What Health and Safety system do you need?

Everyday we come across people with very negative views on Health and Safety and in particular documentation and consultants.

It seems that over the years, larger organisations with more resources at their disposal lead the way in developing paper-heavy time consuming health and safety systems – that might look good in theory, but lack practicality to businesses who don’t have the qualifications or the staff to write these systems and manage them on an ongoing basis.

Then on the other hand, you have some consultants that take advantage of this, and fleece small to medium business owners of thousands of dollars, by convincing them that they too need a large system…which the consultants can write, and charge an ongoing fee to maintain!

This to us is the complete opposite of what Health and Safety systems should be about.

If you are a small to medium business, you don’t need document after document, manual after manual…and it certainly shouldn’t need someone else to manage it. All you need is to document what you are doing to keep anyone within the vicinity of your workplace safe (so hopefully this means documenting what you are already doing), keeping records of any new hazards, accidents or employees that come along…and showing that you are reviewing your system on an ongoing basis.

If someone had of explained that to me at the start, Health and Safety might not have been so daunting.

The question is, why is no one spreading that message as well?

Surely there has to be an easier way of making this information available to business owners, through WorkSafe NZ…instead of the pages and pages of guidelines.

So what Health and Safety system do you need? You need one that covers the work that you do, the people you work with and one that won’t sit on an office shelf without being read…and here are the ‘High 5′ things we recommend:

• Hazard Register
• Accident Register
• Emergency Procedures
• Employee Induction and Training
• Contractor Induction

…and if you spent a few days on google, you could even write these yourself!

But if you would like a bit of advice or any more info, flick us an email and we’ll be happy to help.

Good luck!