Toolkit makes new laws easy to grasp

WorkSafe's Al McCone says the new toolkit is a great place to start.

An updated toolkit designed to help farmers better manage risks on their farms will be distributed at National Fieldays at Mystery Creek.

The toolkit, which provides practical advice and resources to help farmers improve health and safety on their farms, has been developed by Safer Farms, ACC and WorkSafe New Zealand's health and safety programme designed with farmers and the wider agricultural sector.

Beef + Lamb New Zealand and Federated Farmers were among the groups which provided input to the toolkit. Beef + Lamb, in addition to working with WorkSafe on the new toolkit, is liaising with sheep and beef farmers to help them meet their obligations under the Health and Safety at Work Act.

Chief executive Sam McIvor says that, by the end of June, Beef + Lamb will have run more than 70 health and safety workshops for more than 2100 attendees around the country.

"There's no question that as an industry we need to make sure we have good health and safety practices in place on our farms," Mr McIvor says.

"We've been working closely with WorkSafe and farmers to get these systems in place on sheep and beef farms. Tools, like those promoted on the WorkSafe website, give farmers good practical information to make their farms safe places to operate," he says.

WorkSafe agriculture programme manager Al McCone says that, while many farmers recognise that proactive planning is needed to ensure they keep healthy and safe, they find it difficult to know where to start with changing their approach.

He reassures farmers that this doesn't need to be hard. The easy-to-use toolkit concentrates on those things that make a difference on farm, which are also at the heart of the new Act - involving everyone on farm, recognising health as well as injury risks, and working with other businesses to make sure overlapping risks are managed.

"Fit and healthy people are a critical factor for successful farming. In 2013, around 20per cent of agricultural workers made a farming-related injury claim to ACC, at a cost of over $26million.

Some of those injuries will keep costing for several years. Keeping everyone on your farm safe and healthy helps ensure a farm is productive and profitable.

"The new toolkit can help farmers keep safe and keep farming," says Mr McCone.