Simply presenting your board with a monthly H&S report is unlikely to effectively engage them. ERICA MILES suggests some ideas, including engaging officers in a risk appetite review.

PETER BATEMAN analyses this year’s survey of incomes and other matters related to the employment of health & safety practitioners, occ health nurses and occ hygienists.

In this year’s salary survey we asked one open question: In the last year or two, how has your approach to H&S changed or evolved? With some 275 responses to this optional question, the sense of change, of people challenging themselves to work differently, is clearly evident. Here are some selected and edited highlights.

We asked three former keynote speakers at the Safeguard National Health & Safety Conference – one each from Australia, the UK and the United States – to answer this question: Q: How do you expect the role of the health & safety professional to have evolved by 2020, and what should people do to keep relevant and able to add value?

JACKIE BROWN-HAYSOM talks to the forestry organisation that won the 2017 Safeguard award for best collaboration between PCBUs – a new award category.

PETER BATEMAN challenged a selected group to come up with an interesting job description to attract the best and brightest candidates.

We asked three people who have recently started work in three different areas of health and safety to tell us how they’re going in their new careers.

JACKIE BROWN-HAYSOM nominates a Marton meat processing plant for best use of imagination in the services of health and safety.

JACKIE BROWN-HAYSOM listens to the closing submissions in a hard-fought health and safety case, following on from her earlier report in our Nov/Dec 2016 edition.

We invited experts to respond to this assertion: “Everyone agrees that the procurement process is an opportunity for large organisations to strategically influence H&S practice further down the supply chain. The best way to do this is via one of the various health & safety prequalification schemes.”

Along with more than 3000 others PETER BATEMAN attended the XXI World Congress on Safety and Health at Work in Singapore.

TERRY JOHNSON and FIONA CARNEY suggest answers to the three questions they are most commonly asked: on due diligence, on H&S reporting, and how to meet overlapping duties.

BRETT MURRAY flags the hazardous substance regulations coming into force in December as an opportunity to review your health risk management.

CRAIG SMITH interprets the results of the inaugural HASANZ survey of health & safety professionals and the businesses which use them.

GREG DEARSLY reports on a new internationally recognised framework for health & safety practitioners and how it can be used by them and others in the H&S system.

DAVID McBRIDE says that in the process of successfully tackling noise a workplace will acquire multidisciplinary skills of use in tackling other workplace risks.

CALLUM McCORQUODALE and JOSEPH McARDLE report on how reduced working hours resulted in healthier, happier staff along with higher productivity and fewer incidents.

“I’ve been told there’s a brand new workplace drug testing procedure which detects if someone has used cannabis or alcohol up to two weeks earlier. I like the idea of treating booze and weed the same because both can cause impairment, but I also like a quiet beer at the weekends. Should we implement this new test?”

HILLARY BENNETT finds out the hard way that all work and no play can have serious health consequences.