Connecting Māori in the workplace

.

A Whakatāne-based company is combining cultural practice with traditional health and safety processes.

Haumaru HS has been awarded $520,000 from ACC to create an app to help connect Māori workers to Matauranga Māori in the workplace.

The grant is one of three workplace injury prevention grants ACC has awarded to initiatives aiming to solve workplace health and safety challenges in the manufacturing sector.

“We want these grants to be a catalyst for major health and safety improvements across Aotearoa New Zealand by developing, sharing, investing in, and implementing solutions to problems,” said ACC workplace safety manager Paula Wood.

The Me Mataara app will include check-ins, surveys, and videos to help enhance traditional health and safety processes in the workplace.

They will complete an initial test at a Māori owned, milk manufacturing site in Taupō, with future plans to scale across the manufacturing sector.

Haumaru HS also aims to provide access to business case templates, to help other businesses invest in Mātauranga Māori.

The three grant recipients will receive $2.17 million from ACC collectively to develop their design for use in the manufacturing sector.

The other two recipients are Taranaki-based Reloc8 NZ, and Auckland-based Rush Digital.

This is the fifth round of ACC’s Workplace Injury Prevention grants. Each grant round focuses on different priorities, says Wood.

These are based on discussions with internal and external stakeholders, and it is also informed by ACC data to identify areas that would benefit from innovation or capability development, she says.

“For this grant round, we’re looking for initiatives that can eliminate or significantly reduce hazards and lower injuries through Good Work Design approaches, or the adoption of effective technology and/or engineered solutions.”

Reloc8 NZ has been awarded $715,000 to develop and refine an innovative aluminium pallet cage designed to more easily load, move and empty products that are hard to pallet, such as end-of-life car bumpers, which can put workers at risk of injury.

Rush Digital has been awarded $935,000 to use a combination of CCTV and AI to monitor real-time movements of people and objects, providing insights into hazards that could lead to injury. Using these insights, they aim to create solutions to reduce harm through good workplace design.

Manufacturing is one of New Zealand's biggest sectors, employing around 200,000 people across 18,000 businesses and 15 sub-industries.

It also experiences one of the highest rates of harm and injury. The costs of work-related injuries in manufacturing amount to 19 percent of ACC’s total weekly compensation costs, compared to 15 percent in 2015.

In 2022, injury claims in manufacturing resulted in 240,400 lost workdays.

Each compensation claim today amounts to 25 days off work on average, compared to 20 days off work 10 years ago.

“To date, large investment has already been made in other high-risk priority sectors, and we now want to do the same in manufacturing.”

Manufacturing has an estimated $1.23 billion burden on the New Zealand economy each year from work-related injuries in the sector, according to a recent report from the Employers and Manufacturers Association (EMA).

“We want to support manufacturing businesses in creating evidence-based solutions to create safer workplaces.

“It’s important that we work together to address the health and safety challenges of kaimahi (workers).

“We’re looking forward to seeing the three projects come to life.”

This year is the final round of ACC’s Workplace Injury Prevention grants.

This five-year programme of investment began in 2019. Over the five grant rounds ACC has invested $18.67 million in grants.

Support the journalism you love

Make a Donation