Quinovic offices around New Zealand have been ensuring their Property Managers and other staff understand their responsibilities under the new workplace safety legislation taking effect on Monday April 4
We're also ensuring the contractors and other people we engage to work on our client' properties are aware of the paramount importance of safe practices when carrying out their duties.
For Quinovic, the new Health and Safety at Work Act reinforces our day to day responsibilities to provide the highest standard of management for our clients. While there has been great focus over the past year on the law's impact in high risk, high profile sectors like forestry and farming, many private, self-managing landlords may not be aware of its implications for them.
Our Health and Safety policy statement commits all staff to our vision of ensuring a safe and healthy workplace and stresses that all possible measures must be taken to remove (or at least minimise) risks to the health, safety and welfare of workers, contractors, authorised visitors, and anyone else who may be affected by work on the properties we manage.
The Act puts the primary duty for safety on 'Persons Conducting a Business or Undertaking', known as PCBUs. For landlords who manage their own properties, and professional property managers like Quinovic, that carries significant responsibilities and liabilities.
It means having a good understanding of health and safety matters and keeping up to date, gaining an understanding of the hazards and risks associated with the operations of your business, ensuring you have the appropriate resources and processes to eliminate or minimise those risks, ensuring you have the appropriate processes for receiving information about incidents, hazards and risks and for responding to that information. Lastly you must verify that these resources and processes are in place and being used.
Of course, all landlords are also bound by the Residential Tenancies Act to provide and maintain rental properties in a reasonable state of repair, and in a reasonable state of cleanliness.
By ensuring our Quinovic Property Managers and contractors, etc are well informed about their legal responsibilities and how they apply to the properties we look after, we help safeguard our clients' interests. It's another reason why increasing numbers of residential rental property investors are appointing Quinovic to take care of day to day management issues while they focus on building their portfolios.
See the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment website for more details.
