Officially launched Tuesday, ShopCare is one of five initiatives to receive funding in the first round of ACC‘s Workplace Injury Prevention Grant scheme.

Led by CEO and former GM logistics for Countdown NZ, Liz May, ShopCare meets a critical need for dedicated health and safety leadership in New Zealand – to drive long-term positive change.

Focusing initially on the food and grocery sub-sector, ShopCare will partner with major retailers, manufacturers, transporters and suppliers to improve the safety, health, and wellbeing of all employees involved in the creation, supply, delivery, and sale of the numerous items that grace our supermarket, dairy, and retail shelves.

ShopCare brings together senior leaders from a diverse group of businesses to share knowledge and problem solve. This approach fosters enhanced ownership and responsibility for organisational health and safety amongst business leaders, and models leadership behaviours to influence cultural change and save lives.

May says ShopCare will drive industry collaboration and knowledge sharing, and enable a coordinated approach to simplify and align safety processes and systems, and the reporting of workplace injuries, near misses and hazards.

“One of the most significant challenges currently facing the retail and supply chain industry is the lack of consistency in health and safety systems.

“Organisations have their own way of doing things, and as a result, when we have employees and suppliers moving between companies, there is not a uniform set of health and safety standards. We aim to address the challenges of overlapping responsibilities between companies and agree a common language and standards that can be applied across the industry.

“We aim to lead the adoption of initiatives that identify and address critical industry risks, creating an industry aligned charter of change to effect a different outcome for the food and grocery retail and supply chain sector.”

The food and grocery sub-sector is a springboard for positive change across the entire retail and supply chain industry. Over time, ShopCare plans to scale initiatives and apply these to other retail segments including hardware retail and general merchandise retail.