I am one of those immigrants in a H&S position here in NZ and I am shortly sliding in to HR instead. The issue I have been against is that the whole area of OHSE seems to be that it is not seen as tangibly productive. If a $ figure cannot be put against your time, the skills are not valued. When I want to spend time with people from the workshop floors, I am pushed back as it is not seen to be a productive use of their time. The remuneration is pretty poor which goes hand in hand with the business owners' view of H&S as an added bonus for a business that can be achieved and then is finished, rather than a basic, ongoing necessity. You get an understanding of the attitude towards H&S in NZ when you tell someone you work in that field. The assumptions that you are the workplace baddy, or a bossy know-it-all are very telling! This really pushes back anyone wanting to move in to H&S specific roles from operational roles which is such a shame when you think of how much people have to offer who have significant experience on the shop floor.

Thank you all for taking the time to respond. I have been working with people who are desk based, so clicking a link and completing a form was fine. Now I am working with fabricators and engineers who never access computers and don't all have smart phones (or want to use them for work).
The idea of being anonymous to start with is good, but with only 50 employees, 40 of whom are in the workshops, they all know who did what.
With your system, @LouiseB, is the identity of the reporter recorded and accessible by someone (say the H&S Officer), but left off any reports going to managers? Otherwise, would it not be hard to identify if there is a pattern with a certain person always having near misses or incidents?

@Lee - it is so difficult to get something that works! To make a change I am going to have to develop a system and present it in its entirety to the management team who are totally on board with so much but have a blind spot when it comes to the reporting- people just 'should' use the current system. This means I need to get as much info as possible about different options available without being able to trial them out or raise them casually.

@Tony: We have have weekly toolboxes where I cover a certain topic (e.g. confined spaces when we have a lot of such work coming up) but with management reps there, I think people are more resistant/defensive and don't want to raise their head above the parapet in case it gets shot down. The culture is not bad, it is just that they have all worked together for years and personalities come in to play 'oh well, you are always complaining about that' and 'well you are always the one that rushes things' etc.

If you could just supply me with the magic cure-all, that would be perfect... ;)

Thanks again.