Bruce Emson: Bosses unite to make workplaces safer

Up to 100 people die every year in workplace accidents in New Zealand. Photo / NZ Herald

Opinion

On Thursday, I had the privilege of being one of 94 chief executives and managing directors from some of New Zealand's largest companies who, in front of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Labour, publicly pledged to work towards "Zero Harm Workplaces."

The Business Leaders' Health and Safety Forum, launched formally by John Key and Kate Wilkinson, is a coalition of senior business leaders committed to improving workplace health and safety.

Members of the forum signed a pledge, and in doing so we have made a commitment to personally lead health and safety in our respective organisations, and to work individually and collectively to improve New Zealand's performance in this important area.

As a member of the steering group for the forum, it struck me that the nature and diversity of the companies represented was immense.

Yet the one thing that brought us together wasn't the recession or taxes or even ACC rates.

It was our people, and our desire to make sure that all of them get to go home from work every day fit and well.

Each of us in that room share a belief that as leaders we play a crucial role in ensuring that happens.

One thing is clear, if we want our staff to take an active interest in health and safety we need to lead from the front.

New Zealand business leaders have a unique opportunity to do just that - to work together, and to work with government, towards delivering zero harm workplaces.

It's an aspirational vision and achieving it is going to present challenges. But to accept any target other than zero harm is unconscionable. That's the true value of the forum.

This is about New Zealand's chief executives taking the lead on safety to make a difference in the day-to-day operation of their businesses, to the attitudes of their people towards their own safety and towards the safety of their workmates.

I see it as being about learning, sharing and working - learning about international best practice in health and safety leadership, learning about what's worked for my peers; sharing my own knowledge and experience with other business leaders and working as a group to identify the gaps in our leadership on health and safety, and establishing what we can do to fill those gaps.

To that end the first project this forum is undertaking is a benchmark of members' performance as leaders in health and safety to give us a clear picture of whether we're as good as we might think we are, and what we need to do to improve. The second project is benchmarking our organisations' performance in health and safety so we can see how we rank against others.

There is no doubt in my mind this forum has the influence to make a step change in New Zealand's performance in workplace health and safety.

Up to 100 people die every year in workplace accidents across the country and about 6000 are seriously injured. The economic and social costs are estimated to be about $16 billion a year.

More importantly, there is a human and emotional cost to victims and their families that just can't be quantified.

* Bruce Emson is chief executive of NZ Bus.