Zane: Hi and welcome to your introduction to SafePlus. I'm Zane Yates and today I'm
here with Malcolm MacMillan from WorkSafe g'day Malcolm.
Malcolm: Hi.
Zane: And we're going to be
talking about all the things you need to know around SafePlus, it's evolution
and how it got to you, being here today. I guess, right?
Malcolm: Correct.
Zane: So let's get into it straight away so what is SafePlus?
Malcolm: Yeah great question Zane.
First I think it's fundamentally two things and perhaps for the first time in
New Zealand it's a nationally consistent authoritative kind of credible trusted
definition of what good health and safety looks like and when I use the term
'good', I mean best practice health and safety beyond minimum legal compliance.
Businesses have been kind of asking for a consistent approach and definition of that,
so we think we can deliver that, and then secondly it's a performance
improvement tool so it's a product that can help businesses to help themselves,
identify their strengths and weaknesses and support them to make the changes
necessary and support the continuous improvement activities and go on a
journey towards excellence and health and safety.
Zane: Great, so it sounds like this
is a progress for New Zealand really, in relation to 'good'.
Malcolm: Correct.
Zane: So if we're talking about what good is then can you give me a bit of an example of what SafePlus
isn't intended to do just because some time that's helps clarify things as well.
Malcolm: Yes, so what I think SafePlus is not is it's not a traditional
compliance audit scheme or service or product. It takes a different type of
assessment approach and it's a behavioural evaluative and deliberately
quite consultative advisory assessment approach and it's quite
different to traditional compliance audit.
Zane: It sounds different.
Malcolm: Documented manuals and
policies and procedures have their place, don't get me wrong, but that's not the
primary focus of SafePlus. The Assessors are, not literally, but you know, walking past
those manuals on the shelf and getting to the frontline and talking to people,
people, people. Focusing on the people in the business so what are the
behaviours, what are the attitudes, what are the perceptions.
What's the culture? What are the values around health and safety
focusing all those human factor issues.
Zane: Okay, so you're talking about lifting
performance there and that it is not about audits and manuals and all that kind of
thing. So how just start developing this tool?
Malcolm: Yes, so it's had a really long
gestation period, it goes way back. If we go back in history there was the Pike River
disaster and then there was a Royal Commission inquiry into that.
That identified that we had some failings in the whole health and safety system in
New Zealand. There was an independent task force appointed by the government of the
day to look into that, they made a number of recommendations that are
effectively the genesis of SafePlus today. They said we should have a
performance improvement initiative that can help businesses that goes beyond
compliance, so government had some health and safety reforms and some
recommendations to kind of go away and design and test and come back with some
advice around what could something be in this space, and so WorkSafe, ACC and the
Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment were tasked with designing and
developing what we now have today is SafePlus. We've spent a number
of years kind of working with industry to do that. It's been genuinely quite a
collaborative approach. We've set up expert
advisory groups, industry reference groups and business and worker
representatives and designed and tested the stuff over a number of years.
Zane: Okay so it sounds like this isn't something that's not a flash in the pan it hasn't
happened overnight. One of the things you mentioned there was that
you've worked with industry and what did you learn as you tested it.
You said testing, did you learn anything and if so what's that changed?
Malcolm: Yeah, so we've ran a big pilot back in late 2015 through the middle of 2016.
95 Businesses participated in that across seven different sectors so
construction, agriculture, transport forestry, the list goes on quite a few
sectors to give this a really good road test and see if it was going to work, and
we were piloting and kind of testing the effectiveness of the SafePlus tool its
relevance and currency in a New Zealand market because we've done a lot of
international research around what makes up 'good' but we wanted to test it on the
New Zealand market and make sure it was kind of appropriate. Value for money
you know, is this something that businesses would value and be prepared
to pay for, and it's kind of effectiveness,
could this make a difference. There were learnings out of that pilot.
Businesses kind of fundamentally came back and said, Yes we like this.
Its different, it's different to a traditional audit approach we like that
it's behavioral and its assessment approach and that you're looking at the
people human factors that we talked about. They did value it and said,
yes we would actually be prepared to pay for this in future so we thought it was good.
Zane: That is kind of useful! Malcolm: Biggest measure of success perhaps.
They like that it engaged with workers and the workers were involved in it. Its very worker
friendly and that the workers felt the experience. So it wasn't
something that sat away in an office you know, reading through manuals and all that,
just engage with senior managers. Workers are involved in the SafePlus
experience and businesses like that. They felt it was a really good worker
engagement exercise so it enabled them to have a conversation with their
workers and hear from their workers. They really liked the worker
engagement aspect to it. And they liked the independence.
They like that it could give them some confidence about, are we doing the right
things? are we investing a health and safety dollar wisely? what should we do
to improve? and then this could give them that sort of consultative an advisory factor.
They cared less about the stars, or the badge, or the certificate on the wall.
They wanted the 'how to' factor. We know we need to improve we don't know
how or where, we don't know what they would look like if we were doing it well
and we don't know where to start. So if you could bring us that 'how to' factor
that's the real value in SafePlus for businesses.
Zane: Just switching hats for a moment,
if I'm thinking as a business owner of those target markets what am I
going to benefit from it? I understand there was this tool there and I can have
an assessor come in and help out, but what are the real business benefits of this?
Malcolm: I mean that all goes to the value proposition of SafePlus.
That's different for different businesses. There'll be some businesses,
that are here generally, they want the 'how to' factor They want the advice and guidance and
that's their primary reason for using SafePlus and climbing into that.
Have some independent qualified person come into our business, look at where and how well
we're performing and where we have strengths and weaknesses and provide us
with that advice around how to improve.
That'll be how I would like to think, that it is there for most businesses that use this, because that's its fundamental
purpose and the reason for being, a performance improvement tool.
There'll be businesses,
that are driven by the kind of business confidence and maybe the assurance factor.
Help us fulfill our due diligence obligations as a director or
board member or an executive in the business, in the same way that businesses
go out and hire the independent financial institutes to get
financial audits. This could be a way of having an independent perspective and
look at how well are we doing. Is management taking the mickey?
I want to know from someone qualified and independent, how well are we doing?
So they'll want their business confidence factor. They'll want to know, yip we're doing
really well here or, if we are not, we want to know about it coming from a risk
management benefit. I think there'll be some businesses that want
the employer of choice factor. They say, we take the stuff seriously and we
actually want to show our workers that we do that. SafePlus is a very
tangible way of showing workers that you're taking health or safety seriously
workers are involved in it.
Zane: Because they're part of it, and this is not a little office somewhere.
This is, we are talking to people.
Malcolm: Workers are all engaged in the SafePlus experience, they get to see and feel and
it brings a bit of trust and confidence from the workers that their employer
is taking a stuff seriously, cares about them and cares about their
health and safety and you know with that comes all those sort of an employer of
choice benefits around staff acquisition and retention. We'd like to think
that it's going to be effective at helping businesses improve their
health and safety, of course that's their primary overall objective and with
doing health and safety well, we know that health and safety,
doing it well as good for business you know, there's the productivity gains
you can get when you're doing stuff well and you're not having the accidents or
causing the harm on-site, there's the avoidance of the cost of failure when
things go wrong. Just doing health and safety well is good for business
We can help you with that and some of those productivity gains
Zane: So I can see a lot of stuff, and as a business owner, that they can look at or
in a leadership team this is really useful, I guess workers have to be
involved with this. What's in it for the workers is the same kind of level of
drive there for workers?
Malcolm: Yes, so there are benefits of course for workers as there should be.
I'll start at the top you know, this is about helping
make the workplace safer and healthier. That's fundamentally what it's all about.
If SafePlus is effective in its implementation it will make the workplace effective
or safer and less risk of harm so that's there.
Again I think it's around some of that confidence and knowing that your employer takes this stuff seriously
and also that you're being heard and listened to and you're having a say in
health and safety and that you're engaging with your your bosses and that
you're helping provide an input into the health and safety management
and approach to their business. So those benefits are there, being heard and listened
to and being cared about I think of some of the workers benefits.
Zane: I love the word care because it's so important in what we do isn't it and making sure that
there is a key part of it. I can see businesses get benefits, I can see
workers get benefits from what you said there but why is the Crown involved in
all of this? Why have you decided that this is an important place to actually
stick your all in?
Malcolm: So, many will be aware that there are health and safety
reforms at play and I think the government's try to do a couple of
things here. We try to change the culture of health and safety in New
Zealand businesses generally, and SafePlus is one of a number of initiatives
that the government's doing around improving health and safety performance
in culture around health and safety in New Zealand businesses, so this is
deliberately behavioral and focusing on the people and those culture and value
issues and that's where you've got to focus if you want to change culture
around health and safety. Government's got some big goals around
reducing workplace harm and accidents by 25 percent by 2020 so this is one of a
number of initiatives contributing towards that. Interests those huge
social and economic costs of when things go wrong and the cost of poor
performance or any Health and Safety whether it's the health system or our
social system so we're trying to just reduce all of those costs prosperity and
productivity in New Zealand, by getting health and safe right.
Government's got a number of kind of angles that we're coming at this
from and to help businesses to help themselves. It's a voluntary initiative
so it's the businesses that can see the benefits and want to use this to kind of
help themselves to get there.
Zane: So with the number of initiatives that are out there
because frankly you know every day something is popping up
why choose SafePlus?
Malcolm: I think there's a few couple reasons to that and some of
our points of difference, if you like, this is not a health and safety checking
or an audit product so this is genuinely an educator performance improvement tool.
So if a business wants some help to improve their health and safety then we
got the product for them. Its uses that behavioral and focus
on the human factors and that's where we think that you can make a difference and
really get some performance improvements if you focus in on the people and whats
driving some of those behaviors and practices. It's Crown endorsed,
the Crown has worked hard to develop this and with industry so
businesses can have some confidence and trust that it's gonna be here tomorrow
you know it's around for a while and you know this is the Crown putting a
stake in the ground and saying actually this is our definition of what good
looks like. If you want to strive towards excellence and best practice,
then we have defined that for you and you can have some confidence around that.
We can get that national consistency that's often missing around that.
Zane: Yes, and I guess and saying that that investment then everything you do is
getting you closer towards good, whereas other initiatives perhaps might not be
moving you on the same direction.
Malcolm:And some are focusing around that minimum
compliance and that's okay if you're in a space where you need to you know just
struggling to meet minimum compliance then maybe another product is
appropriate for you and maybe SafePlus is not you because you're not quite at
this space to be aiming for excellence. Zane: That is a great point
Malcolm: So SafePlus is definitely for those that want to go on
a journey towards excellence and best practice around health and safety
Zane: Awesome so we know a huge amount about the intent and the why and all that kind
of stuff but, how does it actually work?
Malcolm: So very briefly we've got a framework
Zane: Yes,
Malcolm: Ten performance requirements across three key areas.
Leadership, Worker Engagement and Risk Management, and a whole bunch of
performance requirements in there that we can use to assess a business their
performance but importantly package advice and guidance around those ten
performance requirements. This is what good looks like in your business with
your Agriculture, Forestry, Manufacturing Construction.
Customized kind of definitions of what that stuff looks like in practice.
Secondly and quite importantly I think for SafePlus we've got this
maturity scale built into it. Three levels kept a nice and simple.
We've packaged it up as develop, performing and leading. And that's important for a
couple of reasons we can cater to businesses at different levels of
maturity and performance around health and safety. If you're beyond compliance
but, you know, maybe just, then the developing level is going to offer you a
lot of advice and guidance that's pitched right for you we're not going to
have Assessors giving people an aspirational recommendations and best
practice that's really beyond the capability or the level that a business is at.
We will packaged up stuff in the developing space to help them get to
the next level and those that are at the other end of the maturity scale and
performance those that are exemplars and healthy safety. We can accommodate them
in their performing level and we can give them the recognition that they need
There's always room to improve so we can give them sensible advice around how
to improve in those areas they might need to still work on so that
maturity scale is really important to give businesses the right advice and
guidance back, and it's also a useful measuring stick for where are you on the
journey towards excellence. Are you developing performing or are you leading?
Zane: Absolutely, so we've got this tool that's quite flexible. I guess the next question
is, well who's going to actually use this assessment tool in a business,
and what kind of skills do they need?
Malcolm: When we ran the pilot, a key learning from our
pilot and from businesses, was that they liked this tool, they liked the approach
the assessment, they liked the advisory aspect of it.
They said to us, and we agree, the key to the success of this will be the capability of those
that deliver it, and those are those Assessors that are out there using this
and providing that advice. So that's why we have this accreditation system.
Its around the defined competencies that they need to have and we go through
the process of assessing those and we train them in the tool and it's around
ensuring that we get the right people out there using this. They can do those
behavioral and evaluative assessments.
They can engage and have a strong business acumen that understand
and are technical experts, around health and safety.
I call it the 'nigel latter' factor. If they can see and understand and identify human behaviors
and can dissect practice, What's the behavior that's behind their
practice? What's the attitude that might be behind their behaviour?
What's the cultural values that are at play in the organization that are impacting on this,
perhaps poor practice?
Zane: It's a special type of person doesn't it really you've
kind of named some three key factors there but the goal I guess is to get to
the heart of what's going on in their business?
Malcolm: Correct, yes so the Assessors
are critical to the success of this. It will be a huge success based largely on
the capability those Assessors and how well they deliver this.
Zane: Obviously we've got assessors here today and that are watching this what are some of the
things that you want to make sure that they are thinking about before that
assessment ever takes place and the scoping kind of phase can we stuff it up?
Malcolm: So that front end conversation
that they need to have of the business is critical to the whole experience.
There will be businesses of all different shapes and sizes that have different risk
profiles that have different business activities across different sites or
locations so the fronting conversation with the
business is really important to identify the key risks the critical risks that
they're going to focus on. They work out the scope of the assessment component of this.
Work out whether they need multiple Assessors
and for larger businesses we're really encouraging that the team's
have more than one accredited Assessor on it.
There is nothing more valuable than two sets of eyes, you know, you can bounce stuff off each other.
You can cover more ground so we encourage that. It won't always be necessary but we
do want to encourage that. There'll be times depending on the
business activity when technical experts or subject matter experts might be
needed to come in as well. Whether they be a technical health and safety risk or
a business risk like risk management and measures and things like that.
Assessors will need to, after talking to a business, do I have the
right skills and experience for this and if I don't have a you know top those up
and have I got the right team makeup to get the coverage necessary.
Assessors will need to climb into issues like sampling, and how do I do that.
Remembering that this is about providing advice and guidance so
they just need to get enough of a picture around the key issues in those
strengths and weaknesses to provide the advice and guidance that will then
probably be useful across the whole business.
Even though they've not seen the whole business.
Zane: So it's not saying that I've got to visit every single site to give an accurate assessment
or that you even after pinpoint accuracy here are we?
Malcolm: Correct.
Zane: Okay that's cool, so it sounds like that
they've got a really important part to play in that scoping process, in it is
time well spent and I guess working with the business to make them very clearly
understand that as important, this is not just give me a price and rip into it.
This is we need scope this well.
Malcolm: It's about a really important conversation
with a business around what is it you want out of this?
What are your critical risks and tell me about your business and the
business activities you do and yes, it's really important to their front end conversation.
Zane: To make all of this work this isn't just about the Assessor
They've got a fabulous, and a real critical role because there's a front
end of this thing out there with the people building those relationships but
tell me about the process leading up, who else is involved?
Malcolm: In terms of the whole SafePlus system there are a number of other parties.
WorkSafe is the primary government agency that's administering this and we're the sort of
system or thought leadership role if you like.
WorkSafe's role is to ensure that this stays current and accurate in terms
of collateral and the framework and the definition of good and maintain and
update that as it needs to be. To continue to pump out resources tools
guidance and for both businesses and accredited Assessors and so that's our kind of role.
There's the accreditation process and insuring that we have the
right people who are accredited Assessors and checking their
competencies and and reassessing those at periods of time. And then in the middle
of that we've got the training provider as well so they're around teaching them
around the tool and how to deliver the behavior on evaluative assessments.
Those are a kind of key roles I think we've got WorkSafe is the kind of
thought leader system leadership creditation body our training provider
and probably most importantly as we've got our creditor Assessors who are the
delivery arm of all of us that are out there providing the consultant of an advisory services.
Zane: So while the process might feel quite rigorous to go through
and there are a number of hurdles to get past to become a accredited Assessor,
at the end of it you know that you're a pretty special person actually.
You've got the skills that can make a difference to lifting New Zealand's
health and safety performance which is really super good
Malcolm: Correct.
Zane: So once I've been through that process and I've got their ticket so to speak,
are they just left on their own set free or is there more support or how does it work?
Malcolm: Back at Worksafe we've got this role of staying connected
with them and providing more advice and guidance, tools and collateral
as required. We're gonna take the learning to get a bit of market
intelligence back from those Assessors at periods of time. You know, what are the
trends and issues that we're seeing and what do you need what's working
well and what could be improved. We want to stay connected with them.
We've got a site that we are using to house material and collateral and guidance and
tools and resources and we'll grow that collection of the material and I guess
we're staying across what's good look like and best practice and sharing that
information back with the accredited Assessors so that's our
challenge is to stay connected with them and support them to do their role really well.
Zane: Ok, so there's definitely that support there, they are not flying blind so to speak.
Malcolm: Correct.
Zane: So I've learned a lot Malcolm thank you very much and just to finish
off though if you would have talked to me as an Assessor and just tell me what
you want me to remember that's at the heart of SafePlus, what the key things be?
Malcolm: I think it's really important for all Assessors to remember that the
fundamental value and reason for being around SafePlus is around the educator
advice and guidance, so don't deliver a traditional compliance audit approach
Do the behavioural and evaluative assessment. Focus on the people
and the people issues in some of those behaviours and culture and value issues.
Unashamedly provide lots of advice and guidance.
This is not about past fail, tick box, it's about identifying
the strengths and giving that business the feedback, here is where you are doing really well,
and here's where you need to and could improve and here's what improving
could look like. So give them the sensible and tailored and relevant and
recommendations around how to improve and give them the advice and guidance
there's best practice guidance that we include in the toolkit around what good
looks like when you're doing that. Jam-pack your assessment reports with
lots of advice and guidance because that's the real value to help that
business move towards excellence and continue their
journey towards that.
Zane:Well it's pretty clear that you're passionate about
SafePlus and making this performance switch from a traditional approach to a
new approach so I guess that the advisers here today have got a great
opportunity to jump on board and be part of making the change to how well we do
safety New Zealand.
Thanks for your time
Malcolm: Thank you,
Have a great course team.
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