Returning to business as usual safely

Kia ora koutou katoa,

It was great to come together in person at our recent Chief Executives’ Health and Safety Breakfast and discuss the challenges we are continuing to work through as we shift to a post-COVID environment.

I’d like to take the opportunity once again to thank Christine Stevenson and Debbie Power for their insightful presentations. While our work may be returning to a more normal state, especially with the removal of the Covid Protection Framework, there are undoubtedly challenges we must navigate.

The key topic of our discussion was how we safely return to business as usual following the significant disruption and change we have experienced over the last two years. While there is no rulebook for how we do this, we recognise the need to set work up to go well for our people and the contractors we engage.

For the past two years, many of our core activities have been stopped or significantly changed, meaning our people have had less opportunity to work together or at particular locations. We know these challenges can make incidents more likely. The question we need to ask ourselves is, “How best can we support our people as we safely restart our operations?”. It is essential we engage with our workers and ask them about the pressures or challenges they face with work and address any uncertainties they feel.

We discussed the potential that as we return to normal operations, our frontline staff may be less practiced in normal business controls and processes. As Christine identified in her presentation, we need to get out and use our assurance mechanisms to keep that gap between “work as imagined” and “work as done” as small as we possibly can.

This serves as a timely reminder that health and safety is never ‘done’ and our approach as Officers must remain one of curiosity and learning. This is particularly important as we consider the changing socio-economic environment we are currently operating in and any influence this may have on the level of risk our people face.

We know violence and aggression, as with most health and safety concerns, is an outcome of interrelated and interconnected factors in real-world contexts, many of which may not be immediately obvious in the work environment.

The increasing levels of violence and aggression many of our agencies are experiencing was also raised. This may be an outcome of many factors such as the effects of the prolonged pandemic and strained economic conditions.

This is an example of a complex system issue which requires us to change our approach to managing risk. Rather than controls and system processes being the start and end of managing risk, we need to also create the capacity for our systems and people, to absorb, and adapt to changing situations. To move beyond health and safety as a matter of compliance and focus on creating better work.

The Government Health and Safety Lead (GHSL) is developing a programme of work to support our thinking on violence and aggression as a systems issue. I encourage you to engage with the series of think-pieces and resources for senior leaders being released over the next quarter.

This is a simple and accessible opportunity to meet our requirement as Officers to keep up to date with knowledge of health and safety matters and also serves as a helpful exercise to how we can build resilient organisations that can anticipate, monitor, respond to, and learn from unexpected events.

The GHSL continues to offer the IOD Officer Development Programme for Tiers 1-3. If you or your senior leaders have not yet participated in the programme, I encourage you to take this opportunity to strengthen your knowledge. 

I look forward to seeing you at our next Chief Executives’ breakfast.

Ngā mihi

Ray

GHSL Work Station:

GHSL Officer Development Programme

You can find out more about the Government Health and Safety Lead Officer Development Programme on the GHSL website.

GHSL Violence and Aggression Programme

Read more about the GHSL’s upcoming programme on violence and aggression, which includes the Senior Leaders Series – a series of think piece articles and short videos to build our thinking on violence and aggression as an outcome of a complex system.

Fatigue initiatives

A number of agencies are undertaking interesting and exciting work to address the impact of fatigue, including sleep fatigue studies, pre-work fatigue assessments and wider psychosocial risk programmes. The GHSL can provide introductions, if anyone would like to explore this further. To get in touch, email GHSL@mpi.govt.nz

Articles and Resources:

More Information:

Please direct any queries to GHSL@mpi.govt.nz