Looking out for one another
The Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 (HSWA) covers the health and safety requirements for most workplaces in Aotearoa New Zealand. It was the most significant overhaul of health and safety standards in 20 years and it came into effect on 4 April 2016.1
This law sets out our obligations and rights regarding workplace health and safety. And the principles of this Act are not only for employers and management – everyone present has a part to play, including people like clients or visitors who are in a workplace but are not employed as ‘workers’ themselves. As the Worksafe website says, “We can't do this alone. Everyone needs to work together on health and safety.”2
When employers and managers take a strong lead on health and safety, it helps create an environment where staff look out for each other and the people who they work with. You can contribute to this by making sure you have a good understanding of your own responsibilities and the policies and procedures that apply to the work you do.
In this topic we will focus on the part you have to play in making your workplace a safe environment for your colleagues and the young people you work with. More than simply complying with the law, showing young people that you are serious about their safety and wellbeing can help nurture trusting and productive relationships.
Task: Health and safety representative
Who is your workplace health and safety representative? Is there more than one person you could raise a health and safety matter with, or report a hazard to? Ask your manager if you do not know the answers to these questions.
Your responsibilities under the Act
Worksafe has prepared a guide to the key requirements of the HSWA written in plain English.3 It includes a list of definitions for terms and concepts, and provides examples to illustrate how the principles might apply in practice.
This special guide is written to apply to all kinds of workplaces, so you may find it is still very broad and not specific enough to the kind of work you do in your role.
As a very general summary of the responsibilities of a worker, you must:
- take reasonable care for your own health and safety
- take reasonable care that your behaviour does not adversely affect the health and safety of others
- comply with any reasonable instruction from your employer to allow the employer to comply with the Act
- cooperate with the employer’s health and safety policies or procedures.
Workers should report any incident, risk or hazard using the workplace's procedures, and inform visitors or clients of any known hazards or risks in the workplace.
Hazards and risks
Something that has the potential to cause death, injury or illness to a person is a hazard. Hazards can include objects, substances, situations and even a person’s own behaviour.
Meanwhile, risk is how likely it is that death, injury or illness might occur when a person is exposed to a hazard. According to WorkSafe2:
HSWA shifts the focus from monitoring and recording health and safety incidents to proactively identifying and managing risks so everyone is safe and healthy.WorkSafe
Reasonably practicable
Where a workplace hazard has been identified, employers (and workers) are required to manage the risk(s) from that hazard. Eliminating the risk (meaning there is no chance the hazard could cause death, injury or illness to anyone) is the best option, but in practice it is usually not realistic to completely eliminate all risks. Eliminating a hazard would also eliminate any risks associated with that hazard.
When it is not reasonably practicable to eliminate a risk, action(s) should be taken to minimise the risk that any harm will occur. You can read a detailed explanation of what ‘reasonably practicable’ means in this fact sheet by Worksafe.4
A risk can be minimised either by reducing the seriousness of the negative consequences in the event of an incident or by reducing the chance of an incident occurring.
It is the responsibility of your employer – as the ‘person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU)’ – to assess the risks and decide on what control measures to put in place, but it is helpful for you to know about what is required. The employer needs to make sure any control measures are communicated to workers where relevant, so that everyone can follow the risk minimisation strategies. This also helps create a culture where everyone can contribute to identifying new hazards and keeping each other safe.
Work–health relationship
There is a two-way relationship between someone’s health and wellbeing and the work that they carry out. A person’s work tasks or their work environment could harm their health, while at the same time the state of their health and wellbeing due to factors unrelated to their work can affect how they carry out their work in a safe manner.
Examples of the ‘effects of work on health’ could include:
- poor manual handling practices leading to a sprain injury
- exposure to bacterial or viral infection due to poor hygiene protocols
- psychological harm due to workplace bullying.
Examples of the ‘effects of health on work’ could include:
- poorly controlled diabetes or high blood pressure
- having low vision because you are not wearing your corrective lenses as required
- showing up to work fatigued due to poor sleep habits and not being able to concentrate.
Risk matrix
For every workplace risk identified, your employer is required to assess both the likelihood of harm occurring and the seriousness of the consequences if harm did occur. Taking both these factors into account helps to work out which risks are the most critical overall, allowing the employer to prioritise which risks need to be managed most urgently and with more robust control measures.
Combining the potential seriousness of a person being exposed to a hazard and the likelihood of this occurring can be done with a risk assessment matrix – also known as a risk rating matrix or simply a risk matrix. The risk matrix allows you to compare different hazards using a common ‘risk level’ and this rating also sets the bar for what actions are appropriate.
You can read a full explanation of the process in this practical guide developed by the Ministry of Education and the New Zealand School Trustees Association, under ‘Tool 13 – Assessing Risks’.5
Based on those assessments the employer needs to decide how best to manage each risk, with proportionate control measures.
Hierarchy of controls
There is a hierarchy of controls for dealing with each risk once the risks have been assessed. You should start at the top and choose the most effective or reliable measure(s) that are reasonably practicable for that risk.
| Can you eliminate the risk? If this is not possible, minimise... | Completely removing the risk. If this is not possible, minimise by doing one or more of the following (a, b, c, e, f, g) |
| A. Can you substitute the risk? | Substituting a safer process or material for the risk identified |
| B. Can you isolate the risk? | Separating the risk from workers |
| C. Can you put in an engineering control? | Designing and/or adding physical safety features to the working environment |
| D. Can you put in an administration control? | Requiring systems to be established or amended in order to control the risk |
| E. Can you use personal protective equipment (PPE)? | PPE should only be used when all other control measures are impractical. It should be used in conjunction with other more effective measures |
Hazard assessment register
Once this work has been done, it is a good idea to keep track of all these control measures in writing – written records are easier to review during the ‘Act’ step and this also makes it more efficient to train and onboard new staff.
One way you can do this is a hazard assessment register. There are variations in how a hazard register is set out and it may be known by a different name in your workplace, but it is basically a table that lists all the identified workplace hazards and what is being done about them. The columns show the location of each hazard, the potential harm that could come from that hazard, the likelihood of harm occurring, and what control measures are in place. You could also have columns indicating whose responsibility it is to enact the control measures, or dates for when the control measures are due for review.
You can see an example of a hazard assessment register for a café in this quick guide by Worksafe titled ‘Identifying, assessing and managing work risks’.6
Task: Hazard register
Your workplace should have a risk or hazard register. It may be available in hardcopy somewhere or it may be online (or on the intranet); ask your manager or health and safety representative if you don’t know where to find it.
Read through this register and note which hazards apply to the work you carry out in your role. Some hazards will be location-specific – think about all the rooms and locations where you work with young people in a typical week.
- Are there any risks in the register that you weren’t aware of or hadn’t thought about before now?
- Are there any hazards or risks in your workplace that are not listed that you think should be included in the register?
How to respond in an emergency
You are probably familiar with fire drills as a way of practising and embedding emergency safety procedures. Your workplace should also have procedures in place for other types of emergencies, such as an earthquake, gas leak or bomb threat.
In a real-life emergency event, you may not have time to sit down and read through your workplace’s policies to learn the correct ways to respond. This is why it is important to familiarise yourself with these procedures before an emergency occurs.
Task: Emergency procedures
Where can you look up the emergency procedures for your workplace? These may be available in hardcopy somewhere or they may be online (or on the intranet). Ask your health and safety representative to confirm where these procedures can be referred to.
Task: First aid kits and evacuation routes
Think about all the rooms and locations where you work with young people in a typical week. For each of these sites, think about where the closest first aid kit is – and if you are unsure where the first aid kit is for any of these sites, go and confirm where they are kept today.
In the event of an emergency evacuation, would the evacuation procedure and route be the same across all these sites? Make sure you are aware of the evacuation processes that apply to all the rooms or locations you usually work in. The young people you work with will be looking to you to lead by example.
Legal and ethical obligations
Safety management in your workplace is a legal and ethical obligation. There is a legal liability for your employer under the HSWA and there are ethical requirements under Ara Taiohi’s Code of Ethics for Youth Work in Aotearoa New Zealand (the Code of Ethics).7
When you work with young people, you need to consider the safety and wellbeing of yourself, your colleagues, the young people in your care, and others in the wider community.
Task: Clauses relating to safe environments
Consider the 24 clauses in the Code of Ethics. Other than Haumaru (Clause 20), which of these clauses are concerned with the safety of the young people you work with? See how many clauses you can identify that relate to elements of a safe physical and emotional environment for young people.
Disclosure of information in an emergency
Clause 15 ‘Matatapu | Confidentiality’ states that there may be certain emergency situations that allow for the disclosure of confidential information about the young person.
Where a young person has told you something personal in confidence during the course of your work, you would generally be expected to keep it confidential. The exceptions to this are when you are required to disclose this information due to legislation or a court order, or when you believe there is a risk to the safety of the young person in question or to someone else, and that disclosing this personal information to the right agency could prevent this harm.
An example of when a youth worker might believe there is a risk to the safety of a young person or someone else would be around mental health and physical harm – for instance, when they have reason to believe a young person is in the process of harming themself or others. This could be an attempt at suicide (overdose or hanging) or self-harm to the degree that they are about to harm others (driving at high speed while under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or intentionally going out to pick a fight with someone. In this situation, a youth worker is permitted to disclose relevant information about this young person to someone else to try and prevent or reduce the harm.
Even when such an exception applies, you are permitted to share this information only with appropriate people – those individuals or agencies that are in a position to prevent the harm or lessen the risk, such as the Police. And you are limited to disclosing only the information that is necessary, rather than passing on all the details you have about someone.
These rules around maintaining confidentiality and managing other people’s personal information not only relate to the Code of Ethics, they are also required under the Privacy Act 2020. You looked briefly at the Privacy Act 2020 in Topic 3 of this module.
Te Whare Tapa Whā
When considering health and wellbeing in a youth work context, it can help to think about it in terms of a model you looked at in Module 2, Topic 2: Te Whare Tapa Whā. In this model, the overall health of a person was depicted as a wharenui (meeting house) whose four walls represented four equally vital dimensions of the person’s wellbeing.8
Taha Whānau refers to the person’s family and social bonds. This is more than just their immediate family and relatives, it’s all the people in their daily life who they care about and who they can count on for support when things get tough. This ties in with the HSWA’s aims of identifying and mitigating risks before they cause harm to any workers, students, clients or visitors – a collective effort for the benefit of all.
In that sense, the health and safety of people in the workplace depends on everyone being there for each other. You and your colleagues are whānau for each other but also for the young people you work with; the quality of these relationships is important for the young people’s overall wellbeing and safety.
It bears repeating that this model treats physical health (Taha Tinana) as only one dimension of a person’s overall wellbeing. Tinana Hinengaro, or mental health, is an important aspect of workplace safety that is not always on people’s radar. Workplace hazards such as stress or bullying can have harmful effects on people’s mental health and the negative impacts are not as obvious as, say, a sudden physical injury. Safety management systems need to consider hazards to mental health, and those who work with young people should remember that a hazard such as bullying can occur between young people, not just among workers.
Plan-Do-Check-Act
Plan-Do-Check-Act is a risk management process that Worksafe recommends. This is a four-step process that can be repeated as necessary, i.e. after reviewing incidents or near misses as part of the ‘Act’ step, you use this information to start back at the ‘Plan’ step to reassess risk and decide on other control measures.
Worksafe have created a two-page fact sheet titled ‘How to manage work risks’, which sums up their guidance on how to manage workplace risks in a way that complies with HSWA.9 Click on each heading to read more.
Plan – Assess risk and identify control measures
This step is where employers and workers identify hazards and risks in the workplace. Assess the risks to work out which ones you should deal with first. Eliminate risks where possible, and if a risk can’t be eliminated then you need to minimise it (as far as is reasonably practicable) using control measures.
Do – Implement control measures
This is the step where the control measures are put in place or embedded into ‘business as usual’. Allowing everyone to have input during the Plan step means more people are likely to play their part and take ownership of the control measures that were decided on.
Check – Monitor performance of control measures
Even with all the hazards identified and the risks managed, there may still be near misses or incidents – these need to be reported and investigated. Everyone needs to remain vigilant and know the reporting process. Employers should solicit health and safety concerns from workers and monitor the effectiveness of the control measures.
Act – Take action on lessons learnt
In this step, you take the information gathered in the Check step and use it to review how effective the control measures are. These reviews should be regularly scheduled and the results should be used to continually improve working conditions and control measures.
Are you confident you have a good understanding of workplace health and safety compliance?
- What are an employer’s responsibilities under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015? What are your rights and obligations, as a worker?
- Make a list of some important aspects of health and safety that you need to consider when you work with young people in your role.
- Do you know how to report an incident in the workplace? How to respond to an emergency situation?
- Make a list of some of the ways that having good health and safety policies and procedures could help you within your context and the work you do with young people.
You are now ready to complete Task 4 of Assessment 2.1.
