• Coronavirus
    I did have to chuckle last night when talking to an old friend who works for a Ministry-of-Whatever in Wellington, after they informed me that their IT group has just put in a purchase request for around 500 laptops in the event that staff may need to work from home. That is a very expensive demonstration of stupidity in my opinion. :grin:
  • National to promise 'common-sense' legal test for workplace safety rules
    When we talk about common sense, we are making an assumption that all people have a fundamental shared set of experiences and beliefs that shapes their actions - which of course is completely untrue!
    Common sense is absolutely subjective and extremely situational. A sixteen year old school leaver let loose in an engineering workshop is going to have a completely different understanding of hazard and risk compared to the old guy who has been working there for forty years. The danger comes when employers think common sense exists as a hive mind state amongst their workforce.

    I'd also like to think that if a steam burn from a kettle has been identified as a risk, then surely the control would be to get rid of the risk by using something other than a steaming kettle (there are alternatives available out there) - which would in turn mean it can be removed from the 'list of hazards'
  • Docu-Dramas
    Chernobyl is on my list - I have also heard good things about it. As Chris mentions, the USCSB content is also really worth checking out.
    A couple of documentaries I have recently seen that I would recommend are:

    Upper Big Branch - Never Again https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NYOBEQWIlg
    The fact that this incident occurred (and 29 workers lost their lives), approximately seven months before Pike River explosion is still so shocking to me.

    Fire in the Night - a 2013 documentary on the Piper Alpha disaster. I don't have a link for this, but I think it's still on Amazon Prime if you can't find it.

    EU-OSHA also has a Healthy Workplace Film Award each year. You do have to hunt down some of these, but I have managed to find a few online
    https://osha.europa.eu/en/healthy-workplaces-campaigns/awards/hw-film-award
  • Safety Policy Statements - you are committed to what?
    I think they can have some value when they workplace-specific and not a generic statement copied from an ancient H&S manual (from a completely different industry). Some of the best ones I have seen are those developed by health and safety committees / safety teams, and in the past I have used this as a starter exercise when providing support to newly formed H&S committees. Personally I think that a policy statement developed by workers, in their own words, can be far more meaningful than a collection of generic management-speak safety statements.