Face your fear

If you’ve recently been busy focusing on health and safety within your business – and who hasn’t? – this is the month to turn attention to the wellbeing of you and your staff beyond the building site.

Blue September is the Prostate Cancer Foundation’s annual appeal to raise awareness of men’s health and the importance of getting regularly checked. It’s a campaign PlaceMakers gets behind every year – with great support from our builders – and we are proud to be the principal sponsor.

This year’s campaign, ‘Face Your Fear’, encourages men to bite the bullet and ask their doctor for a prostate cancer check. It’s about ‘everyone has a fear, but a prostate check shouldn’t be one of them’. These checks should become a regular date on your calendar, rather than something you’ll ‘get round to later’.

If anything, we should be afraid of what not getting checked could mean – not only for ourselves but for our families too. If prostate cancer is detected early, it can be treated; if not, it can be fatal.

Buck Shelford recently had his regular check-up and shares his experience on camera – an inspiration to us all! Head to www.faceyourfear.org.nz to see Buck overcome his fear of heights.

So come on, share your fear at www.faceyourfear.org.nz and challenge a mate and we’ll donate $6 to the Prostate Cancer Foundation.

On another topic, putting yourself in someone else’s shoes is often a good way to better understand a situation and may even lead to a breakthrough for change. That’s one method covered in The Successful Builder’s article on how to change workplace culture here.

Also this month, Under Construction talked to building control officers around the country to gain insight into their experiences – check out what they had to say on here.

As usual, we have plenty more articles covering various aspects of the industry to help keep you informed and earning skills maintenance points. Look out, too, for our next round of seminars – details here.

Finally, congratulations to the Hurricanes, whose excellent form carried them through to a home win and their first Super Rugby title! PlaceMakers has been proud to sponsor another season of excellent competition, with some old favourites and new faces doing battle. Well done to everyone for playing their part on the paddock!

Gary Woodhouse
General Manager Operations & Marketing