2024

Celebrating the best of health, safety and wellbeing in New Zealand

The annual New Zealand Workplace Health & Safety Awards have been run since 2005. They are organised by Safeguard with the support of WorkSafe New Zealand and ACC.

WINNERS ANNOUNCED!

Deep dive into ergonomics takes out top national health and safety award

The deliberate use of a formalised ergonomics and human factors approach in the design of a new household food waste bin has won Auckland Council the overall honours at this year's New Zealand Workplace Health and Safety Awards. The extensively trialled design has hugely reduced the risks of musculoskeletal harm for the rubbish collectors who pick up thousands of these bins around the city every day.

The awards were presented at a gala dinner at the Viaduct Events Centre in Auckland, attended by more than 700 people.

Safeguard editor Peter Bateman, convenor of the five-person judging panel, said Auckland Council's commitment to take seriously the most common type of work injury - strains and sprains - and engage ergonomics researchers at AUT with the hard-earned wisdom of rubbish collectors themselves had produced an outstanding result.

"It's really pleasing to see a major player such as Auckland Council partnering with academic exponents and taking a fully researched, trialled and human-centred approach to design out problems before they arise. Strain and sprain injuries put thousands of people off work every year and can significantly reduce people's ability to keep working."

The winners are:

THE WORKSAFE NEW ZEALAND/ACC BEST OVERALL CONTRIBUTION TO IMPROVING WORKPLACE HEALTH AND SAFETY IN NEW ZEALAND
Auckland Council (winner of the Innovation category)

SAFETY (sponsored by Dentons)
Traffic Safe NZ

HEALTH (sponsored by Southern Cross Healthcare)
AW Fraser

WELLBEING (sponsored by Vitae)
Contact Energy

ENGAGEMENT (sponsored by NZ Safety Blackwoods)
Air New Zealand

INNOVATION (sponsored by Anthony Harper)
Auckland Council

SAFETY-II (Sponsored by HSE Global)
EastPack

COLLABORATION (Sponsored by IMPAC)
Marlborough Roads

GOVERNANCE (Sponsored by Simpson Grierson)
NZ Post

LEADERSHIP (Sponsored by ACC)
CHASNZ

PRACTITIONER (Sponsored by NZISM)
Kurt Maxwell, Watercare

EMERGING PRACTITIONER (Sponsored by edenfx HSE Recruitment)
Kate Poole, NZTA Waka Kotahi

REPRESENTATIVE (Sponsored by Vero Liability)
Mathew Bennie, KiwiRail

MENTAL HEALTH CHAMPION (Sponsored by Site Safe)
Josh Darby, FENZ

LEADER (Sponsored by Business Leaders’ Health & Safety Forum)
Gavin Hudson, C3 Limited

JUDGES’ COMMENDATION AWARD (Sponsored by ecoPortal)
Hato Hone St John

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS (Sponsored by Woolworths New Zealand)

John Skudder

Mike Massaar

See the media release for more information on the winners.

Download the Media Release

See the photos from the gala dinner

See previous Lifetime Achievement recipients in the Hall of Fame

Questions?

For any awards enquiries please email us.

Hall of Fame Inductee

John Skudder

Formerly of Meridian Energy, John has championed new approaches to health, safety and wellbeing and encouraged others to do the same. At Norske Skog he oversaw implementing a process of employee participation which was recognised at the first Safeguard Awards in 2005. An early adopter of e-learning, he developed courses illustrated with photos from the plant and made them available to contractors too. At ACC he developed interactive e-learning modules for the metal manufacturing sector. At Contact Energy he embraced the Safety-II approach together with the use of learning teams to look at how work is done rather than narrowly focusing on failure. In challenging the prevailing Zero Harm mantra he modelled the move away from health & safety people as experts with the answers to become enablers who help workers find their own solutions. More recently, at Meridian Energy he helped develop its award-winning Care Team wraparound approach to wellbeing.
Mike Massaar

Recently retired after a long career with the Department of Conservation, Mike has championed a formal approach to critical risk and some difficult decisions flowing from that. He helped develop a critical risk standard which went beyond the norm with its focus on control verification and feeding assurance back to the governance group. He was influential in DoC moving away from quad bikes as the residual risk was too high, and in banning staff (and later volunteers and contractors) from travelling in Robinson helicopters on the same risk basis. He championed employee health monitoring – fire fighter fitness, pesticide use, hearing – and was early to realise the minimal value of TRIFR and that traditional audits do little to lift health & safety performance, leading him to embrace the SafePlus evaluation process. He recognised that driving cars was a critical risk requiring training, and was early to acknowledge psychosocial harm and violence/aggression to staff in remote places.