It was great to be part of the Safety Warrior workshops with Tawera Nikau from Team One last week, organised by the Northland Forestry H&S group.
Nearly 330 forestry people attended the events in Dargaville, Whangarei and Kaitaia.
Tawera is a former professional rugby league player and he talked about the importance of working as a team to achieve success in any field – be it rugby league or health and safety.
He also talked about the need to have a team culture where it is okay for people to speak up when they’re worried about something.
Tawera spoke about his experiences as a player for the Melbourne Storm league team, and in particular about the team’s values. These focused on things that help create good teams; family, integrity, respect and loyalty. These values, and having clear goals, helped the team succeed.
As part of his presentation the audiences were asked to come up with the top things they thought were important to have a good day in forestry. It was really interesting to see that the lists at all three venues were almost identical.
Good communication, having the right attitude/culture and training were on everyone’s lists. Team work, good leadership, and health/wellbeing were also mentioned. The last point raised was don’t be afraid to ask for help.
It’s encouraging that these are the same things that many forestry companies/crews already focus on, and are the things we focus on at Safetree.
Well done to the Northland Forestry H&S Group for organising these events and to all the companies and crews who supported them.
Fiona Ewing, National Safety Director, FISC (Forest Industry Safety Council).
Safetree is running free workshops with Dr Tom, an emergency department doctor who’s hosted TV and radio shows. These events, run in partnership with FICA, are taking place in June and July in Gisborne, Napier, Stratford, Whanganui, Greymouth, Invercargill, Balclutha, Kaiapoi, Timaru, Nelson, Blenheim, Masterton. RSVP to info@safetree.nz with your name, how many people attending, and location of event you’ll attend. We will also run a couple of events in Rotorua – details will be available shortly.
Scion is running workshops in Christchurch and Rotorua to help forestry companies use a new approach to incident investigations, called Learning Reviews. This approach has been really successful in helping people learn more about how an incident happened so they can prevent similar problems in future.
The workshops include two sessions, and participants will be supported to run their own review in their workplace. They have been designed for operations/forest managers, harvesting managers or operational personnel.
Find out more or register for the Christchurch event
Find out more or register for the Rotorua event
Congratulations to our most recently certified contractors. These are Marshall Logging Ltd and Waikato Forestry Services Ltd. There are now 15 certified contractors on the Safetree register.
Find out more about certification
See the latest injury information for forestry, and work that’s being done to prevent incidents.
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