Health and Safety Representatives (HSRs) work hard to make a positive impact on the health and safety of kaimahi in workplaces across Aotearoa.
Meet Rawiri (Ra) Waihape, an HSR for TW Trades in Hawke’s Bay.
We visited Ra earlier this year to hear about his passion for health and safety.
Transcript:
My name is Rawiri Waihape, everyone calls me Ra.
My job title is HSEQ advisor, and all those letters stand for Health Safety Environmental Quality Advisor.
I started my journey with TW Trades under the Hawke's Bay construction brand as a labourer.
They offered me an apprenticeship, they saw potential in me and they shifted me into more of a health and safety role, inducting people, making sure people are being compliant.
So my day-to-day work consists of a priority list and I'm very reactive to incidents, accidents and near misses. So, if that occurs, I'll drop everything I'm doing at the time to go see if my friends need help.
Also my day would usually consist of site inspections and will come down to attending toolboxes and delivering training and getting certain messages out to the guys when we identify our trends through the site inspections, also building a good safety culture amongst people and actually getting them to care and to take five and think about themselves.
So to be a successful HSR you need to have a few good qualities. You need to have courage to have those courageous conversations. When it's awkward you've got to be able to speak up.
I've always had empathy and put myself in other people's shoes and then try to deliver a bit of advice or some guidance from their position and what I would do in their position.
I've really improved worker voice. Worker voice is the amount of guys on the field I get phone calls from every day asking for advice, asking for just what should I do in the situation "hey I'm doing this" and they're using the tools to report. They're letting us know some when things ain't right and it's bloody awesome because you don't know what you don't know.
You don't always have to have the answers, sometimes you just need to listen to someone and they come across answers themselves, get them thinking about their own health and safety versus you tasking them something.
So the one piece of advice I'd give is to have those positive conversations around health and safety, get people thinking, get them buying into the culture and that way you know you're doing your job when people going home happy healthy safe.
28 июл 2024
