Health and Safety Business Partner

• Full Time
• Application Closes 27 Aug 2026
• Taranaki - New Plymouth
• Occupational Health and Safety Specialist

The opportunity

Port Taranaki is seeking a Health and Safety Business Partner to join our Asset Management and Assurance team.

About the role

This is a great opportunity for someone with existing health and safety experience who is ready to broaden their capability in a complex, high-hazard operational environment. You will work closely with leaders, staff, contractors, port users and customers to provide practical health and safety advice, coaching and assurance support across the business.

Reporting to the Health, Safety and Environment Manager, you will support compliance with health and safety obligations, strengthen everyday safety practice, contribute to reporting and assurance activity, and help deliver practical improvement initiatives. You will also support associated environmental, quality and wellness activities where appropriate.

Working as part of a supportive HSE team, you will have the opportunity to build on your existing experience, develop your operational safety capability and challenge yourself in an environment where effective risk management, worker engagement and practical improvement matter every day.

Key responsibilities include:

• Provide practical health and safety advice, support and coaching to leaders, staff, contractors and port users.
• Maintain a visible presence in the field and help teams identify gaps between expected practice and work being carried out.
• Support worker participation through the Switched On programme, the Health and Safety Committee and other engagement initiatives.
• Undertake assurance activities and use insights to support data-informed improvements across the business.
• Support incident response, investigations, corrective actions, critical risk activity and practical risk reduction initiatives.
• Contribute to health and safety reporting, scorecards, system reviews, meeting administration and governance reporting information.
• Provide case management support for workplace injuries and contribute to workplace wellness initiatives.

About you

You will already have some health and safety experience and be looking for an opportunity to apply and grow your skills in a more complex, high-hazard environment. You enjoy working with people, getting out into the field, asking good questions and helping teams turn health and safety expectations into practical everyday actions.   You will bring a practical, relationship-focused approach, sound judgement and strong communication skills.    To be successful in this role you will ideally have:

• A relevant qualification in health and safety or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• Sound working knowledge of health and safety legislation, good practice, hazard identification, risk management and contractor management.
• Experience in health, safety and wellbeing practice, ideally within an operational, industrial, logistics, construction, marine or similar environment.
• Confidence coaching, facilitating and partnering with leaders and teams to support practical safety outcomes.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including report writing, presentations and the ability to explain information clearly.
• Good relationship-building, problem-solving and organisational skills, with the ability to manage competing priorities.
• Experience using Microsoft Office and health and safety systems, with exposure to incident investigations, corrective actions, permit to work or operational control systems considered advantageous.

Our values - At Port Taranaki, our values guide us on how we act with one another and how we make decisions within our business. Demonstration of these values will be key to your success:

• Our people come first: we take care of each other and our communities.
• Integrity guides us: we trust each other and act with respect and honesty, even when it is challenging.
• We embrace the future: we strive for improvement through innovation and learning.
• We collaborate to succeed: we work as a team, helping each other succeed.

What we offer

We offer an environment where continuous learning and professional development are encouraged, as well as the ability to work autonomously with expertise and guidance at hand when you need it. We consider your wellbeing to be a priority, and we support you with great flexibility initiatives as well as having a respectful approach to diversity, inclusion and equity in the workplace.

If this sounds like an opportunity you would enjoy, and you are motivated to contribute to the overall success of Port Taranaki Limited, please apply now with your CV and Cover Letter.  We will begin reviewing applications as they arrive, including conducting interviews. We will close this role when a successful candidate has been appointed. 

All candidates must already hold the required residency status to work in New Zealand and be able to satisfy a Ministry of Justice criminal background check. Candidates must also hold a full NZ driver's license.