Welcoming our 2023/2024 Summer Internship Programme

On Monday, 20 November the Government Health and Safety Lead’s Summer Internship Programme welcomed 19 interns who are placed within sixteen public sector agencies.  This is the seventh year of the programme which has also met a significant milestone with over 100 interns entering the programme. It was great to hear from Katie Tortise, ex-intern from last year’s cohort and H&S Advisor, Wellington Free Ambulance shared her experience of the internship programme and her placement, and how it ignited her passion for health, safety, and wellbeing career. With a large percentage of these interns have gone on to permanent roles and are making a huge difference to the health and safety workforce. 

The programme is now in its seventh year and is an important capability and capacity initiative designed to build a pipeline of future H&SW practitioners for the public sector, to address the gap in the health and safety workforce. This three-month internship programme provides our interns with a mixture of valuable on the job experience, learning events and workshops to develop their H&S knowledge and support them with their intern projects.  

The programme highlights the importance of Health, Safety and Well-being (HSW) in New Zealand and the career opportunities available in the profession. 

The GHSL would like to thank all 16 agencies participating in this years programme (listed below) for their commitment and support to enable us to increase the sectors capability in wellbeing, health and safety.