Gordon MacDonald: Keep calm and keep volunteering

Gordon MacDonald.

New Zealand is a nation of volunteers. From parents organising the local school fair to Lions Clubs fundraising for community projects, a recent survey found that slightly more than one in three Kiwis volunteered at least an hour of their time in the previous three months.

I know from my own experience volunteering in the UK just what a difference it can make.

Before moving to New Zealand I was a volunteer director of Groundwork, an organisation which focused on getting disadvantaged and troubled youth involved in environmental projects in their community.

These were young people that faced some big social and economic challenges. Many of them had already had brushes with the law or had dropped out of school. But put them to work cleaning up their local council estate and establishing some gardens and you could see what a difference it made. They learned useful skills but more importantly felt more connected to their community. It also helped bridge the gap between the generations. Residents who might have previously dismissed these youth as troublemakers saw them in a new light.

For me it was hugely rewarding work. Given my background in health and safety I was aware of the risks involved in putting troubled young people together and handing them tools. Those risks had to be managed and they were.

That idea, that risks need to be sensibly managed, lies at the heart of the new Health and Safety at Work Act. I know some voluntary organisations are concerned about the implications of the law, but they have nothing to fear.

At the heart of volunteering is the ethos of caring for others. If that's your starting point then you will already be looking for risks and managing them.

WorkSafe concentrates on those industries with poor safety records (farming, forestry, construction and manufacturing) not the voluntary sector. Our data doesn't suggest it's a problem area.

The law recognises that volunteers contribute greatly and is designed to ensure volunteering is not negatively affected.

The Health and Safety at Work Act does not apply at all if your organisation is made up entirely of volunteers, even if you are undertaking what might normally be thought of as work activity such as clearing scrub for a community garden.

But many community organisations have a mix of volunteers and paid staff. The health and safety law applies to paid staff, but volunteers doing certain types of activity are specifically excluded from being treated as volunteer workers:

- Assisting with sports or recreation for a sports club, school or recreation club;

- Assisting with school activities outside the school grounds (eg school camps);

- Fundraising;

- Providing care for someone in your own home (such as foster care).

If your organisation has unpaid volunteers doing any of these activities they are not considered a worker under the law. That said, you will still have a duty to take reasonable measures to keep them safe from any hazards, just as you would do for any member of the public who could be harmed by the work your business does.

The Act only treats volunteers as workers if they are working in an on-going basis with the knowledge of the business, and doing something that is an integral part of the business. In that case the volunteer is considered a "volunteer worker" and is effectively treated the same as any other worker under the law.

What does this mean for the voluntary sector? Keep calm and keep volunteering.

Your rugby club sausage sizzle can go ahead as usual. Your firewood collection to raise funds for the community hall upgrade can continue. It's all go for the Santa Parade.

But whether the Health and Safety at Work Act applies or not, do take care of each other.

Volunteers want to serve the community and injuring people or making them unhealthy is the exact opposite of that. Take sensible precautions. So if that firewood collection involves chainsaws make sure they're used by people that know how to use them safely and provide proper safety gear. Make sure you have a plan to keep children well clear of the vehicles in the Santa Parade.

It's usually not that hard to keep people safe and healthy, and it's always the right thing to do.

For more information about the Health and Safety at Work Act, including more detail on how voluntary work is treated under the new law head to the WorkSafe website at business.govt.nz/worksafe/hswa.

- Gordon MacDonald is chief executive of WorkSafe New Zealand.

- Views expressed here are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's. Email: editor@hbtoday.co.nz