Safeguard a success | IMPAC health and safety

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This year’s Safeguard conference was filled with stimulating health and safety conversations and presentations, insightful networking, and a tonne of photos in the giant IMPAC frame.  

Our amazing sales team pose in the IMPAC frame.

And it was great to see so many of our friends and customers nominated as finalists and winning awards at the New Zealand Workplace Health & Safety Awards – congratulations to you all!

Richard Gibson, one of IMPAC’s Directors, presented the ‘IMPAC best collaboration between PCBUs’ award to Napier Port. When presenting, he talked about how one of his past work environments was unforgiving to human error and that's why this category is so important to him and why IMPAC decided to sponsor it.

The only way to correct environments like these, said Richard, is by looking at everyone who has influence over these areas or conditions.

Richard followed up with, “As leaders, it’s all about thinking, ‘how can we fundamentally change the environment that people are working in and have a big impact?’ And that’s basically what we decided to do.” 

Richard speaking at the awards. 

Here’s the complete list of New Zealand Workplace Health & Safety Awards winners  

Kensington Swan best initiative to address a work-related safety risk

Naylor Love Construction

Found a simple engineering solution to eliminate the risk of items being dropped from swinging stage work platforms used on multi-storey buildings.

WorkSafe New Zealand best initiative to address a work-related health risk

Air New Zealand

The “Take Charge” programme intervenes early when staff report pain or discomfort below the threshold of an injury and has almost halved days lost due to manual handling injury.

Vitae best initiative to improve worker health

Wellington City Council

Its new wellbeing strategy focuses on four areas – nutrition/activity, mental wellbeing, musculoskeletal health, and smoking, drugs & alcohol use – and engages staff in the strategy via regular conversations with their managers.

NZ Safety Blackwoods best initiative to encourage worker involvement in health & safety

Connetics

Moved from centralised control to a ‘leader as host’ philosophy, which has boosted trust and engagement in safety, created successful learning teams, and generated co-design initiatives.

3M best use of New Zealand design/technology

Unitec Institute of Technology

Student’s access to 150 high-risk machines is now controlled by an automated card reader and induction system.

Site Safe best health and safety initiative by a business of no more than 50 staff

Focus Construction

Identified 8 risks that had become normalised as acceptable. Responded by creating its own unique safety brand with visual icons to address each of the risks.

IMPAC best collaboration between PCBUs

Napier Port

Pre-vessel-arrival meetings, which include PCBUs involved in loading/unloading and those operating in the vicinity, have helped build enduring relationships and lifted accountability for managing risks.

Simpson Grierson best board level engagement in health & safety

Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu

Created a board safety charter and a health & safety strategy which focuses on operational excellence, a wellbeing culture, and visible leadership. Reports to the board now reflect the true risk profile of diverse operations.

ACC best leadership of an industry sector or region

Staylive

Has developed multiple guidelines for the electricity generation and supply sector, and forms working groups to address issues as they arise. Services as a model of sector collaboration in health & safety.

NZISM health and safety practitioner of the year

Terri Coopland, Mars Petcare

Developed a behavioural methodology which has been enthusiastically embraced by staff in an engagement process which has helped build a sustainable health & safety culture.

edenfx HSE Recruitment health & safety representative of the year

Joanne Thompson, Coca-Cola Amatil New Zealand

Challenged to identify a problem and find a solution, she proposed a better way of keeping pedestrians and forklifts separated. She also created a safety induction video for new starters and contractors.

Business Leaders’ Health & Safety Forum leader of the year

Ray Smith, Department of Corrections

His transformative work within Corrections was acknowledged with the appointment of Corrections to lead a collaborative effort to transform the government sector into a leading force for better health & safety in New Zealand.

Countdown Lifetime Achievement Award

Sandra Johnston

For her commitment over many years to the field of psychological trauma and supporting the mental health of people at work who have been through or witnessed a traumatic event. As well as helping to lead the development of trauma response in New Zealand, she has also been at the front line delivering services to working people over more than 20 years. In doing so she has shone a light on the significance of mental health at work and the debilitating effects of psychological trauma on health, long after the initial incident.

Fonterra judges’ commendation awards went to:

Youthtown

For creating a programme which actively engages staff in wellbeing at work and at home, and also focuses people on ways to promote fairness, diversity and inclusion. Staff devise their own challenges using gamification.

Northpower

For a highly consultative programme looking at four key behaviours, pictorial and carved representations of them, and storytelling opportunities to allow staff to better understand their collective role in the community.