Celebrating our 2023 Health and Safety Representative of the Year Award Finalists and Overall winner

 

On the 8th June, the GHSL hosted the 2023 Health and Safety Representative Conference and Awards. This year’s ceremony looked a little different to recent award events, as we were back to a full day with over 400 attendees celebrating our Health and Safety Representatives (H&S Rep) finalists and recognising the important mahi they do to champion health and safety in their agencies every day.

This year’s conference was also an important development day, focused on mentally healthy work and the role of the H&S Rep to support and enable this within our organisations.  We had an amazing range of international and national speakers from the field of mentally healthy work and psychological health and safety, which included:

• Jason van Schie, an occupational psychologist and Managing Director of Flourish Dx.
• David Burroughs, Westpac Australia’s Chief Mental Health Officer.
• Dougal Sutherland psychologist and Chief Executive of New Zealand based Umbrella
• Jacqui Maguire, an organisational wellbeing consultant and registered clinical psychologist.

 

In addition to leading her own session, Jacqui was also our MC for the day. We also heard from Deputy Chief Executive of WorkSafe New Zealand, Quin Carver; Chief Executive for ACC Megan Main; Director-General Ray Smith, MPI and the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, the Hon. Minister Michael Wood.

These speaker sessions were designed for our H&S Reps to walk away a clearer understanding of how to recognise psychological hazards and risks, their potential impact, the differing types of interventions and their role in supporting mentally healthy work.

We finished up the afternoon by celebrating this year’s six finalists for the H&S Rep of the Year Award, selected from over 20 nominations. This year’s finalists were:

• Bonnie MacGregor - ACC
• Jen Sommerville - NZDF
• Justin Moore - NZ Police
• Nathan Mills - Kainga Ora
• Nicole Price - Ara Poutama Dept. of Corrections
• Stephen Rolls - MPI

 

Our overall winner and 2023 Health and Safety Representative of the Year is Stephen Rolls, MPI. The panel recognised Stephen works tirelessly every day as the link between Te Uru Rākau - Forestry System - Indigenous Forestry, external training managers and colleagues to ensure high standards of safety are set and met on a consistent basis.

Since becoming a H&S Rep in 2004 and joining the Health and Safety Committee at the Indigenous Forestry Unit, Stephen has been an influential force behind numerous health and safety initiatives. He has worked tirelessly to improve processes and procedures while identifying gaps and working collaboratively with his colleagues to close them. Stephen's colleagues and managers describe him as the ‘go-to’ person across the wider forestry teams, sharing his wealth of knowledge and experience to ensure that staff are competent and safe in their work.

 

 

The GHSL would like to congratulate all our finalists and our overall winner. Each finalist received a hand carved manaia and in addition was also awarded a $500 training voucher from IMPAC, with the overall winner receiving a hand carved manaia and a $1500 IMPAC training voucher.

Finally, we would also like to say a big thank you to the health and safety teams across all our agencie for supporting HSRs and the work they do.