How the health and safety gravy train is sucking the productivity out of NZ manufacturing
Barry Robinson, Chairman MESNZ Are you being suckered by the H&S gravy train? You can save money immediately by reading the following. Test and tagging of electrical appliances and leads is NOT a legal requirement in NZ industrial plants. If you Google it you’ll find any amount of references convincing you that it is a legal requirement, but follow those links and you will always come to the test and tag industry many of whom are cultivating this fallacy and who ultimately benefit financially from your confusion. “In the view of the MESNZ this is but one example of the unhelpful ‘smoke and mirrors’ rubbish that gets seized upon and promoted by health and safety advisors and HR practitioners, particularly within larger organisations” said Barry Robinson, Chairman of the Maintenance Engineering Society of NZ. “What is happening is these misleading H&S processes become de-facto norms and get mimicked by the media and smaller organisations who think that because the big plants are doing it, then it must be the specified standard that needs to be adopted in all industrial operations large or small”. Robinson, who has spent over 30 years safely and healthily running NZ’s largest hot forging and heat treatment plant, makes no apologies for his confrontational approach. Other examples are: Compulsory wearing of safety glasses, hard hats and hi-viz vests in industrial plants; proliferation of orange cones; Stress-inducing beepers on machinery, and banning of ladders. These things waste time, money, and productivity. Worse, in many cases they can actually expose us to greater risk. “A common example of increased risk is the wearing of safety glasses: Safety glasses detract from our natural vision and senses in several ways – fogging, limiting or obscuring of peripheral vision and immediate upper and lower frontal vision, irritation and pressure). By wearing […]