Managing mental health a legal requirement
We know that farmers are at risk of fatigue, stress and depression. Isolation, long hours and challenging environmental conditions all contribute to a widely acknowledged problem that is not effectively managed on farms.
Farm owners and managers are becoming increasingly aware of their health and safety obligations, and proactive about identifying and managing physical risks.
However, risks to mental health are often ignored. They can be hard to identify until it is too late.
Farm owners and managers ignore risks to mental health at their own peril – the Health and Safety at Work Act’s definition of ‘‘health’’ includes both physical and mental health.
This means that farm owners and managers have a duty, under the Health and Safety at Work Act, to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the mental health of their workers.
WorkSafe is prepared to prosecute health and safety breaches that relate to mental health. In 2005, the Department of Labour successfully prosecuted an employer for failing to take all practicable steps to ensure the safety of an employee who was suffering work-related stress which resulted in the employee taking medication for stressrelated pains.
A farm owner’s duty to ensure the physical and mental health of workers includes employees, contractors and certain volunteers. This means that a farm owner’s health and safety obligations extend to managing risks to their sharemilkers’ mental health, as well as their employees’.
Ensuring farm workers’ mental health isn’t a job for owners and managers alone. Farm workers must also take reasonable care for their own health and safety.
There are also other duties. All workplaces (including farms) must allow worker engagement and participation about safety in the workplace.
That means ways to talk about mental health with your farmers. The very thing that makes mental health so hard to tackle in the workplace is the stigma associated with it. It is getting better, but in farming workplaces especially, we still have that No 8 wire ‘‘she’ll be right’’ mentality.
Engagement with workers about mental health (talking about it) is one of the frontline weapons needed to break down that stigma.
Apart from talking, what does ensuring safety for mental health so far as reasonably practicable really mean? In other words what can be done? Talking about it is one step.
But other actions can been taken. My colleague Jesse Lange will write about some next week.
❚ Lawyers and legal executives from Auld Brewer Mazengarb & McEwen write about legal topics affecting farmers. The content of this article is necessarily general and readers should seek specific advice and not rely solely on what is written here. For further information on any of the topics, please contact Auld Brewer Mazengarb & McEwen. This column was prepared by Sean Maskill, who can be contacted by emailing sean.maskill@abmm.co.nz.