Farmer researching safety climate PLANNED POWER OUTAGES

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A Golden Bay farmer is hoping her postgraduate research will help to make the milking shed a safer place.

Ferntown-based Deborah Rhodes is conducting a nationwide safety perception survey to gather data for a master’s thesis, and she urges all the Bay’s dairy farm workers to get involved. “The research is intended to find out what the extent of safety climate is in the milking shed and examine what are possible causes that lead to harm.”

The milking shed provides the focus for the study because it is a multi-hazard space where most harmful incidents, such as slips, trips, cow kicks, burns and chemical injuries, occur. These incidents contribute a significant proportion of the agricultural industry’s cost to ACC, which in 2020 totalled $84 milllion.

Deborah expands on the concept at the heart of the research. “Safety climate is about the perceptions of workers and managers and employers about their safety, and what they think about others’ safety… It is what they all think as a whole that evolves the safety culture of a workplace and safety climate can indicate what behaviours could occur.”

The academic study, which Deborah is carrying out through Victoria University’s School of Health, utilises a questionnaire developed by a group of Nordic researchers. “It is an internationally validated questionnaire used widely,” says Deborah, who is the first in the country to use it.

Her findings, while highly applicable to New Zealand’s farming sector, are likely to contribute to a much broader understanding of safety climate. “I am in regular contact with the lead author [of the survey] in Denmark who has encouraged me to share my data to their international benchmark data set,” explains Deborah. “This data set is across a number of industries, but they have nothing from New Zealand… They have very little data from farming around the world.”

Regarding her own data gathering, Deborah says the survey is highly relatable. “The language in the questions is really relevant to local farmers.” And she stresses the importance of wide participation. “To get good results, I need workers on farms to engage in this survey. To give them a voice, particularly in places where safety outcomes are not so good.”

To access the survey, use the QR code above.