Effective consultation is a core element of building a functional safety management system in any workplace. This involves talking and listening. Various occupational health and safety (OHS) regulators have pushed this point in the past usually with static images of mouths and ears but WorkSafe New Zealand has released a series of videos in support of its existing”How you can use your mouth” campaign. Thankfully WorkSafeNZ has taken a leaf from the Air New Zealand book and used humour.
Of particular interest is the brief but importance emphasis on the role of the ethical bystander.
Having never played sports outside the obligatory high school activities, which in my high school also included snooker?!, the world of locker rooms and team sports is foreign. But earlier this week I learnt that where OHS professionals talk about productivity, sportspeople speak of performance, and where factories address line speed, sports physicians talk of load management. I also learnt that professional sportspeople are exempt from workers’ compensation.
There is no doubt that football fields are the workplaces of professional football players and their support staff. So they are covered by occupational health and safety (OHS) and/or work health and safety (WHS) laws but what does this mean in relation to OHS regulators, and the sportspeople’s employers? Recently