New Zealand’s health and safety performance seems to be dire still.
In 2013, an independent taskforce identified three key failures in the country’s health and safety system in the wake of the Pike River tragedy.
Eleven years later, Newsroom reveals that despite knowing these faults, not much has changed.
Legislation continues to be poorly implemented with insufficient follow through, the primary regulator is still under resourced, and there is still poor coordination across the agencies tasked with injury prevention, they said.
Mike Cosman, Chair of the New Zealand Institute of Safety Management, told Kerre Woodham that he was part of that taskforce, and sadly only about half the job was done.
He said that whilst other countries we would normally compare ourselves to —Australia, the UK, Europe— have continued to improve, our performance has staggered along.
It’s not getting worse, Cosman said, but it’s certainly not getting better at the speed that you would hope.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Carry Wooden Morning's podcast from News
talks'd B.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I was looking at a report this morning from Newsroom
as I came into work looking a little bit fatigued
around the eyes, not because of any excess because those
days are gone, but because it was a late night
because I was m seeing the New Zealand Health and
Safety Awards last night, and I was absolutely blown away
by the initiatives that I heard about. When you announced
(00:34):
the finalists, you announced why they were in the finals,
and it was the way that so many industry groups
were working together using experience from the shop floor, with leadership,
with innovative ideas, people being allowed to speak up, people
(00:56):
being allowed even you know, very very lowly team members
being allowed to say no, we're not working it's unsafe
until it's fixed, being believed trusted. You had people using academics,
you had people using design experts to make the workplace safer.
(01:16):
So I was really interested. And there were seven hundred
and fifty people there who's each and every goal was
to ensure that people went home from work that they
were safe and had done so you know, they had
actually saved lives. And then this article which has been
written by Stacy Shortall and Mike Bennett's They've written a
(01:40):
report Been there with the dumb that crossed out a
report into New Zealand's repeated health and safety failures. They
claim that our performance when it comes to health and
safety is falling short. Nothing has changed since a twenty
thirteen report that said legislation have been poorly implemented, with
(02:03):
insufficient follow through the primary reading later was under resourced,
and there was poor alignment and coordination across agency's tasked
with injury prevention. They said not much has changed that
our poor health and safety performance last year cost about
four point four billion dollars a year. Joining me now
(02:28):
is the chair of the New Zealand Institute of Safety Management,
Mike Cosmon. Mike, good morning to you.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Morning carry.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
You're at the conference right now. You are one of
the New Zealand's most highly regarded health and safety practitioners
with more than forty three years experience, so you have
seen it all. Is it fair comment that we're just
as bad as we were ten years ago?
Speaker 3 (02:54):
I think it is. I was part of that government
task force that you referred to, which was set up
after Pike River and we identify the whole range of
improvements that needed to be laid for the system to
work effectively for all concerned, and sadly, only about half
of the job was done. And as you know, often
(03:16):
you do half a god when you don't get half
the results. And so whilst other countries that we would
sort of typically compare ourselves to, like Australia, the UK,
Europe you have continued to improve, our performance has sort
of staggered along. So it's not getting worse, but it's
certainly not getting better at the speed that you would
(03:37):
hope if we were going to really be punching at
the level that we should as a country.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Well, you just don't want people to go to work
and die, do you.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Well that's the bottom line, isn't it. And I mean,
you know, you talked about all the fantastic things that
were showcased last night at the awards, but unfortunately there's
still this perception and I have to say sadly that
was also articulated by the Minister at the end of
the conference yesterday that while she acknowledged the concerns for workers,
(04:08):
she was also talking about compliance, cost and the cost effectiveness,
and of course that takes you into a really difficult area,
which is what value do you put on a life?
What value you put on somebody who you know is
going to be permanently disabled? Because we also heard from
acc about the you know, the cost of maintaining the
(04:29):
fantastic no blame compensation scheme that we have. But you know,
if we continue to injure workers, then that, you know,
puts further pressure on the scheme and puts further pressure
on the public health system. So you know, all of
these things are interconnected. And if we can actually focus
more on the prevention end, which was what was being
(04:49):
showcased last night, then everybody wins.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Yes, And I get that. I was seeing like the
industry at its best, where you have got highly motivated
individuals and companies who are being extolled for or being
their best in field in terms of accident prevention. But
a lot came through from the finalists, and that the
(05:14):
voice from the shop floor was vitally important. You know,
that the workers were actually being listened to when it
came to health and safety, which must be something that
has changed since twenty thirteen.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
So you're right, and that was one of the things
that the task Force report talked about was how do
we encourage workers, How do we empower workers to have
a voice, because at the end of the day, when
it's three o'clock in the morning and the equipment's broken
down and they've still got a job to do, those
are the ones who are making decisions to what their
boss expects them to do. You know, so, do this
(05:47):
boss expect the dog to get done no excuses? Or
does the boss say, well, actually, if we haven't provided
you with enough people or the right equipment or the
right flag, then that's our problem. We don't expect you
to put your lives and health on the line because
of that. And I think that's the culture piece that
a couple of those organizations really demonstrated, which was that
(06:09):
they didn't just talk the talk, but they walked the walk,
and so if workers did put their hands up, then
they got applauded for it. It was a safe place, yes,
and particularly when you consider on some of those big projects,
a lot of the workers there were foreign workers, did
not have the English as the first language, may have
very different expectations as to what a good safety culture
(06:31):
looks like. And yet somehow they managed to empower them
to have as much agency in their work as the
traditional fuity worker.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
And having listened to because I really did find it interesting.
Honestly it was. I found it an absolutely fascinating night.
Just each and every case study that even in that
preceed form I found fascinating. But a lot of the
complaint on talkback from bosses is that their workers will
not follow the health and safety guidelines because it's uncomfortable
(07:02):
to wear the PPE, or they believe that being harnessed
in fact means that they can't trust their own balance,
all that sort of thing, and they really struggle with
getting their workers to comply. If it's lead from and
that sometimes you can legislate common sense and safety out
of somebody because you're making them a bay rules that
(07:25):
mean they're not thinking and you really need them to
be thinking to keep themselves safe. And I was just
listening to all of these finalists where when the workers
are listened to that sometimes there are better outcomes. Can
you sometimes overlegislate for health and safety?
Speaker 3 (07:45):
I mean you can, There's no doubt about it. And
certainly I think in my experience there's a lot of
misperception as to what legislation actually requires So if you
look at the law, there's very little actual requirement to
write anything down, and yet the response of most people
to health and safety is, you know, I have to
write something. What we heard of some of those examples
(08:06):
last night is that for workers who don't have English
in the first language, actually pictures are a far more
powerful way of communicating bettages. You only find that out
if you actually speak to the workers and check whether
they've understood what you're asking of them. But you know,
in answer to your comment about protective equipment being uncomfortable,
(08:27):
it is uncomfortable, and that's why it's the last line
of defense. What we should be focusing on is how
do we remove the contaminant or the airies or whatever
it is that source so that we don't have to
wear uncomfortable respirators. But I'm sure if you you know,
on a talk back, I'm sure you get people saying
they don't like wearing sat belts because some people find
seatbelts uncomfortable. But yet we acknowledge that actually, when rather
(08:51):
than if we have a crotch, it's the seat belt
is often going to make the difference between a survivable
injury and an insurvivable injury. It's the same with the harness.
Ninety nine times out of one hundred, you're not going
to fall, but at hundreds of time that what's and
make the difference. And so because we're human, the one
thing that ferentiates humans from machines is that we make
(09:13):
the stakes, and so we have to plan for when
those mistakes occur. Because somebody's hired because their mind's not
on the job, because they're worried about what's happening at home,
because they've got a deadline to meet, which is causing
them to rush. You know, those are the things which
mean that we depart from that what we call workers imagined,
which is the nice, you know, smooth, straightforward process when
(09:36):
that everything is as it should be, but the less
the reality it will work is that that is actually
the exception rather than norm. Workers are having to adapt
to circumstances in order to get the job done, and
sometimes that means that the solution that's been designed by
somebody else doesn't actually look good from their perspective.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
No, and all the successful ones head worker agency, you know,
the actual workers working alongside the decision makers and people
who had stepped out of their executive leadership team officers
and come down onto the shop floor to see for
themselves what it looked like, what they faced, what had
(10:17):
to be done. And I can't understand why people wouldn't
invest in health and safety. I'm now a complete convert.
Put a hard hat on me and call me a
health and safety rep. But I can't understand why you
wouldn't invest in the programs and adapt them to make
them work for your company when you can see that
(10:37):
A people are alive and not injured and not traumatized,
and b you save so much money.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Well, I think that was the other part of it,
wasn't it. How many of those projects that actually they
had lower turnover, they had greater productivity than that budget.
People were working together for a common cause and so
they were collaborating rather than competing. And so you're right.
I mean, good managers recognize that help and safe is
(11:06):
an investment rather than a conscience cost. But what our
role as help and safety professionals who advise businesses is
to get that balance right between what sometimes perceived as
the health and safety bureaucracy and actually the things that
make a real difference on the shop floor and I
think one of the challenges that we face is getting
alignment between work Safe as the regulator and what they
(11:29):
expect when they come in and investigate after an instant
has occurred, where the first question will be show us
the paperwork, rather than let's go and talk to the
workers and understand what they understood about how the work
was supposed to be done and what the expectations were
around what they could and couldn't do. The paperwork is important,
(11:52):
but it's not the thing that's going to make the difference.
It's the shared environment of working together, that sense of
care for ourselves and each other and actually understanding what
the real risks are because of workers don't understand the
potential for harm is until let's explain to them, and
when they get it, when they understand why they have
(12:13):
to do certain things, then often you get a much
better outcome.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Oh absolutely, like I just everybody wins when you do
it right and when you trust the workers and you
trust their common sense and you trust their knowledge and
you can explain it because they trust you what the
expectations are. You don't want them going you want them
going home with ten fingers and tis and all their
bits attached. They want to go home to You take
(12:41):
pride in the work that you do. You look after
your mates.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
It's total one one one, and you want of them
saying to their family and friends, this is a great
place to work. You know, come and get a job here. Now,
you know, unfortunate our job market's not as great as
it was a couple of years ago, but when the
labor market was tight. Actually and probably increasingly for you know,
for Chen's they are looking for workplaces that share their
(13:07):
mindset and philosophy that they choose where they want to
work because you know, it's it's an environment that they
find supportive and conducive, whether that be from a mental
health point of view or from a physical safety point
of view. We no longer pay people danger, but maybe
no longer expect people to lose their lives as a
(13:28):
condition of working. So you know, we have to we
have to change our mindset.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Nice to talk, Thanks so much, Mike, Mike Cosmon, cheer
of the Institute of Safety Management partner ed Cosmon spikes.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
For more from Kerry Wood and Mornings, listen live to
news Talks. It'd be from nine am weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio,
You're listening to the Carry Wooden Morning's podcast from News
talks'd B.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I was looking at a report this morning from Newsroom
as I came into work looking a little bit fatigued
around the eyes, not because of any excess because those
days are gone, but because it was a late night
because I was m seeing the New Zealand Health and
Safety Awards last night, and I was absolutely blown away
by the initiatives that I heard about. When you announced
(00:34):
the finalists, you announced why they were in the finals,
and it was the way that so many industry groups
were working together using experience from the shop floor, with leadership,
with innovative ideas, people being allowed to speak up, people
(00:56):
being allowed even you know, very very lowly team members
being allowed to say no, we're not working it's unsafe
until it's fixed, being believed trusted. You had people using academics,
you had people using design experts to make the workplace safer.
(01:16):
So I was really interested. And there were seven hundred
and fifty people there who's each and every goal was
to ensure that people went home from work that they
were safe and had done so you know, they had
actually saved lives. And then this article which has been
written by Stacy Shortall and Mike Bennett's They've written a
(01:40):
report Been there with the dumb that crossed out a
report into New Zealand's repeated health and safety failures. They
claim that our performance when it comes to health and
safety is falling short. Nothing has changed since a twenty
thirteen report that said legislation have been poorly implemented, with
(02:03):
insufficient follow through the primary reading later was under resourced,
and there was poor alignment and coordination across agency's tasked
with injury prevention. They said not much has changed that
our poor health and safety performance last year cost about
four point four billion dollars a year. Joining me now
(02:28):
is the chair of the New Zealand Institute of Safety Management,
Mike Cosmon. Mike, good morning to you.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Morning carry.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
You're at the conference right now. You are one of
the New Zealand's most highly regarded health and safety practitioners
with more than forty three years experience, so you have
seen it all. Is it fair comment that we're just
as bad as we were ten years ago?
Speaker 3 (02:54):
I think it is. I was part of that government
task force that you referred to, which was set up
after Pike River and we identify the whole range of
improvements that needed to be laid for the system to
work effectively for all concerned, and sadly, only about half
of the job was done. And as you know, often
(03:16):
you do half a god when you don't get half
the results. And so whilst other countries that we would
sort of typically compare ourselves to, like Australia, the UK,
Europe you have continued to improve, our performance has sort
of staggered along. So it's not getting worse, but it's
certainly not getting better at the speed that you would
(03:37):
hope if we were going to really be punching at
the level that we should as a country.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Well, you just don't want people to go to work
and die, do you.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Well that's the bottom line, isn't it. And I mean,
you know, you talked about all the fantastic things that
were showcased last night at the awards, but unfortunately there's
still this perception and I have to say sadly that
was also articulated by the Minister at the end of
the conference yesterday that while she acknowledged the concerns for workers,
(04:08):
she was also talking about compliance, cost and the cost effectiveness,
and of course that takes you into a really difficult area,
which is what value do you put on a life?
What value you put on somebody who you know is
going to be permanently disabled? Because we also heard from
acc about the you know, the cost of maintaining the
(04:29):
fantastic no blame compensation scheme that we have. But you know,
if we continue to injure workers, then that, you know,
puts further pressure on the scheme and puts further pressure
on the public health system. So you know, all of
these things are interconnected. And if we can actually focus
more on the prevention end, which was what was being
(04:49):
showcased last night, then everybody wins.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Yes, And I get that. I was seeing like the
industry at its best, where you have got highly motivated
individuals and companies who are being extolled for or being
their best in field in terms of accident prevention. But
a lot came through from the finalists, and that the
(05:14):
voice from the shop floor was vitally important. You know,
that the workers were actually being listened to when it
came to health and safety, which must be something that
has changed since twenty thirteen.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
So you're right, and that was one of the things
that the task Force report talked about was how do
we encourage workers, How do we empower workers to have
a voice, because at the end of the day, when
it's three o'clock in the morning and the equipment's broken
down and they've still got a job to do, those
are the ones who are making decisions to what their
boss expects them to do. You know, so, do this
(05:47):
boss expect the dog to get done no excuses? Or
does the boss say, well, actually, if we haven't provided
you with enough people or the right equipment or the
right flag, then that's our problem. We don't expect you
to put your lives and health on the line because
of that. And I think that's the culture piece that
a couple of those organizations really demonstrated, which was that
(06:09):
they didn't just talk the talk, but they walked the walk,
and so if workers did put their hands up, then
they got applauded for it. It was a safe place, yes,
and particularly when you consider on some of those big projects,
a lot of the workers there were foreign workers, did
not have the English as the first language, may have
very different expectations as to what a good safety culture
(06:31):
looks like. And yet somehow they managed to empower them
to have as much agency in their work as the
traditional fuity worker.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
And having listened to because I really did find it interesting.
Honestly it was. I found it an absolutely fascinating night.
Just each and every case study that even in that
preceed form I found fascinating. But a lot of the
complaint on talkback from bosses is that their workers will
not follow the health and safety guidelines because it's uncomfortable
(07:02):
to wear the PPE, or they believe that being harnessed
in fact means that they can't trust their own balance,
all that sort of thing, and they really struggle with
getting their workers to comply. If it's lead from and
that sometimes you can legislate common sense and safety out
of somebody because you're making them a bay rules that
(07:25):
mean they're not thinking and you really need them to
be thinking to keep themselves safe. And I was just
listening to all of these finalists where when the workers
are listened to that sometimes there are better outcomes. Can
you sometimes overlegislate for health and safety?
Speaker 3 (07:45):
I mean you can, There's no doubt about it. And
certainly I think in my experience there's a lot of
misperception as to what legislation actually requires So if you
look at the law, there's very little actual requirement to
write anything down, and yet the response of most people
to health and safety is, you know, I have to
write something. What we heard of some of those examples
(08:06):
last night is that for workers who don't have English
in the first language, actually pictures are a far more
powerful way of communicating bettages. You only find that out
if you actually speak to the workers and check whether
they've understood what you're asking of them. But you know,
in answer to your comment about protective equipment being uncomfortable,
(08:27):
it is uncomfortable, and that's why it's the last line
of defense. What we should be focusing on is how
do we remove the contaminant or the airies or whatever
it is that source so that we don't have to
wear uncomfortable respirators. But I'm sure if you you know,
on a talk back, I'm sure you get people saying
they don't like wearing sat belts because some people find
seatbelts uncomfortable. But yet we acknowledge that actually, when rather
(08:51):
than if we have a crotch, it's the seat belt
is often going to make the difference between a survivable
injury and an insurvivable injury. It's the same with the harness.
Ninety nine times out of one hundred, you're not going
to fall, but at hundreds of time that what's and
make the difference. And so because we're human, the one
thing that ferentiates humans from machines is that we make
(09:13):
the stakes, and so we have to plan for when
those mistakes occur. Because somebody's hired because their mind's not
on the job, because they're worried about what's happening at home,
because they've got a deadline to meet, which is causing
them to rush. You know, those are the things which
mean that we depart from that what we call workers imagined,
which is the nice, you know, smooth, straightforward process when
(09:36):
that everything is as it should be, but the less
the reality it will work is that that is actually
the exception rather than norm. Workers are having to adapt
to circumstances in order to get the job done, and
sometimes that means that the solution that's been designed by
somebody else doesn't actually look good from their perspective.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
No, and all the successful ones head worker agency, you know,
the actual workers working alongside the decision makers and people
who had stepped out of their executive leadership team officers
and come down onto the shop floor to see for
themselves what it looked like, what they faced, what had
(10:17):
to be done. And I can't understand why people wouldn't
invest in health and safety. I'm now a complete convert.
Put a hard hat on me and call me a
health and safety rep. But I can't understand why you
wouldn't invest in the programs and adapt them to make
them work for your company when you can see that
(10:37):
A people are alive and not injured and not traumatized,
and b you save so much money.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Well, I think that was the other part of it,
wasn't it. How many of those projects that actually they
had lower turnover, they had greater productivity than that budget.
People were working together for a common cause and so
they were collaborating rather than competing. And so you're right.
I mean, good managers recognize that help and safe is
(11:06):
an investment rather than a conscience cost. But what our
role as help and safety professionals who advise businesses is
to get that balance right between what sometimes perceived as
the health and safety bureaucracy and actually the things that
make a real difference on the shop floor and I
think one of the challenges that we face is getting
alignment between work Safe as the regulator and what they
(11:29):
expect when they come in and investigate after an instant
has occurred, where the first question will be show us
the paperwork, rather than let's go and talk to the
workers and understand what they understood about how the work
was supposed to be done and what the expectations were
around what they could and couldn't do. The paperwork is important,
(11:52):
but it's not the thing that's going to make the difference.
It's the shared environment of working together, that sense of
care for ourselves and each other and actually understanding what
the real risks are because of workers don't understand the
potential for harm is until let's explain to them, and
when they get it, when they understand why they have
(12:13):
to do certain things, then often you get a much
better outcome.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Oh absolutely, like I just everybody wins when you do
it right and when you trust the workers and you
trust their common sense and you trust their knowledge and
you can explain it because they trust you what the
expectations are. You don't want them going you want them
going home with ten fingers and tis and all their
bits attached. They want to go home to You take
(12:41):
pride in the work that you do. You look after
your mates.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
It's total one one one, and you want of them
saying to their family and friends, this is a great
place to work. You know, come and get a job here. Now,
you know, unfortunate our job market's not as great as
it was a couple of years ago, but when the
labor market was tight. Actually and probably increasingly for you know,
for Chen's they are looking for workplaces that share their
(13:07):
mindset and philosophy that they choose where they want to
work because you know, it's it's an environment that they
find supportive and conducive, whether that be from a mental
health point of view or from a physical safety point
of view. We no longer pay people danger, but maybe
no longer expect people to lose their lives as a
(13:28):
condition of working. So you know, we have to we
have to change our mindset.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Nice to talk, Thanks so much, Mike, Mike Cosmon, cheer
of the Institute of Safety Management partner ed Cosmon spikes.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
For more from Kerry Wood and Mornings, listen live to
news Talks. It'd be from nine am weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio,
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