This year the awards feature a new category, Emerging Practitioner, for H&S practitioners aged under 35 (as at 31 March 2020) and who have less than five years' experience in a paid H&S role.
Now is an excellent time to reflect on your best health & safety initiatives of the last year and to consider entering them. It's also an opportunity to recognise the work of safety representatives, H&S practitioners, and leaders who have championed the cause.
As always, entry is free and is open to any New Zealand-based organisation or person.
Great to see the new Emerging Practitioner award this year - although I am interested in why the criteria is <35 and <5 years experience, as I know a fair few emerging safety professionals that have moved into H&S roles later in their professional life and so wouldn't be eligible to be entered into this category no matter how deserving they would be of the title. I just would have expected it to have been an either/or criteria (or just a pure age criteria like most other young professional awards).
The idea is to acknowledge and encourage the younger people in H&S, given it is - like so many - an ageing profession.
Bear in mind the 'Practitioner' category remains alongside the new 'Emerging Practitioner' category, so any other H&S person who has carried out some noteworthy initiatives in the last year or so should be nominated for 'Practitioner'.
(Note that all categories except Lifetime Achievement are focused on a person or organisation's recent initiatives. So 'Practitioner' is open to any H&S practitioner of any level of experience.)