Effective health and safety training with the University of Auckland
“It’s about showing an interest in what people do and connecting with them at their level. If you just throw information at people, they won’t engage with it.” – Peter Simunovich
For University of Auckland Infrastructure Manager Pauline Harrington, EMA health and safety facilitator Peter Simunovich's engaging approach to workplace training was perfectly suited to her work environment.
Overview
Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland is New Zealand’s top-ranked university, according to the influential QS World University Rankings and caters to a student population of over 45,000, with more than 10,000 staff.
The university, which has been an EMA Member since 1967, has five campuses, with the largest in Auckland’s city centre.
Veteran EMA facilitator Peter Simunovich has been working with the University of Auckland for about six years delivering the Health & Safety Representative Stage 1 course.
This two-day course equips health and safety reps with a solid understanding of the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 (HSW Act) and its regulations, along with the responsibilities of the role.
Participants learn how to support a positive health and safety culture and communicate effectively with management on safety matters.
By the end of the course, the aim is for learners to understand their legal requirements and promote health and safety management in their workplace.
Simunovich is an expert in occupational health and safety, particularly in providing injury prevention training and exercise-based rehabilitation, but has also expanded into the fields of neuroscience-based mental health and wellbeing initiatives, which he works into the course.
“I use two main strategies: first, I make examples relatable and grounded in real-world situations; second, I use analogies and alternative methods of understanding to help people make connections with the message.
“That’s how I get people to engage with health and safety in a meaningful way.”
Building connections
For Pauline Harrington, Infrastructure Manager at the University’s commercialisation arm UniServices, the approach was a refreshing change from courses she’d been on at other training organisations.
UniServices is responsible for commercialisation of intellectual property at the university and connects its research and capabilities with the community, government, investors, and businesses.
It works to transform research into real-world solutions and positive economic, social and environmental impact.
Harrington has spent more than 20 years working for UniServices, and 12 years as the Infrastructure Manager providing support to the Impact Services Teams. She’s been part of UniServices’ Health & Safety Representative Committee since its inception, where she participated on behalf of the Immunisation Advisory Centre, based at the University.
“Health and safety is one component of my brief,” she says. “Attending courses provides clarity on why health and safety in the workplace is important, making it easier to explain and implement.”
Harrington says health and safety courses she’s been on in the past had focused on hazards such as chemicals, working in and around water, or using heavy machinery, rather than the office environment she works in.
“Honestly, I didn’t want to attend another boring health and safety course as they have often focused on dangerous jobs, not the work that I do at the University of Auckland,” she says.
“However, it was the most interesting health and safety course I have attended.”
Simunovich says his long association with the university is based around the fact that he connects well with its team members.
“I think they’ve kept working with us because we’re a good fit,” he says.
“For example, I’ve done health and safety sessions for the university’s medical school where I worked with doctors and lab staff who handle cadavers.
“I’ve visited the facilities, which was an interest of mine anyway, and I worked closely with them to ensure the training was relevant to their specific context.
“It’s about showing an interest in what people do and connecting with them at their level. If you just throw information at people, they won’t engage with it.”
Making health and safety training fun
Harrington agrees that his ability to provide real-world, practical examples helps to create an understanding of health and safety that they can apply to their own roles as well as the requirements of the Health and Safety at Work Act.
Simunovich says personalisation also helps to make the policy more relatable and applicable.
“At the start of the training, I ask the learners to tell me what they enjoy personally or what they like to do in their spare time.
“I then ask them to be completely honest about their feelings about health and safety – to rate it from one to 10, with 10 being ‘absolutely love this’ to one, ‘I really hate it’.
“If they’re in the 1-2 bracket, I encourage them by basically saying: ‘Look, it’s my job to get you from that 1, 2 or 3 to something significantly higher. If I can’t convert you, I’m not doing my job as an educator.’
“So, I give them a kind of license – I put it out there to begin with and just ask them to be honest and to know that what they say in the room, stays in the room.
“I want their honest feelings, because that’s what they’re going to encounter as health and safety representatives.”
Simunovich also likes to use gamification to pass along health and safety concepts.
“One of the exercises I like to do is you break the groups into teams and give them a big yellow ball and set them a timed activity to perform with it and a set of rules.
“So, I provide the parameters, then when they’ve completed it, I ask them to repeat the exercise but to bring down the amount of time it takes.
“The point here is to get them to work collaboratively to bring down the time, but to act with rules or parameters that they can’t move outside of.
“The takeaway in this exercise is that if you replace the time with a safety control and you needed to improve it, how are you going to do that? You’re going to talk to each other to find the best way.
“The fundamental point is that if you can make something like health and safety fun, the natural desire is to repeat pleasurable experiences.
“So, if you place this new lens on health and safety, that will transfer over to the way you deliver it back in the workplace.
“People aren’t stupid, and if your heart’s not in it, they’re going to know.”
This approach was certainly one that Harrington enjoyed.
“I have never played games in a health and safety course before,” she says.
“How fun that was! It got us thinking and helped with making connections.”
