6 Analysis of response to questionnaire for individuals

6.1. What is working well in terms of risk management and safety in the adventure and outdoor commercial sectors in New Zealand?

All reference group members and 29 non reference group members responded to this question. Key themes that emerged included:

Industry awareness of inherent risk and 'industry best practice'

Several respondents noted the awareness in the industry of the risks in adventure activities in the outdoors, and that there is a wider acceptance among stakeholder groups of the need for risk management. They considered this to have contributed to individuals and organisations being proactive about ensuring that sound risk management procedures are in place.

One respondent noted there is a slowly increasing awareness and understanding of what constitutes 'industry best practice' and operators/guides are working to 'best practice' even if they do not necessarily endorse them or are qualified [21].

Another noted that part of the pressure to meet good practice was due to "an increasing level of pressure on operators to survive and remain competitive" [14].

Organisations that help support outdoor/adventure based centres and operators

Several respondents noted the support of industry associations. They viewed associations as providing a neutral, non-competitive arena for sharing information, e.g. best practice and risk management strategies.

Responsible employers and operators

A number of respondents noted that most employers and operators are considered responsible and take appropriate measures to ensure clients' safety, including how they approach clients, management of the equipment they use, and how they manage the activities.

One respondent noted "it is rare to find a 'loose cannon' of the type that used to be around 20-30 years ago" [12]. Another noted the culture within the industry has a positive and pro-active approach.

Training and qualifications

A number of respondents noted that qualifications and experience are valued, and that the New Zealand guides and instructors are highly skilled practitioners especially compared with other countries.

However, one respondent noted that while in certain fields there are excellent qualification standards, whether these carry over to the actual operation is debatable, especially when field standards and requirements are not as well defined or required. They noted that plenty of examples exist where staff qualifications, training and practices are of a "less than desirable 'standard'" and suggested the Safe Ship Management Practices that are required by commercial water operations involving vessels could provide a model for adventure tourism operators [31].

Regulatory rules and policies

Some respondents noted that the general regulatory rules and policies are well established and understood by most commercial operators.

6.2. What could be improved in terms of risk management and safety in the adventure and outdoor commercial sectors in New Zealand?

All four individual reference group members and 29 non reference group members responded to this question. Key themes that emerged included:

Collaboration and sharing

Respondents noted that:

• that there could be better collaboration and sharing of experience, information, resources, and lessons learnt between companies that work in the same sectors
• too often the companies operate in a silo, not distributing the critical information that is revealed post accident or near miss
• although there is a genuine momentum for groups to collaborate and provide a unified and robust structure around training and assessments, there has been some fragmentation historically which has seen many organisations looking after their specific groups
• there could be greater consolidation of organisations so safety organisations are not competing for the same funding.

The quality and availability of training for commercial operators and trainers

Key issues that emerged from the responses in relation to this theme noted:

• staff qualifications, experience and training are critical to help mitigate a certain degree of inherent risk involved in the activities - "poorly qualified and trained staff do not recognise potential problem situations emerging and so unlike true professionals they carry on and then when trouble strikes they often do not have the skills or training to cope....there is NO substitute of excellent staff" [31]
• it is too easy for certain businesses to operate without going through competency models, particularly when a business is sold and the new operator does not have the same or even a similar skill set
• at a minimum, the Qualmark licence should be an expectation for businesses, with the initial assessment being more rigorous
• an experience rating from ACC could be used as a tool to recognise businesses with strong safety practices as an incentive for operators

Understanding of context and environmental factors

Five respondents considered that there should be more focus by operators on establishing "context" and operators understanding the environment (human and physical).

Suggestions for having a better understanding of weather knowledge included standardisation of plain language weather forecasts, national use of New Zealand standard time, and recommendations on the best weather warning web sites.

One respondent proposed that seismic hazards (i.e. earthquakes) should be included in safety guidelines for all adventure recreation areas and outdoor activities. They felt that this is particularly important for managing the risks associated with seismically induced geomorphic hazards (i.e. avalanche, landslides, and loss of critical lifelines) for Alpine Ski Areas.

Regulations and central government leadership

Key themes and ideas that emerged from the responses related to this theme included:

• that a key area for improvement relates to the overlap in the regulations and regulatory bodies who administer regulations
• the Department of Labour could take a more active role in supporting the industry by assisting organisations meet Qualmark or OutdoorsMark standards, instead of an enforcement role
• if the Department of Labour investigation process was more encouraging of extracting learning and less focused on attributing blame, organisations and individuals and the industry in general would be far more likely to share their learning and this above anything else would contribute more to safety in the outdoor sector
• confusion about which regulatory body a commercial operator should deal with on a particular issue and what to do when two or more bodies have similar (but inconsistent rules)
• a rapid reaction team, made up of specialists in the field involved, working beside a specialist outdoor Department of Labour team. One respondent felt that this would help because:
  1. The company involved would get immediate back up and advice in their hour of need
  2. The industry would get some immediate information on how to best respond to the situation at hand. This could be in the form of warnings about faulty equipment or recommendations on the best weather warning web sites
  3. The general public, media and world at large would see that something positive was being done and appropriate measures were being taken to avoid this event happening again [14]
• eliminating the requirement for hazard registers, with one respondent noting:
  An example of this is the widespread imposed use of 'hazard registers'. Whilst a hazard register may be a logical and useful mechanism for identifying and reducing risk in a standard workplace, in the outdoors this is impractical and merely adds to the pile of paperwork that takes away the ability to dedicate time to initiatives that will ACTUALLY reduce risk (staff training, reconnaissance, scenarios etc). The outdoors is such a dynamic and varied medium that having a 'register' for every hazard is impossible, ridiculous and therefore not used well. Despite this, due to recommendations from coroners and other non-industry experts, every outdoor centre has to have one. What is more important, is ensuring staff are trained and experienced in identifying, predicting and managing TYPES of hazards (and the sector does this very well) [20].

6.3. Do you have any other comments about the strengths and weaknesses of risk management and safety in the adventure and outdoor commercial sectors in New Zealand?

Three out of the four reference group members and 23 non reference group members responded to this question. Most respondents concentrated on the weaknesses of risk management and safety in the adventure and outdoor commercial sectors in New Zealand when answering this question.

Strengths

Those who commented about strengths noted:

• the openness to share experiences and what works and doesn't work so that all benefit
• that the systems, policies and procedures are well established
• that there is a strong health and safety culture amongst most operators (big, medium and small).

Weaknesses

The following key themes emerged from respondents' comments about the weaknesses of risk management and safety in the adventure and outdoor commercial sectors in New Zealand.

How risk is defined

Comments included or noted:

• the difficulty of defining risk when activities are varied, as are the environments they operate in
• removing the risk potentially removes the challenge and point of participating for participants
• the terms 'risk management' and 'safety' (or 'hazard' or 'risk management') will not mean the same thing to different people (the respondent suggested that there needs to be a glossary of terms so that the information being analysed is using consistent definitions)
• a balance needs to be struck between a systems approach and the autonomy of the instructor/guide
• research in the New Zealand outdoor and adventure industry indicates that experts use 'naturalistic' decision-making tools rather than rational-choice strategies when faced with complex and ambiguous problems. The use of rational-choice strategies is limited to rare circumstances where simple choices occur in association with stable contexts. This is considered to have significant implications for selecting, training and monitoring staff in the adventure industry as it would suggest that introducing straightforward policies and procedures will have little effect on incident rates. Rather the development of a suitable skill set to work safely in the outdoors is suggested as being essentially experienced based, and only gained after long apprenticeship
• some staff who are younger are considered to have a higher tolerance to risk and still be developing in both experience and judgement.

Legislation

Some respondents noted limitations with the current health and safety legislative provisions and enforcement. These included:

• The Health and Safety in Employment Act is not specific to various activities and does little to encourage safety.
• The system is reactive instead of being proactive
• The relationship between the Department of Labour and operators is not a positive one.

Department of Conservation concessions

One respondent noted that the Department of Conservation safety system puts the onus for safety onto the concessionaire and a system of initial safety plan auditing by an approved auditor. They said that "conceptually this is a reasonable model but because there are no formal standards, different auditors potentially audit operations against different standards. There is also a lack of ongoing operational audits so there is no guarantee that even if an operation has an approved safety plan that it is being followed" [15].

Qualifications

Some respondents expressed concern regarding qualifications. They noted, for example that:

"Qualmark is not a substitute for OutdoorsMark. We live in a small country and thus there is some conflict where people are assessors/auditors and involved in companies etc and certainly are friends of operators. This needs to be recognised not so that it limits the assessment/auditing.... perhaps there is dual assessment/auditing and/or rotating. It is often said in the financial world that the auditor should be changed every three years" [24].

6.4. Please list (with bullet points) the six most important principles you believe underpin well managed risk in the adventure and outdoor commercial sectors.

All four of the four reference group members and 27 non reference group members responded to this question. The following themes emerged from the most referred to principles put forward by respondents:

Employing staff with appropriate experience, relevant training and qualifications

Comments included the need to employ experienced staff who receive training in risk assessment (internally, externally, and repeated training).

Good planning for risk management and safety

Comments included that there needs to be: advanced planning and review; identification of strategies, policies, procedures and control mechanisms to avoid hazards; and maintenance and upgrading of vehicles and equipment. Comments also stressed the need to keep to plans and to review them.

Sound operating procedures that meet industry standards

Comments included that there needs to be clear operating procedures that meet industry standards and that can be communicated to staff and customers. It was felt that these must conform to best practice and peer reviews of them should be undertaken.

Clear and open communication between all employers, employees, organisations, practitioners, and with government bodies

Comments included that there needs to be open communication about ideas and best practice between employers and employees, staff within an organisation, organisations, practitioners within the sector, and between the sector and government bodies.

Providing clients with good information

Comments included that clients must be given good information before undertaking the activity about the location, equipment and conditions likely to be encountered. Respondents felt that full disclosure of the risks to clients was appropriate so they can make an informed decision.

Staff having real experience in the sector

Respondents felt that staff of adventure and outdoor activities must have real experience in the sector to allow for skills development, good decisions and judgement, and appropriate assessment of whether an activity should occur. They felt that this would assist with mitigating risk in outdoor activities.

Other principles included: having comprehensive knowledge of health and safety obligations; support from government agencies; monitoring results of processes to ensure better planning; understanding the context between the physical and human environment; collaboration and cooperation between operators and agencies to keep a good idea of conditions and issues in the location of the operation; and research-informed techniques.

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