Worksafe New Zealand

Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on itunes.

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0:14 Minister announces new agency name – Worksafe New Zealand
1:22 How will this affect your business?
2:20 How I can help you now

Quotables:
“…Biggest NZ Workplace Safety Change in 21 Years, and what you can do about it” – Tony – Tweet-Share This One!
“…Get latest updates on NZ safety and the new agency Worksafe New Zealand” – Tony – Click to Tweet

Hi, Tony Collins with a quick update letting you know the new Government standalone H&S agency has been named Worksafe New Zealand.

At a recent national health and safety conference, the Minister announced the name of the new H&S organisation – which will be called WorkSafe New Zealand. Now we’ve had the Pike River enquiry and a national taskforce on workplace Safety and one of the strong recommendations was to set up this new health and safety regulator. You will remember the old name of OSH, which was under the Department of Labour, which then moved into another organisaiton called MBIE. Workplace safety got buried in these Government organisaiton’s and we’ve seen that in the stats and how we have been performing poorly to overseas statistics.

The name change signals a key change in NZ history around health and safety and Worksafe New Zealand will be up and running by the end of this year.

What does all this mean for you? There will be changes to the HSE Act and there is talk around moving away form a hazard management framework to a risk management framework. I need to be able to explain these changes and what this means for you. The regulator may have more powers, meaning they can move in and out of workplaces differently. Employees may or may not have the ability for more enforcement. My update today is to telegraph the changes to you and interpret them as they come. Worksafe New Zealand is not planned to open it’s doors until 01 Dec 2013, but the next 3-4months will be quite intensive and if you keep watching and listening, my aim is to help make the transition easier. And if you take action, you could gain a competitive advantage by being in front of these changes.

All of which means you’ll also become more safe – which is my ultimate aim for you. This is Tony Collins and www.SafetyHub.co.nz