Stalwart supporter of the Charter retires

Robin Rowse, H&S and Compliance Manager at Canterbury Aluminium, is retiring. Robin has been a huge champion of the Charter and we spoke to him recently about what good health and safety means to him.

As a child Robin would join his Dad, a builder, on site and learned from an early age the importance of health and safety. He went on to become an automotive mechanic and registered automotive engineer. “Working on people’s cars you had to be safe, if you didn’t do the job properly and they had an incident, then what?”.

Robin believes the biggest thing for health and safety is a good workplace culture. As he says, “you can spend a lot of money on H&S, have screeds of paperwork in place, but the guy on the ground who has a couple of forms and a notebook will do more for creating a good health and safety culture. If the culture is good, that’s what you need.”

He also believes older workers have a responsibility to led younger workers. “It’s our job to teach them to speak up about health and safety and lead by example. We need to listen; we might be doing something the same way for 10 years and someone else might have a good idea about how we can improve it. Just because we haven’t had an accident doesn’t mean we can’t improve and listen to new ideas.” says Robin.

Robin has also built good relationships with WorkSafe Inspectors and was able to call them and talk to them about any issues or concerns. He believes the Charter has provided the same opportunity – to build relationships with people that can talk to in the industry and build that good culture of health and safety.

A huge thank you to Robin for being a true champion of the Charter vision and values – you are a great example of someone who walks the talk!