That was the belief of Silver Fern Farms’ group health and safety manager Andrew Mitchell who said health and safety was about what happened on the shop floor, rather than in the corporate office.
Last week, Silver Fern Farms won the supreme award at the New Zealand Workplace Health and Safety Awards in Auckland, an event described by Mr Mitchell as "the Academy Awards of health and safety land".
It was the first time a meat company had ever won the accolade and it came as a genuine and humbling surprise, he said.
It was an honour to even be named as a category finalist, let alone win one; Silver Fern Farms won the governance category for the leadership shown in health and safety before being named supreme winner.
"We almost fell off our chairs," he recalled.
It was incredibly humbling to be recognised for making a difference in what was a really challenging industry which involved knives, machinery and laborious work.
Coupled with such a large workforce throughout its network of plants, it was "vitally important" to have a daily focus on health and safety and the company’s culture had to demonstrate that, he said.
About five years ago, the company began work on developing a new health and safety strategy, recognising that it had to "lift the bar, shift the dial, move into a different space".
One of the initiatives singled out by the judges was the three-day Ora Runanga in which the company’s directors and executive team personally engaged with workers from each of its sites to hear first-hand about the challenges they faced and the opportunities available for improvement.
When the idea was first mooted with several workers and several union representatives, it was outlined that there were some challenges that needed to be overcome, Mr Mitchell said. Sitting in a meeting-type situation was not a comfortable place for many reps who were often used to working on the chain doing physical laborious jobs.
A way needed to be found to keep them at ease and relaxed so that discussions could open up.
Attended by 20 health and safety representatives from Dargaville to Invercargill, the first runanga was held in 2021 in Dunedin, followed by another in the city in 2022. The next was planned in August in Rotorua.
The first day was about helping the reps — who turned up looking like "possums in the headlights" — to relax a little and meet people from other sites. A barbecue was held, there was a plant visit and they were able to have conversations among themselves.
By breakfast on day two, they were visibly looking more comfortable. They were updated on the company to help them understand the bigger picture, and leadership facilitators ran some courses and workshops.
In the afternoon, "poster sessions" were held, where senior leaders from the company were brought in for one-on-one discussions.
It broke down barriers; frontline health and safety reps and the company’s most senior decision makers were able to have unobstructed conversations about what the realities were like, Mr Mitchell said.
One rep waved Mr Mitchell over and told him he had been talking to the company’s chief executive Simon Limmer, saying "he’s just a guy like you and I".
That came as an "absolute shock" to the rep who found himself having a genuine discussion with the chief executive who was taking an "absolute interest" in the challenges that were faced at the site.
Then an awards dinner was held and a manaaki (to cherish) award was given to a rep who was nominated for "going above and beyond".
Information from those nominations were also used in nominations for the New Zealand Workplace Health and Safety Awards for individual reps. Bevan Thompson, from the Takapau site, won an individual award last year.
In Dunedin, they were also given a tour of the company’s head office and met the likes of sales staff who were dealing with the product they helped to process.
Those taking part in the runanga event loved it. In their own words, they left "buzzing" and they felt genuinely connected to the company, Mr Mitchell said.
They had got to know senior leaders and they felt they could express their concerns in their way and come away with a list of initiatives and investments the company planned to make as a result of those discussions.
Various initiatives had come out of the event including one particularly successful one from a runanga in 2021.
There were often small things they wanted fixed in the work environment but it was difficult to access the funding.
So a centralised fund was created and those ideas then started to flow. It had grown "a life of its own" and workers felt empowered.
It had also changed the culture of health and safety meetings; the tone of language had gone from more reactive-based to more proactive.
"You can’t forget it’s the little things that really matter to people on the shop floor," Mr Mitchell said.
The dial had been shifted around health and safety engagement and culture within the organisation and severity of health and safety incidents was coming down.
But both that — and the recent award accolade — did not, in any way, mean the company was perfect and there was still a long way to go as far as improvement went, he stressed.
There were a lot of challenges around health and safety in the meat industry because of the nature of processing.
Silver Fern Farms was recently fined $283,500 under the Health and Safety at Work Act after Takapau plant worker Brian Wilson had his right hand amputated after it was crushed in machinery in February 2021.
Judge John McDonald imposed the fine but declined to make a reparation order for the emotional harm suffered by Mr Wilson after hearing of the company’s efforts to support him.
Company leaders attended the sentencing, and Mr Limmer said it was "focused on supporting Brian’s recovery as best possible and taking whatever measures are needed to help prevent this from happening again."
It was supporting his recovery and rehabilitation and was helping him to achieve some of his personal goals and hopefully return to work at the site.
Since the accident, Silver Fern Farms had undergone a machine safety review of its historic machines, and it was investing "millions of dollars" each year, specifically on machine safety improvements, he said.
Mr Mitchell said the company was committed to the direction it was heading in around health and safety improvements, creating the right culture and empowering its employees to also make a difference.
The message plant managers took back to their teams after a senior manager meeting following the awards was that it was a collective effort.
It was "fantastic" to get recognised for the hard mahi over the last five years — "we all know we’ve been on a slog" — and it emboldened the company for the next five years.
During his travels this week, lots of people had been coming up to Mr Mitchell giving him "high fives" in response to the award.
