Health and safety Hauora me te haumaru

Everyone at your business has a role to play in creating a healthy, safe and incident-free work environment. 

You can’t manage health and safety on your own. Your employees need to watch each other’s backs — they’re the eyes and ears of your business.

Part of your job as a business owner and manager is creating a culture of health and safety and getting everyone on board. That may involve:

• providing training
• creating regular opportunities to identify risks
• inviting input on health and safety decision-making.

Some health and safety conversations can be challenging. People may find it hard to change their behaviour, or they may be defensive about unsafe practices.

Approach these conversations with a friendly, problem-solving attitude. The stronger your health and safety culture, the easier it will become to tackle risks and change unsafe behaviour.

Managing health and safety risks takes a proactive approach. Before you can tackle risks, you need to identify and understand them. 

You and your team should be on the lookout for anything in your business that could affect people’s health. Creating a culture of health and safety will help make this an everyday habit.

Health and safety risks aren’t always obvious things, like slippery steps. Tired, distracted or stressed employees might be a risk. 

Different risks carry different potential for harm, and require different solutions.

Once you’ve identified a risk and assessed it with your team, you need a plan to address it. 

Manage health and safety proportionately to the level of risk. This means the greater the risks, the more careful you and your team need to be.

Like the risks themselves, your health and safety plans and tools may be very simple, or more complex and impactful. You don’t necessarily need a formal process or policy in writing — the most effective approach is the one that’s practical for you and your team. 

Once again, having a culture of health and safety will help here. Regular open, honest and collaborative conversations about health and safety will empower your people to create good plans and put them into practice.