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Strengthening our people and culture

Our why

Our people are critical to our success in becoming a modern regulator. Creating an organisation that values and grows its people is essential for embedding a high-performance culture. A strong organisational culture ensures our people feel engaged, connected and valued. Our changing operating context will create new challenges for how we work and deliver our business in the future. We need flexibility to align our people capability to the opportunities and challenges that present as our external environment evolves.

Our aim is to deliver organisational excellence by ensuring our people are highly capable, diverse and engaged, with the right skills and experience to create a high-performing organisation. We will ensure we have the right people, in the right places, at the right time to translate our strategy into action and support the Government’s priorities.

High-performing and engaged people

In 2018/19 we developed our People Strategy to provide a roadmap to support WorkSafe’s transition to a modern and more effective regulator. Our People Strategy has eight work-streams: leadership; health, safety and wellbeing; performance; talent management; reward and recognition; employee recognition; grow and adapt; and technology, including design work on a Human Resources Information and Payroll System.

We have commenced the implementation of the People Strategy across multiple workstreams including revamping our inspectorate training programme and delivering a range of other capability-based training.

We signed up to be a Rainbow Tick organisation to uplift our inclusion of our LGBTQ community and we established rainbow and women’s networks.

We started providing eligible staff members (those who are permanent and work more than 15 hours a week) with an insurance bundle as part of our benefits package. This insurance plan is part of our commitment to caring for our people’s wellbeing, and will provide a financial safety net and support for our permanent staff.

Enhancing our technology, data and infrastructure

Our why

Since we became WorkSafe more than five years ago, we have kept many of our systems connected to MBIE in order to let us focus on the work of being a regulator. In order to support our vision of becoming a modern regulator, we need the right systems to enable staff to work in a smart, integrated and flexible way, becoming technology- and dataenabled and intelligence-driven. These improvements will have a flowon effect enabling WorkSafe to become more effective and efficient.

Building tools for the modern regulator

In 2018/19 we progressed our Digital and Technology Strategy, setting out the capability and systems we need to deliver our  outcomes, and began the transformation work on the technology infrastructure investment required to enable delivery of new, optimised services. We began the process to de-couple our ICT from MBIE. We also started work to modernise the workplace environment and user solutions, updating some of the older technology that our teams use so they will be able to access the tools they need from anywhere, on any device with an internet connection. We also selected a solution and delivery partner for a new HRIS (Human Resource Information System)/Payroll and Health and Safety system, and have begun the design process for implementation.

Additionally, we also procured, and are in the process of implementing, a fit-for-purpose Project and Portfolio Management and Reporting toolset. This new tool will help our organisation to become more effective in the way we make investment choices. It will also drive operational excellence and will grow WorkSafe’s internal capability and maturity.

Supporting our aspiration to be data- and intelligence-led, we continued to build our business intelligence capability and enhance data and intelligence collection.

Future-proofing our organisation

Our why

WorkSafe is at a critical point of ensuring that the organisation is sustainable and future-proofed to lift New Zealand’s health and safety performance towards world-class. This requires ensuring we have the right capability, service and interventions in place and that our funding and resources keep pace with what is expected of us.

Ensuring a sustainable organisation

Our four-year strategy provides a clear pathway to guide where we need to put our resources, effort and future investment. We secured additional funding with the signing of a 10-year Master Agreement with ACC. This funding will make a major difference to improving health and safety for workers. The agreement provides a sustainable funding pathway to support harm prevention initiatives. 

We also laid out our future pathway to being a modern, world-class regulator. We secured initial baseline funding to improve responses in priority areas, support businesses and workers through educational guidance and digital tools, and increase specialist assessment and enforcement resources. We are finalising our modernisation implementation programme to support further investment for harm prevention, and ICT capability, and improve insights and intelligence. This will enable WorkSafe to be targeted, aligned and flexible.