Relationship Managers have been working closely with many clubs around the country this year and it is great to see a lot of progress being made with Club Health and Safety (H&S). There is an increasing understanding of what H&S is, what clubs need to be doing and why it’s so important.
Key documents for all clubs working on H&S:
- GNZ H&S Guidelines
- GNZ Operational Hazards and Risks – Examples and Controls
If you have not yet downloaded these they can be found under documents on Club Portal.
Defining Areas of Responsibility for H&S
This is a key part of the process of managing H&S in your club. In order to ensure that everyone does what they need to, each individual needs to be clear on what their responsibilities are for H&S – this includes everyone from committee and managers through to coaches and contractors.
Key steps:
- Identify – what areas of responsibility are there in your club?
- Allocate – determine who is responsible for what
- Communicate – make sure that everyone is aware of, understands and is comfortable with their responsibilities. Communication should be done as part of induction, refreshed annually and repeated whenever anyone’s responsibilities change.
We have put together some guidance and a template for introducing this in your club. These can be found in Club Portal under register here – note you will need to be assigned Admin as a role on Friendly Manager before your request will be accepted and you should register with the same email address as the one registered for you in Friendly Manager.
Officer Responsibilities – Health & Safety at Work Act 2015
One area that is still frequently coming up around the country is that there is still a lack of understanding about who are considered officers in a PCBU and what their responsibilities are.
A PCBU is a Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking. This is a broad concept used throughout the Health & Safety at Work Act (HSWA) to describe all types of modern working arrangements we commonly refer to as businesses.
If your club pays any staff or contractors it is considered a PCBU under the HSWA.
The HSWA imposes a specific duty on officers to exercise due diligence to ensure that the club meets its obligations as a PCBU. We strongly recommend that all committee members take some time to read through the information WorkSafe NZ provides on specific responsibilities for Officers. These responsibilities apply to all committee/Board regardless of whether they hold a specific H&S role.
Child Protection
Child protection is a very sensitive and vitally important topic for gymnastics clubs. Because of the nature of our sport and the age of the majority of our participants, all clubs need to ensure that they are doing all they can to provide a safe place for children to take part in gymnastics.
We will be addressing child protection in detail over the coming months but here are some initial things to start looking at:
- Child Protection Health Check – if you are not sure how you are doing currently, an organisational health check will help
- Police vetting – is this routinely done within your organisation? If not, this needs to be a priority. See the GNZ Guide to Police Vetting in Club Portal for the step by step process.
– Police vetting is a legal requirement for all organisations who receive any government funding. It is also a GNZ requirement.
– Police vetting must be re-done every 3 years
– If you are carrying out less than 20 police vets each year they are free of charge - Safe Recruitment – this includes police vetting (above) but looks more widely at the recruitment process. The Safer Recruitment resource is very helpful for this.
- Child Protection policy – each club should be working towards having an up to date Child Protection Policy in place. If you receive any government funding eg. KiwiSport, this is a legal requirement.
GNZ are finalising a template child protection policy which will be available for clubs to adapt and adopt as soon as possible. This will sit alongside the updated GNZ Member Protection Policy (due out soon) and will provide more detail. In the meantime, there are a number of other resources which help with policy development including:
– Child Matters
– Safe Sport for Children – Sport NZ - Staff training – this is as much about keeping coaches safe as keeping children safe. We recommend that all coaches have some form of child protection training. This could include:
– Attending a Child Protection workshop
– Attending an online Child Protection course – this is a great option for those not able to attend a local course as it can be done anytime/anywhere.
– In-house training
Child protection training is run by a range of providers and is the most effective way to equip your coaches to provide a safe environment, recognise signs of abuse and what to do and to ensure that they keep themselves safe. Places to look for workshops including online include: