Safety on Tap

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:

Full show notes: www.safetyontap.com/ep221
This is a conversation about a really important mission to improve health and safety. It's also about extreme difficulty, persistence, and how being professional might actually mean straying far outside your one specific professional domain.

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.

Today my guest is Gareth Lock. Gareth doesn't easily fit in a box or under a single label, as you'll hear in a moment. Military, flying, human factors, HOP, and diving.

I've wanted bring a conversation with Gareth to you for a while, for three reasons. First, the people I know and trust have said wonderful things about him. Second, he is generous - his writing, travel, courses, and social media contributions are a cut above the rest. Just following him on Linkedin for three months and that is like a mini-course on its own. And third, Gareth is tackling some wicked problems in the health and safety space, and I had to see what lessons he is learning from what is very tough work.

Here's Gareth:

Full show notes: www.safetyontap.com/ep220
The piece you might be missing as you try to build new things and all your efforts for making change, might actually be deliberately blowing things up.
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.
"Closing time, open all the doors and let you out into the world"
The song Closing Time by Semisonic is one of those classic tunes of my transition into adulthood.
"Closing time, one last call for alcohol
So, finish your whiskey or beer
Closing time, you don't have to go home
But you can't stay here"
After it was released in 1998 it was pretty common that this song was the very last song played in the bar or pub before the lights got turned back on and everyone had to leave.
"So gather up your jackets, move into the exits,
I hope you have found your friends
Closing time, every new beginning
comes from some other beginnings end"
It turns out that this anthem of the very late night party people had nothing to do with going out of drinking, or even going home.
The whole song is a metaphor for the birth of a child. Lead singer Dan Wilson was soon to become a father as he was writing this song, and the literal meaning of the last song in fact came to be a much deeper insight into the realities of getting bounced from the womb into the world.

Full show notes: www.safetyontap.com/ep219
Have you ever had an idea, or heard an idea, thinking it was brilliant, only to realise that the idea is not that new, and didn't come from where you thought it did? Welcome to the discipline of organisational psychology. 
 
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.
 
Industrial and organisational psychology, or IO psych as it is often called, is well over 100 years old.  It was labelled as the exploration of 'real life' psychology. It's official birth is suggested to be 1913, with the publication of the first text on the subject called Psychology and Industrial Efficiency, by Hugo Munsterberg.
 
How is it that such a field, with 100 years of history and research and development, is not that familiar to most of us working in health and safety?
 
Well today I hope that will change just a little, as I dialogue with Diya Dey, an organisational psychologist based in Melbourne Australia. Diya has experience in both consulting and working in-house, and is currently in a organisational psychology role focussed on organisational wellbeing in the Victorian State Government.
 
When I first met Diya, I found her curious, and generous. A great combination in my book, so it was only natural that I would invite her into a conversation with the Safety on Tap community about how industrial and organisation psychology relates to, and can enhance, work health and safety.
 
Here's my conversation with Diya Dey:

Full show notes: www.safetyontap.com/ep218
You seem to have answers for everything, he said to me.  He was 100% right and 100% wrong at the same time.  This is a podcast about how that can be, and how you can engage with better answers.
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.
 
Before you think that this episode will be a gratuitous brag about how good I think I am wrapped up in some parable of a story, stay with me for a few minutes. 
When he said to me, 'you seem to have answers for everything', he WAS both right and wrong at the same time.                                                             
He was right because to him, it did seem that I had answers for lots of the things we were talking about and working through in our coaching together.  He was wrong, because I wasn't really giving him answers in the way that questions are usually asked, or problems are usually solved with solutions.  What I was giving him was responses.  Responses to his question, to his story, to his context. 
Responses aren't answers.  Responses are what we do when it's our turn, in a dialogue two or more people engage in a turn-taking exchange. Dialogue is an ancient word, very central to modern human experience, which comes from two Greek words put together: dia- translates to through, and logos translated to meaning, dialogos, or dialogue, the movement of flow of meaning through the people involved. 
You can see turn taking all the time, which isn't dialogue. It's more like tennis.  One person serves, another receives and returns the ball.  The object of tennis, and the object of a huge proportion of our interactions with other people, is to get to the end, to resolve the point, usually in favour of one person or the other.