Ready, steady, go

THE HEALTH AND SAFETY at Work Act 2015 comes into force on 4 April 2016. Under the Act, persons conducting a business or undertaking (PCBUs) have a responsibility to ensure the health and safety of workers and others in the workplace so far as is reasonably practicable.

Good systems will be key to meeting this obligation.

Check your policies and procedures

A PCBU should ensure that their health and safety procedures are up to date and readily available. Ask the following:

Do we have a robust health and safety policy in place? Does it need to be updated? Are there hazards that are not addressed in our current policy that should be?
Do our workers know about the policy, and is it easily accessible to them?
Have I asked my workers whether they have any views on the policy?
Are there any other persons that we need to consult with?

Consult and collaborate

Where more than one PCBU is involved in the same workplace, a PCBU should consult and collaborate with other PCBUs to ensure they manage risks to another PCBU’s workers and others. Build 151, Coordinated approach to H&S, discussed the particular impact of this obligation for the building industry. Ask yourself:

Have we ensured the hazards we have identified are eliminated or minimised so far as is reasonably practicable?
Is there a process in place to ensure we are regularly reviewing the content of our health and safety policies?

Officers need to carry out a regular review of a health and safety policy. Officers of a PCBU include company directors, partners, members of a board of directors and CEOs.

Incident reporting

A PCBU must ensure that work-related accidents, incidents or near misses notified to WorkSafe are documented. Ask:

Have we got a system in place for recording these events, including a system of reporting events back to our officers (where applicable)?
Do we have a process in place for ensuring notifiable events are recorded? A PCBU is required to keep records of notifiable events for 5 years.
Is it clear to us what a notifiable event is?

An objective of the Act is to increase worker participation in health and safety. All businesses should consult with workers on health and safety matters.

Large businesses and smaller businesses in high-risk industries, including construction, may need to appoint a health and safety representative if requested by a worker. PCBUs may also have to establish a health and safety committee if five or more workers or a health and safety representative requests one.

What is a notifiable event?

A notifiable event means:

the death of any person
a notifiable injury or illness of any person
a notifiable incident that arises from work.

Notifiable injury or illness

A notifiable injury or illness includes:

the amputation of a body part, serious head injury, serious eye injury, serious burn, spinal injury or cuts that requires the person to have immediate treatment
an injury or illness requiring or should require the person to have:

immediate treatment in hospital as an inpatient
medical treatment within 48 hours of exposure to a substance

any serious infection where work is a significant contributing factor.

Notifiable incident

A notifiable incident is an unplanned or uncontrolled incident in relation to a workplace that exposes a worker or another person to serious risk to the person’s health and safety. It may arise from immediate or imminent exposure to a range of specified things, such as an uncontrolled escape of gas or an electric shock.

Report notifiable events to WorkSafe

A PCBU should ensure that WorkSafe is informed of any notifiable event as soon as the PCBU becomes aware of the event occurring. WorkSafe may then require the PCBU to provide written notice of the event within 48 hours. Ask the question, do we know what obligations we have in reporting a notifiable event?

Investigate, learn and improve

Think about what to do with the information recorded about incidents, accidents and near misses.

A PCBU should not treat recording as a ‘tick the box’ exercise. The information collated about incidents, accidents and near misses needs to be followed up and investigated so that there is proper consideration of how those hazards may be managed for the future.

These records may help a PCBU identify trends that, in turn, may assist in pinpointing where further training is required or what needs to be addressed in future inductions. PCBUs should also consider regularly reviewing other information available, such as sick leave records, which may help identify less obvious health and safety issues.

Good systems help protect all

The new Act does not need to be daunting. Getting good systems in place from the outset and treating those systems as a key aspect of your business should help protect you from liability under the Act.

Note

This article is not intended as legal advice. For further information, see www.business.govt.nz/worksafe/hswa or contact the Harkness Henry Building and Construction team on (07) 838 2399 or email [email protected].