For sector organisations, health and safety means more thanjust ensuring physical workplace safety and checking that emergency proceduresare in place. It also places the onus on employers to address and manage stressand workload issues by ensuring employees - and volunteers - receive effective,ongoing support. Employees,self-employed people, volunteers, contractors and others have a responsibility,too, to ensure their own safety and identify any hazards.

The Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992 promotes theprevention of harm to all people at work and to others who are in, or in thevicinity of, workplaces.

The Act requires employers and others to maintain safeworking environments and to implement sound practices.

The Act recognises that successful health and safetymanagement is best achieved through good faith cooperation in the workplaceand, in particular, that it is best achieved by those doing the work.

The Act requires organisations to keep their workplaces safeby:

• Managing hazards - identifying, assessing and controlling them
• Training and supervising employees - ensuring employees are aware of the hazards and follow safe work procedures
• Preparing for emergencies, including first aid, rehabilitation and investigating incidents.

All these processes must involve health and safetyrepresentatives and staff.

Obligations under the Act

The Health and Safety in Employment Act imposes significantduties on employers and organisations in relation both to paid employees andregular volunteers. It also imposes duties on paid employees, self-employedpeople, volunteers, contractors and others.

• Employers must take all practical steps to ensure all employees' safety at work, regardless of where that workplace is
• Employers are responsible for identifying, eliminating containing or minimizing all possible hazards
• Employers, unions and employees are required by law to develop an agreed health and safety plan, including the election of health and safety representatives who are entitled to attend two days approved training
• Employees have the right to refuse to do unsafe work, but can carry on performing other tasks while these are addressed
• Employees must be provided with a clean, dry area to eat and make hot drinks, including clean water and toilet facilities
• Employers must supply protective clothing if it is required and must provide training in its care, maintenance, and correct use.

Managing Workplace Stress

Managing stress in our workplaces is a key part ofcontributing to a healthy and safe work environment. Stress arising fromunmanaged workplace hazards - whether it be tangible things like poor workplacesafety or intangible things like unmanageable workloads - can result in seriousharm to staff and to our organisations.

Providing healthy work is a shared responsibility. Managingproblems around stress and fatigue requires the same skills and behaviours asany other employment relationship problem. Employers need to:

• Work to eliminate workplace hazards wherever possible
• Minimise the impact of other hazards by providing ongoing training, performance feedback, monitoring the problem and establishing agreed systems for managing the stress
• Help the person experiencing the stress to deal with any harm that may have resulted.

Supervision

Supervision is one of the principal ways in which anorganisation meets its responsibility to ensure that staff are well-supportedand well-resourced, and to identify when work stresses and workloads arebecoming a problem. See the Guide on Training and Supervision in this Resourcefor more details.

Volunteer Health and Safety

Volunteers are covered under the Health and Safety inEmployment Act by enforceable duties when:

1. the volunteer is doing work for an 'employer' or a 'self-employed person' who has given consent to, or has knowledge about, the voluntary work; and
2. the volunteer does the work on an ongoing and regular basis for that employer or self employed person; and
3. the work is an integral part of the business of that employer or self employed person.

Some volunteers who meet the criteria above are specificallyexcluded from coverage under the Act when they are involved in the followingactivities:

• Participating in fundraising
• Assisting with sports or recreation for a sports club; or a recreation club; or an educational institution
• Assisting in activities for an educational institution offsite
• Providing care for another person in the volunteer's home.

For these exceptions and all other volunteers, the Actprovides for a general duty of care. This duty provides that all practicablesteps must be taken to ensure the health and safety of volunteers.

As with paid staff, the key to excellent management ofvolunteer health and safety is good planning and good communication

Emergencies and First Aid

First aid resources must be available to all staff. At leastone staff member should be trained in first aid for every 50 staff on site

Emergency procedures should be put in place and practicedregularly.

Information

• www.acc.co.nz - The Accident Compensation Corporation's website provides information on the Act and ways to prevent injury and illness in the workplace, including a range of resources for small businesses
• www.keepingitlegal.net.nz - Keeping It Legal Fact Sheet 10:Health and Safety covers duties owed to paid employees, volunteers, contractors and others; involving staff in managing health and safety; managing hazards; providing health and safety information for staff; training and supervising staff; reporting incidents; preparing for emergencies
• www.nscss.org.nz - North Shore Community and Social Services - Keeping Yourself and Your Organisation Safe
• www.nzfvwo.org.nz/ourpublications - New Zealand Federation of Voluntary Welfare Organisations - Mentoring, Coaching and Beyond in the Community Sector.
• www.osh.dol.govt.nz - The Department of Labour's Occupational Health and Safety website includes resources on managing stress, managing volunteer health and safety, and ensuring health and safety for volunteers on marae