I'm against pre-employment testing as well. But best we leave that for another day.

Steve, I'll take a bit of an issue with "Testing for impairment is difficult"

It really isn't that hard. And its a stepped approach. And an approach where you preferably get the person to admit they have a problem rather than you invasively testing for what might not be a problem - drugs in a system does not = impairment.

Firstly we are basically creatures of habit. What we do today we'll do tomorrow. So the first thing managers need to look for is a break in that pattern. Lateness for work, slowness of output, lower quality. Down to things like hand eye coordination, balance, movement etc. These give an opportunity to start a chat.

At the chat you can observe pupil size. (Dilated pupil may be indicative of cannabis related impairment) And are eye movements smooth and focussed. Do they move uncontrolled. The eyes are truly the window to the (impaired) soul.

If you want to dig a little deeper you can ask them to focus on an object in front of their face and you move the object around and see what the eyes do. Or you just move your own body around a bit and see how the persons eyes react.

This can be done by anyone - the purpose is just to form an initial view on which to base the next step.

If you are cheeky you could ask them to stand on two legs, ask them to tilt their head back close their eyes and once they reckon 30 seconds has passed bring their head forward and stay "stop". If they wobble or can't follow the instructions you have a clue.

I would much sooner we had a "just cause" for taking action against someone. There should be a reason why we interfere with a person. Drug testing should be last resort.

Rather than drug testing I would much sooner we focussed on formal Impairment Training that covered things like constriction and dilation of pupils, eye convergence and the Romberg Balance test. For those into compliance, or risk adverse in terms of unions, PG etc then a "certification" course would be handy. I'd sign up for that.

Matt.

Always hard to prove a negative.

But I see a similarity in the Government insistence on (miss) reporting Covid positive results on a daily basis. After x days of community free transmission who wants to be the first person with a runny nose to be the one to test SARS-Cov2 positive. It was reported that in the Auckland cluster there was a delay in testng within one family due to the negative impact a result might have on the family. I havent seen any follow up of this.

I investigate very few incidents. Most incidents are "minor" - that is a first aid type treatment or less. And most are due to the same cause. So there is little to be learnt from a new investigation, we have some inherent risk that we can't change and our management of those risks will always be proportional to the potential (and realistic) outcome. So basically I just wear first aid type injuries.

The ones that get my attention are the "near hit" ones. They pretty much consistently show something has continuously got under the radar and not been managed. So they need a fair bit of attention to remediate.

Doctor visit type incidents get a bit of attention - but each of these is on a case by case basis. We'll sometimes send a person to the doctor purely for a precautionary lookover and confirmation nothing major has happened.

Hospitalisations would get an investigation. But these are a bit trickier. Pretty much the only time ambulances are called out is due to personal health issues. So the "investigation" is more around is it right for the person to be remaining at work, given their health issues.

Aside from my view I think this is a totally pointless referendum I shall be voting "yes"

The issue for me has always been and remains today, an issue of competence to do a job. With the flip side of that coin being impairment that prevents a person from being competent.

During my (long) work life there have been four consistent impairment problems. And in no particular order they are Alcohol misuse, mental health, attitude and family issues. Way below that are things like fatigue and prescribed medications. Cannabis misuse doesn't really get on the radar - though I accept that may in part be due to its current legal status.

So, regardless of the results of the referendum I will continue not to have a Drug policy, I won't be doing drug testing and I won't be poking my nose into the private lives of our workers.

I am fully expecting a plague of parasites trying to sell me drug testing and drug focussed health and safety systems. I saw off those terrible Pre-Qual people and I will see off this next breed as well. I'm sure I'll lbe frustrated by worthies creating 40 page policies and curtain twitchers looking for the next best test.

Out of it I hope we will treat people as individuals and treat each of their own set of individual circumstances with care and dignity. While not losing sight that our responsibility lies in ensuring our businesses remain productive and our workers as safe as practicable.

And that's why Team NZ are winners.

While there may be no legal requirement for a "risk Rating" (I hope we do this stuff for reasons other than the law tells us to) I have a rating in my reGRegister.

Two main reasons.
I reckon it actually does give the risk a more objective view, than a subjective one - we need to think a bit harder about it and actually think more about 'real risk" than "ercieved risk"

It also gives me a sense of priority. Eg "Paper Cuts" score very low and I give them zero amount of attention., Where as losing a finger rates very high so this gets loads of attention.

The risk rating is "public" that way everyone gets to see the "priorities" or really dangerous stuff. And the reason why.

There is also two sides to risk. There is the pre-management side where we know something has a certain level of danger with no controls. And the other side is hopefully a whole lot less dangerous once we have implemented out controls. The "risk rating" can help measure the two.

I've had several visits.

Prior to the first one they wanted copies of everything emailed. Policy, risk registers, injury records, investigation records, health checks, environmental assessments, SOP's. Employment Agreements, Meeting minutes etc etc. I just sent them through - I'm not into garnishing stuff to make it look good for an auditor.

First visit was fine - a couple of extremely minor "improvement" suggestions. So trivial I can't remember them.

Second visit wanted all the documentations pre visit - again.

Second visit went pretty much like the first. Asked to talk privately with one of the Safety Advocates (we don't have a Committee with Reps).

This time got issued a formal Improvement Notice. Had to put an Emergency Stop on a machine that was inspected previously. The machine has loads of guarding so was fine on that count. Thing is, this machine can't have an Emergency Stop. It energises, has a full revolution single cycle, cycles once (takes about a second) and that is it until the operator starts the cycle again. We put an E Stop in, took a photo and sent it away. So all is good. Except the E Stop achieves nothing.

Visits were fine - each took about an hour. Nothing achieved or useful from our end. But I guess Worksafe has to satisfy themselves that things are actually being done.

They will be welcome back again.

I could be if I wanted to be. But I can't be bothered. Injury outcomes too low to even make it worth thinking about.

Did get Accredited Employer (Talent) from Immigration and that is much more useful

1, Its been whayt I have been saying since for about forever.

2. We havent forgotten - but we must always prioritize the really dangerous stuff over h lesser stuff

3. Loot should go to the victim

I hope we are also aware of Google Maps TimeLine

The "risk register" is probably my number one most important resource.

Its where I keep, for each separate work area:
- all our identified risks - so it keeps growing as we find more and shrinking as we get rid of some.
- visibility of how the risk is rated relative to other risks (Using the patented FARK scale)
- A summary of each decision point on how the risk is managed - eg why it can't be eliminated and what controls such as engineering changes have been decided on. Down to the required PPE
- A repository of relevant, reference and related documents eg Worksafe guides, SDS and SOPs

Most importantly, for me, every employee has access to all this information - firstly for their own work area, but they can also see every other work area.

It also helpful for inventory management. For example if I want to know what all me chemicals are or where all my "noisy" areas I can easily grab this information

That's what we do here Productive paid time, unproductive paid time, then time off for sickness, work accidents, non-work accidents. I don't drill lower as the number would be so small as to render it meaningless.

400?????
I'm audited right up the wing wang with ISO, financial and other international standards etc etc and I dont think I could add up 400 in total among that lot let alone just HSE measures

I disagree. Not everyone is engaged in H&S. Nor do they need to be. That's not to say that if they want an opportunity to be involved in "H&S" then they should be allowed that opportunity.

What they do need to be, is focused on how to do their job productively. And once that is established,how to be even more productive.

If we have done our job properly we will have engineered risk management controls that allow a person to do that job without serious harm - so really the person doesn't need to think about safety.

This is particularly so of your older gentleman who probably just wants to do a job with the least amount of hassle as possible.

To have a "need" to be engaged in H&S suggests that H&S is a separate task. It ought not be. It should be something that just gets wrapped up within the total context of a job.

I'm a person who partly meets the description in this thread topic so eminently qualified to comment.

The first issue that needs to be addressed is the assumption that "older gentlemen" ought to be engaged in H&S.

This is an extremely fragile assumption.

No payment here either.

Though we do have an agreement whereby if I make a commitment and fail to deliver on time then I buy cake for the next meeting.

Sarah - as above.

Keeping it simple why not open up your "incident"Spread sheet and add two columns. 1 x "Risk rating" (stick a number in here) and the other "Controls" (stick a description in here. Get extra fancy and add a couple of extra columns "date to be done by" "person to do control" and "Date control done"
Finally just call it your Risk Register.

Save your "incident" register for times when some one hurt themselves, and if you want to get fancy, nearly hurt themselves.

I had a look at that Incident Report. We shouldn't loose sight of "the girls shirt which had been saturated with a mixture of olive oil and ethyl alcohol based hand sanitizer"

Hmm. My "Read it on the Internet so it must be true" Bullshitometer is screaming about 100%

7.6 billion people in the world. Many using hand sanitiser many times a day and there have been ZERO verifiable cases reported of fire.

For are those that have missed the news zero active Covid cases in the South Island and 1 active case in NZ.

Time for us to move on.