Fonterra Co-operative wins major health and safety award

Fonterra Co-operative wins major health and safety award

Two innovative employee health and wellness initiatives from Fonterra Co-operative Limited brought the company the WorkSafe New Zealand and ACC sponsored Supreme Award at last night's Safeguard Workplace Health and Safety Awards in Auckland.

The company won WorkSafe's category award for the best initiative to address a workplace health risk with a programme addressing milk tanker driver fatigue. Fonterra also won another category award for its employee wellbeing initiative which created a village concept where facilities for all contractors and subcontractors on site were centralised in one spot.

WorkSafe Chief Executive Gordon MacDonald said the company had demonstrated innovative thinking in areas of risk in the workplace that are often hard to detect and mitigate.

"Milk tanker drivers are working from the early hours of the morning through till late in the day and Fonterra's put a layered programme in place to identify at risk drivers, and told the judging panel they're now having much more honest conversations about fatigue with their drivers," he said.

"The village concept not only provides a clean, dry and safe environment for workers, it is also a place where the collaboration between tradies that is so important to workplace health and safety is happening - and other companies are keen to try the concept.

"Work related health issues are high on WorkSafe’s agenda and our long term strategy is close to finalisation and launch. These initiatives from one of the most influential groups in the economy send a strong signal to its managers and workers that work related health must be a priority, and that it can be tackled positively," Mr MacDonald said.

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