New Zealand Journal of Health and Safety Practice

From the Journal Editor, July 2025

2025-07-06T04:03:00+00:00

Managing Safety Risks Associated with Nightshift in the New Zealand Electrical Distribution Industry

2025-05-05T04:59:20+00:00

This study examines how the New Zealand electrical distribution industry approaches the management of fatigue-related impairment associated with night shift work. Using a qualitative study design, and reflexive thematic analysis, it draws on both industry-submitted documents and focus groups with Network Control Operators and Fault Responders to explore current practices, perceptions, and gaps in fatigue risk management. The research exposes a heavy reliance on the self-management of fatigue, ambiguous policies, and insufficient training. Findings ultimately highlight the need for defensible fatigue risk management strategies to safeguard workers and the public.

Good Sport

2025-06-30T10:00:23+00:00

This paper explores the New Zealand (NZ) high-performance sport industry from the perspective of occupational health and safety (OHS). High-performance athletes face significant psychosocial stresses and hazards in the course of their work, which have not been sufficiently addressed through top-down leadership, or safe systems of work. This paper outlines best practice for managing psychosocial hazards in the NZ high-performance sport industry, culminating in a proposed safeguarding policy. The “Proposed HPSNZ Policy: Wellbeing and Mental Health Support for High-Performance Athletes” is grounded in international best practice incorporating literature from OHS, hauora Māori (Māori health), and sport psychology. If implemented by High Performance Sport NZ (HPSNZ), this policy could safeguard NZ high-performance athletes from psychosocial workplace hazards. Such a policy was recommended following the death of NZ Olympian Olivia Podmore, and this paper presents a viable option allowing HPSNZ to fulfil that recommendation.

New Zealand Occupational Hygiene Society (NZOHS) Conference

2025-07-04T02:00:03+00:00

The New Zealand Occupational Hygiene Society (NZOHS) Work Related Health Conference 2025 was held from 26–28 May at the Hilton Auckland, marking the fourth instalment of our biannual event. With the theme "Challenges, Changes, Solutions", the conference brought together over 160 delegates from across New Zealand and 13 other countries, including Australia, Canada, Indonesia, South Korea, the Netherlands, South Africa, and the United States. It was preceded by having the privilege of hosting the International Occupational Hygiene Association (IOHA) Board Meeting. This year’s event truly lived up to its title as a work-related health conference, showcasing the breadth of presentations from various health & safety disciplines and from different countries around the world.

The programme featured four keynote speakers, four continuing education sessions, 27 concurrent presentations, and four practical workshops. The diversity of topics reflected the complexity of modern work-related health issues – ranging from best practice, occupational hygiene and health to psychosocial risk, human factors and ergonomics, and technology.

Health and safety reporting in New Zealand

2025-07-06T02:40:57+00:00

In a world of acronyms, health and safety is not immune – LTIs, RAMs, ISO, IOSH, SoPs, HSNO – the list could continue. Perhaps the one referred to most frequently by Boards and Executives is TRIFR – total recordable injury frequency rates. It’s a measurement tool which has its place, but there is a growing view among many in health and safety that TRIFR alone as a lag indicator is not sufficient for Officers to take an informed view of health and safety performance across a business or operation.

It’s for this reason that in early 2024 the Business Leaders’ Health and Safety Forum (Forum), a membership group of 400+ CEOs focused on improving health and safety leadership, officially paused its annual benchmarking project. This project, run for more than a decade saw participating organisations who belong to the Forum submit their annual TRIFR data, enabling them to compare their organisation’s performance against those in the same industry. For some members this was a key benefit of joining the Forum.