Mike Cosman: Institute of Safety Management Chair on the Government reforming health and safety

Some are struggling to see the point of the Government's face-lift to workplace health and safety obligations. 

Minister-in-Charge, Brooke van Velden confirms small businesses will only need to manage risks relating to death or serious injury – to reduce compliance costs.  

Institute of Safety Management Chair Mike Cosman told Andrew Dickens multiple things the Government's painted as an issue are imaginary. 

He says there's no current requirement to report minor injuries or have signage for minor risks. 

Cosman believes the Government's created a myth and is now congratulating itself for cracking that. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The government's announced less tick box health than safety activities
and there's no longer a need to report minor events.
So the New Zealand Institute of Safety Management chair Mike
Cosmon is with me, Hello, Mike, morning, Andrew. So are
there any risks in this for our health and safety
in the workplace?

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Yeah? I think there are, But more importantly, I think
there's missed opportunities. So a number of the things that
the government has sort of painted as problems I think
are largely imaginary. So there's no requirement to report minor
injuries at the moment, there's no requirement to have signs
up saying hold the handrail or hot water on the
hot water tap. So I think it's created a bit
of a myth, and then it's congratulating itself for cracking

(00:42):
that myth, whereas it's not really addressing the things that
are killing and injuring workers all around the country, you know,
every day.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
So you said they missed an opportunity? What are they
missed other than what would you sayest?

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Well, So the key thing is that we've got industries
that we know are really has this. So this morning
I'm going off to visit some forestry workers. There's nothing
in here that's going to improve safety in the forestry
industry or with any of our other high risk sectors
like agriculture and construction and manufacturing. In fact, it's going
to divert work face attention away from those priorities to

(01:17):
manning the Cones hotline. So all the talk is about
reducing the cost of compliance, but there's nothing in here
which actually says how we're going to improve worker safety,
which is really at the heart of what I believe
we should be focusing on.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
Okay, well, I have an example, because Book van Velden
gave this example and her press release yesterday, and she see,
for example, a small clothing shop would still need to
provide first aid, emergency plans and basic facilities such as
suitable lighting, but wouldn't have to need to do a
psychosocial hand policy. Was he correct? Is that a good example?

Speaker 2 (01:51):
They don't have to do one anyway unless they are
particularly at risk. So if you were a corner dairy
or a jewelry that's robbed three times, and your staff
are at risk of both physical and mental harm because
of something that their rises through work, then you wouldn't
just need a policy, but you'd actually need to support
your workers who might be afraid to come to work

(02:13):
and concerned about the risks. So no, I think that
again is a misnowner. There's very little that actually is
required to be written down in law, but often people
get this idea that they have to do it because
of this mythical threat from work Safe or whatever. So
I think fundamentally the problem is that we lack current,

(02:35):
easy to access, up to date guidance that tells people
in simple terms what it is they do need to
do and what they don't need to do, and that's
been recognized for over ten years that there's a massive gap.
Work Safe themselves say that they've got hundreds of pieces
of guidance that are out of date and they don't
have the resources to fix them.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Mike, I thank you so much for your expertise. Today,
there's my Cosmin from the Institute of Safety Management.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
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