HSAW Bill - Critical Risks
Factsheet – introducing Critical Risks
There is a Bill before parliament to evolve the Health & Safety at Work Act 2015 (HSAW). In this Bill, there are various recommended changes to the legislation including that of introducing Critical Risks and two classes of businesses.
The two classes of businesses are designed to make it easier to manage risks especially for the smaller business. The two classes are:
Less than 20 workers: typically referred to as the SME (small to medium enterprise) and make up approximately 97% of all businesses in NZ. Note that less than 20 workers is based on at least 9 out of 12 months per year. This recognises that some months the total workers may swell as in agriculture or horticulture.
These businesses only have to focus on ‘Critical Risks’ which are captured in Schedule 1A which is very prescriptive.
More than 20 workers have to cover critical risks and any risk that could cause death, a notifiable event / incident, or triggers the ACC Schedule 2 Notifiable Diseases (think lead, bio hazards, etc). In other words, it will most likely capture all the risks you have in your risk register already.
The use of Critical Risk is principal is not a new concept. NZ used to have the term Significant Hazard (prior to the introduction of the HSAW Act). Although there was not a prescribed list, you did typically reference a hazard as a Significant Hazard and used this wording when describing your methodology.
There are a few things to note with this pending change.
The term ‘worker’: This is anyone over which the PCBU has control and influence and can include employee (full-time, part-time, work trial), volunteer, subbie, subbie of a subbie, etc.
Health & Safety Policy: You may want to reference what category you sit under. You may also want to evolve your wording to capture the updated risk management methodology. For instance, you could add that for any new risks you review Schedule 1A to see if this is on the prescribed list.
Risk Register: you will most likely add a column (if you are using excel) so you can to specifically note which are critical risks and which are ‘other’ risks. A number of safety Apps that have inbuild risk registers have already added this function in anticipation.
Prequals. Discussing the Bill with various prequal providers and auditors (i.e. Tōtika), there most likely will not be much change. This makes sense as fundamentally, the overall risk management methodology does not really change other than using a new label.
Health & Safety Rep (HSR) course: this may need to evolve as HSR’s should understand the overall legal framework. They can after all issue PIN’s (provisional improvement notices) which would require HSR to have a good understanding of the legal requirements.