What Is Safeplus?
Safeplus replaces the Safety Star Rating as the Government endorsed definition of what good health and safety looks like. Instead of being delivered as a safety rating, Safeplus is a performance improvement toolkit for businesses.
The toolkit provides education, advice and guidance on how to improve the health and safety performance of your business. The toolkit deliberately avoids using compliance audit language to focus on the fundamental requirements for achieving good health and safety instead of ticking legal boxes for reward.
How Does Safeplus Work?
Safeplus have an Onsite Assessment and Advisory Service that assesses the health and safety performance of individual businesses. The assessors then make tailored recommendations on what each business needs to do to improve.
This includes tailored ‘how to’ advice and guidance on best practice improvements that can be implemented to ensure all workers get home to their loved ones each day.
What Is Involved?
After pilot testing the system with 95 New Zealand businesses, it was decided to include 10 performance requirements covering 3 main themes – Leadership, Worker Engagement and Risk Management.
With Safeplus there is a continuous drive for improvement in health and safety practices. The assessment system is focused on the people, their attitudes and behaviour, the resources, the systems and practices used, as well as the overall culture.
When the performance of a businesses is assessed, there are three grades of measurement – developing (not meeting the correct standard), performing and leading. These grades help to highlight current strengths and areas for improvement.
What Is Safeplus Designed To Do?
Safeplus is really designed as a more relatable system to make workplaces safe. Because it has been in creation since 2013 and 3 different authorities have collaborated to produce the system, it really is designed to work.
There is a genuine desire to reduce the rate of workplace injury and illness and also to prevent workplace death. It is no longer about paying lip service to a legal requirement. Businesses are really invested in the health of their staff and contractors, so the authorities had to respond with something that could help save lives.
The implementation of Safeplus should see a reduction in workplace tragedies. It aligns with the Government’s commitment to reduce workplace deaths and fatalities by a whopping 25% by 2020.
Safeplus And Your Business
Currently Safeplus assessments are only conducted by accredited members of the Onsite Assessment and Advisory Service. But by mid-2018, there will be a self-assessment component to the system, allowing you to remain on top of your health and safety at all times, not just when the assessor is there!
If you would like some more information about how Safeplus will affect your business, you can download the free resources and guidance information here. Or, feel free to get in touch with us here at CloudmyStaff and we can help with any advice you need.
