Managing Fatigue in the Workplace
A fatigued worker is equivalent to a drunk worker. Fatigue is a significant problem across NZ workplaces. According to the 2017 Health and Safety Attitudes and Behaviours Survey, 43% of NZ workers stated they worked when overtired from ‘time to time’ or ‘a lot’. What is fatigue? Fatigue goes beyond the feeling of just being […]
How to Achieve Good Health and Safety Governance
Many organisations still need to shift their focus on improving their health and safety management and performance. Since September 2019, there have been a total of 88 work fatalities and over 30,000 work injuries in New Zealand. Positive health and safety culture begins with the Board and spreads throughout the entire organisation. As an Officer, […]
Informed Health and Safety: Measuring More Than Just Incidents
Poor health and safety performance can have detrimental effects on workers and their families, as well as on the financial and reputational health of a business. Measurement is a critical part of health and safety management. Health and safety metrics can help identify what drives good performance and highlight areas in need of improvement – […]
How Do We Identify and Track Our Critical Risk Controls?
What are Critical Risk Controls? Keeping the workplace safe and free from serious incidents begins with identifying hazards and risks. Once identified, you must manage these risks through implementing and tracking critical risk controls – these are actions that are designed to eliminate or minimise the identified risk. Risk control measures provide a number of […]
Overthinking it?
Useful tips to manage overthinking: Of course, overthinking can become an issue in itself. It can deteriorate your mental health and lead to stress, anxiety and loss of sleep. Furthermore, there are times when habitual overthinking may be indicative of a deeper issue, such as generalised anxiety disorder or obsessive compulsive disorder (more). Do you […]
Building a Safety Culture Through Employee Inductions
Creating a strong health and safety culture and reducing risks in the workplace begins with your employees. Raising awareness among workers and instilling the right behaviours from day one is critical! The purpose of induction The main purpose of induction is to help new employees settle into the organisation and become familiar with the processes […]
How Legalising Cannabis Might Affect the Workplace
Cannabis is the most used illicit substance in New Zealand. Estimates suggest that by the age of 21 in the region of 80% of young people will have used cannabis on at least one occasion with 10% developing a pattern of heavy dependent use (more). As the Government has proposed a new legislation that will […]
Lessons from Lockdown: Working from home
During lockdown earlier this year, Working Wise conducted Virtual Workstation Assessments to provide support to remote workers and educate them on the best practices of setting up an ergonomic workstation at home. We sat down with our Occupational Health Nurse, Tracey Emmerson, and talked about her experience with helping workers to stay healthy and safe […]
Having a Clear and Easy Process for Reporting
Reporting incidents and hazards helps workplaces identify trends in health and safety and prevent future incidents from occurring. Unfortunately, reporting is still often considered an administrative burden that is too difficult or time consuming. The biggest challenge is letting go of the out-dated processes that are embedded in the organisation. For instance, using a paper-based […]
Advising Staff on the Importance of Reporting
Why is reporting important? Health and safety reporting makes a big difference in safety, efficiency and overall wellbeing. In order for reporting to be effective, workers need to understand why they are required to do so in the first place. Raises awareness – Reports that describe actual events or near misses are an effective way […]
