Ep222: Are we doing enough? H&S governance gets new high-quality guidance, with Chris Jones & Craig Marriott

Are we doing enough? Is the fundamental question of H&S governance. And the answer, it seems at least in New Zealand, is largely not one given with confidence. And beyond NZ, the answer sometimes seems vague, unclear, or uncertain. Governance arguably is the lynchpin around which all health and safety performance relies – so there is something in this conversation for everyone.

Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap. 

Since you’re listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way.  Welcome to you, you’re in the right place.  If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! And of course welcome back to all of you wonderful regular listeners.

New Zealand has had its fair share of problems with health and safety. Catalysed by the Pike River disaster, new legislation introduced in 2015 styled off the Australian harmonised model promised to strengthen many aspects of health and safety including better control of risk, clearer duties for officers of the organisation, and greater clarity to support regulatory activities. The sad news is not much is changing, with health and safety performance lagging well behind similar regimes in countries like Australia and the UK.

Existing guidance was created around 2015 for the new duties imposed upon senior managers and directors of organisations, called ‘The Blue Book’. It’s clear that whilst well. Intended, this simply has not been enough, with the backdrop of tumultuous government policy for health an safety, constrained  funding, and claims of bare incompetence at Worksafe NZ.

The new Good Practice Guide for Health and Safety Governance was led by the NZ Institute of Directors, in close collaboration with Worksafe NZ, the Business Leaders Health and Safety Forum, and the General Manager Safety Forum. The Steering Group was led by Chris Jones on behalf of the GM Safety Forum, and the Lead Author and Expert Advisor is Craig Marriott, both of whom join me in today’s conversation.

Chris Jones is an experienced strategic health and safety leader, having had Head of Safety roles in both the UK and NZ, in rail, poisons and corrections, and now at global dairy giant Fonterra. He has also worked in health and safety lead roles within the NZ government, and a swathe of industry, regulatory, and expert advisory groups and government consultative committees. Chris is fast becoming one of the most popular health and speakers in this part of the world.

Craig Marriott is currently consulting under his own brand, having most recently been the General Manager HSEQ at FirstGas, as well as the Chairperson of the Safety Innovation Community in NZ. With a background in high hazard industries, things that really go boom, and the regulation and creation of safety cases in both the UK and NZ, Craig’s experience spans both senior health and safety positions, and a diversity of consulting leadership roles. Craig is both a keynote speaker and author of Challenging the Safety Quo.

Chris and Craig are arguably two of the most well known and well respected senior health and safety professionals in New Zealand today, and both have spent time working in senior roles at Worksafe NZ. It’s no wonder they’ve been able to bring their knowledge and leadership to this impressive piece of work on health and safety governance along with a committee of clever and hard working colleagues.

Let’s talk health and safety governance, with Chris Jones and Craig Marriott:

Good guidance material speaks for it self. It stands alone in the way it justifies it’s relevance, it helps the reader make meaningful progress on the problems within it’s pages, and I think most importantly, it is worthy of sharing with others. It isn’t isolated however, because good guidance is shaped with empathy for it’s audience, and gets situated in the real world context inside which it is trying to be helpful.

This is a good piece of work, and is arguably the best guidance of this kind for Australian’s as well as New Zealanders.

I have only one takeaway for you today: download a copy, read it a few times, and see where it stimulates ideas and actions for you to take to improve governance inside your organisation. I promise, you will get a lot out of this to make things better.

The new Good Practice Guide for Health and Safety Governance, and it’s supporting Quick Quide and self-assessment, are available at https://www.iod.org.nz/resources-and-insights/guides-and-resources/health-and-safety-a-good-practice-guide#

Other episodes you might appreciate listening to off the back of this one are:

Ep 118 with Wade Needham will get your cogs turning, in particular about reframing, and thinking about safety as a by-product, which fits beautifully with this new governance guidance.

And, Ep 161 is about Maslow’s hammer – when all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. My assertion is that many health and safety professionals use few tools to try and drive change, namely compliance, management systems, and risk management. This new guidance will help you use governance as a new tool to more effetively enable all that stuff to happen.

Thanks so much for listening.  Until next time, what’s the one thing you’ll do to take positive, effective or rewarding action, to grow yourself, and drastically improve health and safety along the way?

Seeya!