15 September 2017

WorkSafe has just launched two new businesses to its highly-successful ‘Around the Block’ tool – a free online tool which has been developed to help small and medium sized Kiwi businesses manage workplace health and safety risks.

The new shops are a bakery and a collision repair workshop. The original 13 shops on Around the Block were launched in November 2016, and since then have proved extremely successful and have been used over 90,000 times.

“Our statistics indicated that workers in bakeries and collision repair workshops are faced with a range of work and health related risks. This tool will make it much easier for any of these businesses to begin identifying and managing their risks” says Phil Parkes, GM Better Regulation.

We have worked collaboratively with businesses to make sure the bakery and collision repair workshop include accurate representations of the risks and mitigations found in these businesses.

Animated and interactive, the tool takes users ‘around the block’ and into businesses where they can click on risk ‘hotspots’ and learn what actions you can take to remove and manage them.

The tool is aimed at small and medium sized businesses which make up some 97% of businesses in New Zealand and targets the owners, directors and managers of those businesses. The tool is designed to help businesses with training and involving workers in identifying and managing some of their key health and safety risks.

The Around the Block tool was built by WorkSafe in collaboration with ACC to help businesses better understand their obligations under the new Health and Safety at Work Act from a risk management perspective.