Published on the 06/04/2016 | Written by Newsdesk

New Zealand’s first entirely online health and safety tool has been launched to coincide with the Government’s recent OSH reforms…

OnSide is the brain child of three friends with various experience in the farming sector who said they became frustrated with standard paper-based health and safety systems. Together they looked for a solution that would take advantage of the most recent technology innovations and have now launched the OSH app, OnSide.

The farming sector has had a particularly bad reputation for workplace safety, suffering 120 deaths from work-related farm injuries since 2008, according to official tallies. The MBIE estimates that 220,000 work days are lost annually due to farm-related injuries and 20 people were killed in workplace accidents on farms in 2013 alone.

The launch coincides with the Health and Safety Reform Bill and its associated new law which came into force this week. It is part of “Working Safer: a blueprint for health and safety at work” which has the aim of reducing the country’s workplace injury and death toll by 25 percent by 2020.

OnSide Chief Executive Ryan Higgs said in statement that: “Farmers can expect scrutiny around health and safety compliance to ramp up as the result of the Act. There was a real need in the industry to have an easy and cost effective way to meet these requirements, and this is what we have created OnSide to provide.”

OnSide is being touted as a practical tool that “contains all the key elements of a safety plan now required under the new legislation”.

Higgs said the cloud-based app will not only save farmers time, but offers a simple way to make their employees and any visitors aware of risks and how to manage them, which in turn, will reduce incidents and improve farm safety. The app does this by using a virtual ‘geo-fence’ which alerts all visitors to potential hazards and requires them to read and acknowledge them. Farmers can update risks in real-time and visitors can help by informing the owners of new risks.

The app was developed in conjunction with Jade Software, which provided the prototyping, design, development and marketing services. Farmers can access the OnSide app for free during April.

The main requirements of the new Health and Safety Act are:

• Every Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking (a PCBU – usually a company) has a duty to do what it can within its influence and control to ensure the health and safety of workers and people affected by its work
• The Act creates a new due diligence duty for officers to take reasonable steps to ensure that the PCBU is meeting its health and safety obligations
• It contains obligations on workers to take reasonable care and follow reasonable instruction
• The Act requires every PCBU to have effective worker participation practices and to engage with its workers.

For more details on the Act and its regulations, visit the MBIE’s health and safety pages.