I'm always one up for a challenge @robb.
I could mention, and I know I am going to get fried for this, Matilda Lang. She was the first to invent a new washing machine and she got the NZ patent for it in 1871. It was known as "Mrs Lang's Patent Economical Domestic Washing Table" She was one of earliest engineering inventors we had

It is of course quite difficult to find the first New zealand woman that did something in a field. As it is to find the first new Zealand man in a field. NZ is such a relatively young country many "firsts" were achieved offshore.

But you might be interested in one New Zealand educated woman Beatrice Tinsley. She didn't let sexism stop her from achieving. She went on to prove the universe is infinite and could just keep on expanding forever. She essentially pioneered research into how galaxies evolve,

I'm not sure it is safe to conclude that a person that doent have $5,000 in cash on hand is living pay check to check. Financially, if you have a mortgage it seems to me very sensible that you would not in fact hold cash earning a very low taxable interest rate compared with the benefit of having that $5,000 sitting off your mortgage. That's not to say people arent leaving week by week - of course they are. And I despair each time I get a phone call from a lender of last resort.

I bring up Working For Families because it guarantees a worker with a family a minimum income dependent on the number of children in that family. So the worker doesn't just get their weekly pay check. I find this a major problem with absenteeism - because if the weekly pay drops it gets topped up by WWF. And I can't get overtime done because the more a person works, the more they earn and the less WWF they get.

There is numerous reasons for absenteeism. Which has increased over the past few years. Which I attribute primarily to the increase in sick leave. People get paid more to stay at home on sick leave than they do to come to work. Mondays and Fridays, especially around long weekends / sunny days are worse. A fair bit I put down to resilience - or the lack of. This ranges from can't be bothered getting out of bed through to marital problems bogging people down - for which we provide EAP support. Theres is also the addictive element of gaming. And also low aspirations. Its a multi factor issue with many issues outside my influence. Where I can influence I try to provide solutions. Interestingly (or not) absenteeism is very low / non existent among our foreign workforce. And at the risk of getting myself into trouble with another contentious view, Nz's working conditions essentially don't change very much. These conditions ought to be well known to anyone considering having a family. Theres should really be no suprise conditions

Hand on heart I can honestly say "No" " employees taking extended leave due to injuries/medical issues covered by the policy (i.e. save on costs of overtime/temp cover, retraining for other roles, recruitment costs, etc" has not once been part of the decision making. We have the view that we are very good at solving internal work related problems. External private life problems are not ours to interfere with or try to solve. But we try to give people the tools and resources to find help themselves. Either through the medical insurance and/or EAP. I don't even blink if our EAP provided say someone would benefit from councelling. Just do it and send me the bill.

The only reason we do the health insurance is we think it is of significant benefit to the employee. If a person doesn't have $5.000 in emergency savings where are they going to find $15,000 for a replacement knee. And we insure family members - not just our worker Having their kid get eye surgery adds nothing to our bottom line.

You say "With over a third of NZ'er living pay check to pay check I wonder how much employee wellbeing would be improve by just giving them the $500 extra to spend on unexpected costs or just the day-to-day expenses they face rather than dictating how they should spend their money."

Id be somewhat cautious about where you are getting your data from. And lets not forget the unseen Working For Families which tops up every workers pay if they have kids.

You may be surprised with just how much Leave without Pay our people take. It staggers me when I look at it every week. Employee well being would be significantly improved if they just turned up to work because I am more than happy to pay them.

And believe me. Every year when we sit down and look at our health insurance bill we do go - maybe its better in the employees pocket. But we fully subsidize the insurance and there are quite a number of employees who get significant benefit form it. We average 7 claims per employee. That's claims they would be unlikely to be able to pay if they relied on their weekly pay check.

I can't speak to women in safety because I don't have a big enough data set.

But if you want my experience with roles at a senior level I can say I have recently hired 2 people with a pay rate over $100,000. If I recollect correctly most applicants were women. I hired the 2 best applicants for the job based on their skills and experience. Both happened to be women. Both hires ended up being abject failures and they no longer work here. Do I say "women are hopeless"?. No. I say I had 2 bad hires and will continue to find the best people for the job and currently applicants are on the whole women.

Unfortunately I have hired so many women I have run out of toilet facilities. Do I stop hiring women. No I don't. I am getting more facilities built. That's my commitment to ensuring I hire the best people for the job regardless of some socially constructed label placed on them

Anyhow, best I back out of this tread since it seems to be getting personal

Like wise Trudy. I find these sorts of discussions often dissolve into anecdotal opinion pieces often devoid of reality or fact.

So lets see what the latest Ngā kaiarataki Ratonga Tūmatanui o tēnei wā report says (because I am struggling to find data in a safety context and I am trying to show objectively that barriers are a construct rather than a reality. (Without denigrating individuals own personal experiences - because I am sure we have all had some shockers)

So how does the senior leadership of the NZ public service look:

"There are 41 Public Service leaders, which include:

39 Secretaries and Chief Executives
2 Deputy Public Service Commissioners.
There are 22 women (54%) and 19 men (46%)."

Interesting paper. Which concludes with "That group, mainly male, Māori and Pasifika,
remain severely at risk of poor outcomes, such as joblessness or even imprisonment,
that could be overcome by educational engagement and success."

A situation that hasn't really changed

What I often find in discussion like this is people find barriers when in facts no such barriers exist.

And I don't live in a privileged world. With "privledge" being a word I could be quite offended by if I was so inclined.

My world has been one of meritocracy. I have lived it since my very first job which was the sole male in an office full of women when I learnt the most intimate details about their periods and included, but not limited to, the positions they got into in the back seat of their boyfriends car.

There is probably a very strong argument to be made (if I had time and didn't want to derail this thread0 that the most discriminated person today is your "older, white, male"

But I am looking forward to more womens (am I even allowed to say that nowadays?) input into this subject. Hopefully based on fact rather than opinion because I sure as heck doent want to be accused of "mansplaining"

No Trudy it didn't. I only used recent examples.

1877 Kate Edgar. First woman to get a university qualification. Followed by Helen Connon in 1881 who got a masters degree with honours. And Bessie Te Wenerau Grace was the first Maori woman to get a degree in 1926
1889 Lavinia Kelsey set up the first kindergarten
1893 Elizabeth Yates first woman mayor,
1896 Emily Siedeberg first woman doctor to graduate
1897 Ethel Benjamin first woman law graduate

I can keep going if you wish.

And lets put the gender pay gap nonsense to bed.

Say I have a Safety Manager job going that the market suggests I'm going to have to pay $140,000 to fill. What do you reckon I'm going to do. Hire a man at $140,000 or a woman at $110,000

(and in case an answer is necessary I'm going to hire the best person for the job and if their skills and experiences match $140,000 then that is what I will pay).

The "racism" argument is also a nonsense. And If I had time I would drag out the university demographics of tertiary enrollments and subsequent graduates. And such discussion usually end up patronizing successful members of racial minorities.

Are women in fact inhibited from applying for senior roles.

Gee our first woman Prime Minster (Jenny Shipley) was back in 1997.
Dame Sian Elias was first woman Chief Justice in 1999
Dame Cath Tizard was first woman Governor General in 1990
Christine Rankin became boss of Social Welfare in 1998
Even Georgina Beyer became the first trans woman MP in 1999

My well being gets well sorted after a few pints at the local pub. But I don't see my boss paying for that.

I see this as just another situation of an employer moving into an employees private life. Employees should be responsible for their own personal, non work related well being.

That said we pay for both health insurance and EAP. Because sometimes stuff happens in life and its going to directly impact work. So best we get people back on the road to recovery as barrier free and quickly as possible.

And if I could be bothered claiming I'd get back the cost of one sports event entry fee a year on the insurance.

If you have $500 to spend on employees I'd recommend subsidizing health insurance.

No. Not since the police riot squad had to come and settle things down.

If people want to go down the path of valuing a human life they ought to at least try to do it accurately.

And at work we already value humans - based on their skills and experience which is reflected in their rate of pay.

So I guess where the risk of death is the same, we should invest more in our most highly paid employees and less on the least paid employees.

Its like security - you will invest more in securing your most valuable assets and your least valuable will possible get zero security.

Maybe we should look after people simply because it is the right thing to do.

Chris. I agree with your colleague.

Your $5m is based on the total life expectancy of a person. I reckon you ought to be refining your approach to talk about a healthy 20 year old worker relative to an obese 65 year old worker.

You could crudely use the QALY x remaining life expectancy for a more accurate figure.

@steve H. Min of transport is publishing dis/mis information.

In NZ, as at 2023 the current official (ie Government)
- Value of a Statistical Life (VoSL) is $5,184,615 per person. Up from $4,423,800
- average length of life is 81.8 years
- the QALY (Quality Adjusted Life Year) based on VoSL is $63,381 a year. This is based on a person in perfect health. If a person is Low Health Status then this knocks 50% of so would be $31,690

There is also, from a safety perspective
- Social Cost of Loss of a Human life = $5,783,615

As far as Min of Transport is concerned they should be referencing
- Social Cost of Fatal Road Accident = $6,847,071 per incident
- Social Cost of a serious road crash = $693,579 per incident
- Social cost of a minor road accident = $39,261 per incident

So the issue Is the source. Do you prefer to use Denne T (I have no idea who that is or why Min Of Transport would choose an alternative source. Tin foil Hat time. Or do you prefer NZ govt source. I'll go for the latter - as it is the established numbers for statistical modeling.

More fun health numbers
Walking is worth $6 per person, push-biking is worth $3 and E-biking is worth $1. So if you are in a CBD you should really be ditching the E bikes and encouraging people to walk.

And if you are Adult doing 300+ minutes moderate to vigorous physical activity per week then that's worth $2,870 per year

Health care system cost of a fatal car crash $18,635. But a serious crash is $21,916

An Intensive Care Unit is valued at $8,014 per day vs an emergency room at $503 per day

Oh how I wish we would focus on impairment.

And not what people do in their private lives.

Well, As I don't like to use safety as a make work scheme I decided to do nothing. Nothing whatsoever. Not a moment was spent in preparation. Anywhere. By anyone.

I turned on the usual charm which doesn't extend so far as tea and biscuits.

We had a chat and a wander and I Ieft him to stroll where ever he wanted and talk to whoever he liked..

And the result? Nothing.

No prohibition Notices. No improvement notices, no suggested improvements. No tips or hints or ideas. Nada.

Job done!

Another make work scheme which is part of the endless thirst for useless unreliable data.

Ideal if you want to stick a veneer of "caring" over your business, but really serves no useful purpose in the end.

I presume you employ adults. In which case the are big enough to make their own decisions.

Creating guidelines that don't impact responsible people is just a create work scheme.

And miscreants should be dealt with on an individual basis depending on circumstances.

(We are a place of work, not a bar. So we don't have drinks on site)

Couple of quick couple of points to summarise above
- if an employee has a disability (manky feet) an employer has an obligation to to take reasonable steps to accommodate that disability. So finding alternative boots is the right thing to do
- if wearing safety boots was a requirement of the job and the person can no longer wear safety boots they can no longer meet their side of the employment agreement. Redeployment elsewhere would be preferable to an otherwise termination of employment.

(Oh - and so often I have seen the token attempt to "manage" safety which is a blanket requirement to wear safety boots irrespective on any risk assessment and subsequent determination that boots are the only option left. Remembering PPE is bottom of the cliff stuff)

I guess so. But at the end of the year you get a bit tired and leave yourself questioning your knowledge when confronted with authoritarian public servants.