Verve sits down with Joanna Clough, director of The Dog Safe Workplace and cofounder of Kids Safe With Dogs charitable trust.
What is the Dog Safe Workplace?
We assist organisations that have workers who enter properties where dogs may be present. We educate them on how to recognise canine body language, how to avoid situations where they may get bitten and what to do if a situation occurs. Our programme is available as both face-to-face training and also in an online training package that is more cost-effective, allowing for companies with smaller staff in one location to still be able to get effective education and training for them.
What kind of organisations would use you?
Currently we are working with companies such as Wells Instrument & Electrical, Statistics NZ, First Security and many others. Each of the organisations that we work with pride themselves on the care of their staff and understand their responsibilities under the Health & Safety at Work Act (2015). There is still a bit of the good old Kiwi ‘she’ll be right’ attitude but times are changing and the consequences of not ensuring your staff has the right training for the right heath and safety risk can be very expensive.
Why did you start the company?
I have always been horrified by the number of dog bites that we hear about in New Zealand and in 2014 decided that there must be something we can do about the outdated education that is available for organisations. I commissioned a report from ACC with the number of bites annually from 2005 and consequently each year since then has shown an increase not only in numbers, but in cost.
Just one of the challenges we have is that there is no mandatory dog bite reporting in NZ. If companies have private insurance the figures do not appear on ACC reports. For example, ACC reported 25 dog bites in 2017 for a particular industry; but we were given a report from one organisation in that category (as listed by ACC) that showed over 250 dog bites over that same period.
We know from organisations that we have worked with for a few years that the introduction of our programme makes a difference—to know you are making a difference and saving people from bites as well as companies money, and dogs’ lives, is very rewarding.
