BWARE NEWSLETTER: AUTUMN EDITION

CEO’s Corner

Kevin Haskins

CEO – BWARE

Kia ora everyone,

A friend asked me a simple question recently.

“Why don’t you tell your customers how you actually got into health and safety?”

It made me pause. Not because I didn’t have an answer, but because it’s not a story I share often.

I first got involved when I was 19. In my first week at Fisher & Paykel, my team voted me in as a Health & Safety Representative. It wasn’t really a vote – more like they picked the new guy. I didn’t fully understand what it would involve at the time. I just knew it mattered.

Two years later, that role became very real. I was involved in a serious workplace incident that partially amputated my left foot. I’m left with a scar from ankle bone to ankle bone, recovery took a long time and took its toll on my personal life. It completely changed how I think about risk, responsibility, and what ‘getting it right’ really means.

What stayed with me most was this: the impact goes far beyond the incident itself. It affects families, teams, and the day-to-day running of a business – especially in smaller teams where everyone is already stretched.

After my injury, my involvement in health and safety grew over my time at Fisher & Paykel. The running joke was that if you sent Kevin into any department, he’d find the hazards. I spent 15 years on the Health & Safety Committee as I moved through operation and leadership roles, and later I supported health and safety training, and systems work in the Human Resources team. Over time, I got to see both sides, what good systems look like when they’re working well, and what happens when real life puts them to the test.

That’s what led me to BWARE. Most businesses I meet genuinely care about their people, but health and safety has become complex, and it often gets piled onto someone who’s already flat out. At BWARE our job is to make safety simple and practical, so you can keep the business moving without losing sight of what matters. We’re not perfect, but we’re always learning, improving, and right there with you.

For me, it’s never been about ticking boxes. It’s about making it easier to do the right thing, consistently. If there’s one thing I hope you take from this, it’s that behind every policy, form, and system is a person, and they’re worth getting it right for.

In a lot of ways, that’s where the BWARE journey started for me. I’ll share more on how the idea grew into what BWARE is today in future editions of this newsletter. So watch this space!

With that in mind, here is something we’ve been working on behind the scenes.

Platform Update Coming: Faster Performance Ahead

In response to your feedback about slow load times (especially for members working with larger datasets), we’re excited to share that after a year of behind-the-scenes work, we’re migrating BWARE to a new framework. This will boost performance and efficiency, so BWARE runs faster and smoother.

The migration work is close to completion, and we’re now moving into the testing stage to confirm everything works as intended and refresh our support materials and outputs.

We’ll share more updates in our next quarterly edition, including a confirmed release date.

Thank you for your patience, especially if you’ve been impacted by slow loading. Please know this work is a priority, and we’re focused on releasing this update as quickly as possible.

In This Edition

In this newsletter, you’ll find an update on what’s being proposed in health and safety, along with a summary of the support options available to help you get more value from BWARE. Thanks for the work you’re doing out there, and for being part of the BWARE community.

Service Desk

Chris Lambeth

SERVICES MANAGER, BWARE

Hi everyone,

Health and safety can feel like a moving target, especially when you’re running a small business and wearing multiple hats. To make it easier to stay on top of what matters, we’ve summarised the key updates being signalled right now, and what they could mean in practical terms.

Did you know there are some big health & safety updates on the horizon for NZ businesses?

Recent announcements from the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety and WorkSafe point to clearer, more practical health and safety guidance – , particularly for agriculture and construction. These are two of New Zealand’s highest-risk sectors, and the aim is to make the rules easier to understand and apply in everyday work.

Here’s a quick look at what’s being discussed and what it could mean for your business.

More Practical Rules for Family Farms

The Government is consulting with farmers about how health and safety rules apply on family farms, where the farm is often both a home and a workplace.

One area being looked at is children helping with everyday farm tasks. Simple, age-appropriate jobs, like feeding animals or collecting eggs, may be formally recognised as acceptable. At the same time, higher-risk activities around heavy machinery will continue to be restricted.

WorkSafe has also been asked to develop industry-led Approved Codes of Practice (ACOPs) for the agricultural sector. These will focus on :

If you follow an ACOP, it will give confidence that you’re meeting your legal health and safety duties.

Clearer Guidance for Construction & Work at Height

In construction, there has been concern that some rules around working at height have become overly complex and expensive to apply.

Proposed changes aim to introduce a more risk-based approach. In lower-risk situations, safer alternatives like ladders or harness systems may be acceptable instead of full scaffolding.

There is also work underway to:

This is intended to cut red tape while still maintaining strong safety outcomes.

What Are Approved Codes of Practice (ACOPs)?

ACOPs are practical guides that show how to meet your health and safety duties. They are approved by the Minister and developed with industry input. While following an ACOP isn’t mandatory, it can be used as evidence that you’re meeting your health and safety responsibilities.

WorkSafe is currently developing three ACOPs:

WorkSafe has advised that the ACOPs are currently under development, with draft versions expected to be released for wider industry consultation in April.

What This Means for Your Business

These changes suggest a move away from one-size-fits-all compliance toward a more practical, risk-based approach to safety. For SMEs, this highlights the importance of:

Your BWARE platform helps you capture this information in one place and demonstrate good safety practice as guidance evolves.

Team Success

Matty Mclean

CUSTOMER SUCCESS MANAGER – BWARE

Hello from Team Success!

Moving forward, we’d like to share some of the practical tips and tricks we’ve picked up from working alongside our customers, especially around how you’re using BWARE day to day. In this edition, I want to shine a light on the Observations function. It’s one of the most underused tools in the platform, but it’s also one of the most versatile. Used well, it becomes a simple way for your team to capture what’s happening on site or in the workplace, while the details are fresh in their minds.

The observation feature includes:

Quick, on-the-go reporting (not just H&S). Ask your team to snap a photo of an issue and add a short comment, for example damage, a near miss, a hazard, a quality issue, or a poor work practice. Submissions are feed straight into the Activity Stream for admins/managers to review, and they’re also stored in the Observation Register, so nothing gets lost.
Evidence of training, coaching, and learning in action. Use Observations to record that training or a toolbox talk took place, and to capture follow-up coaching or check-ins that show how the learning is being applied on the job. It’s a practical way to build an audit trail of engagement and continuous improvement. Examples include working at height (harness fit, anchor points, edge protection), hazardous substances (labelling, SDS access, correct PPE), machinery use (guards in place, pre-start checks), and manual handling techniques.
Spot and praise great practice. Observations aren’t only for when things go wrong. Use them to recognise people doing the right thing, for example great housekeeping, correct PPE use, tidy work areas, or a team member stepping in to fix a risk. When people get positive feedback, they’re far more likely to keep doing it.
Track maintenance and asset issues before they become incidents. Observations are great for reporting worn equipment, missing guards, damaged ladders, frayed leads, leaking hoses, faulty lights, or vehicle defects. It’s a simple way to capture the “something’s not right” moments and make sure they get followed up on.
Capture learnings. Use Observations to record “we should do this differently next time” lessons. Over time, this becomes a useful library of learnings you can bring into planning, inductions, and team meetings.

If you haven’t used Observations much, give it a go for the next week and see how it fits your workflow. And if you’ve found a great way to use it in your business, tell us. We’d love to share your ideas (with your permission) so other BWARE members can benefit too.

BWARE is more than a software: practical support when you need it

Over the last year, we’ve had more and more members reaching out for help with unique training sessions and administration support to keep BWARE up to date.

We’ve really enjoyed getting stuck in, and we wanted to make sure everyone knows this extra support is available as an optional service if you ever need a hand. BWARE isn’t a set-and-forget platform, and you don’t have to figure it all out on your own. We can help you stay on top of your health and safety needs and ensure your system is up to date.

Here are a couple of ways we can support you:

Administration Support

If your health and safety system is mostly fine, but the admin keeps slipping to the bottom of the list, we can jump in and keep things moving so you stay on track and your records stay tidy.

Manual uploading of your health and safety data & information. We’ll help get it into the system so it’s all in one place and easy to find.
Turning your paper-based forms into simple digital forms. That makes it quick and easy for the team to complete them on the go.
Friendly reminders and follow-ups on key to-do list items and priority actions. This helps keep things moving so nothing gets missed or left hanging.
Bulk archiving of register items and clean-up of system events and/or activities. This is especially helpful for members with large registers (which can slow things down), and for clearing old to-do items that were never completed or closed out.

Great for: busy seasons, staffing changes, or when H&S admin is only a small slice of someone’s role.

Worker Upskilling

It’s helpful when more than one person in the team feels confident using the BWARE platform. We can run practical, down-to-earth Zoom training and health and safety workshops, that suit your team and the way you work. No fluff, just what you need.

The payoff: a team that’s confident using BWARE, with consistent H&S information and templates set up correctly from the start.

These are just a couple of examples of how we can help. If you’re stuck or not sure what the next step is, we’re happy to point you in the right direction.

If you’d like to talk through support options, email helpdesk@bware.co.nz. We’ll have a quick chat about what you need and come back to you with a quote.

As always, thanks for being part of BWARE. If you need a hand, reach out – we’re happy to help.

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