marriott (General Manager HSEQ, First Gas), talked about how there needs to be an emphasis on educating the Board on what safety entails, a move away from merely reporting on numbers of incidents or accidents. Boards need to have the reassurance that their Health and Safety practitioners know what they are doing. Directors need to be educated about safety so that they can fully understand the changes that need to be introduced and make valid and informed decisions about safety.

The question and answer session was lively, with attendees' informal feedback indicating that this was a useful and positive session for both Health & Safety and HR practitioners. Watch this space for more events like this!