TOO MANY New Zealanders continue to be injured at work. The manufacturing industry is one of the high-risk sectors, with an average of five deaths and 4,528 people severely injured each year.
There are critical safety risks and variable working conditions in this sector – interactions between people and machines, manual handling, working around vehicles to name just a few.
The CEO from Window and Glass Association NZ, Brett Francis says, “We know businesses want to make workplaces safer for their people, but sometimes they just need a hand to help them understand how they can effectively improve their health and safety performance.”
GETTING PROFESSIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY (H&S) ADVICE TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE
Evidence suggests that H&S advisory services would be beneficial for small to medium sized businesses as they often require extra resources to help improve health and safety systems and practices—particularly if they work in risky industries or have more complicated or technical issues to deal with. That’s even more important in the case of the manufacturing sector.
Whatever your line of work, whatever your business structure, having a health and safety plan is critical.
Putting it into practice every day will keep your team safe, reduce your risk, can reduce costs, drive productivity up and improve staff retention—these are what professional H&S advisors can offer.
ACC COLLABORATES WITH HASANZ TO GIVE YOUR BUSINESS A HAND
In collaboration with the Health and Safety Association of New Zealand (HASANZ), ACC has designed a workplace injury prevention subsidy to help accessing H&S advisory services, aimed at improving workplace H&S performance in the manufacturing sector.
This subsidy is available for small to medium sized businesses (approximately six to 99 employees) in the manufacturing sector. Depending on your business size ACC will contribute a certain amount for an advisory service from a HASANZ-registered professional. For more information about this subsidy, please visit the ACC
website www.acc.co.nz/advisory-subsidy
“Financial barriers to professional H&S advice can get in the way of making health and safety improvements. We’re happy to see this subsidy is now in the market to help manufacturing businesses achieve a better health and safety outcome,” said Philip Aldridge, Executive Director of HASANZ.
FIND A TRUSTED H&S PROFESSIONAL FROM THE HASANZ REGISTER
One of the many recommendations following the Pike River coal mine tragedy was to improve the quality of professional advice in New Zealand. The HASANZ
Register was developed as a one-stop shop for businesses to find reliable, quality health and safety advice and services. HASANZ developed this national, online register of verified workplace health and safety professionals, with funding from WorkSafe and ACC.
You can search for professional help for the problem you are trying to solve; machine guarding, ergonomic design policies, governance, manual handling – you name it, it’s probably listed.
The HASANZ Register puts businesses at the centre of the experience and demonstrates high standards of best practice professionals. To find a registered professional from the HASANZ Register, please visit
