The refreshed WorkSafe strategy defines the wider health and safety at work system (te aronga matua) and reflects our role in the system (kawa), how we will undertake that role (tikanga), where we will focus our effort (kaupapa), and how we will measure our impact (mātauranga).

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WorkSafe Strategy (PDF 4.7 MB)

Foreword

Jennifer Kerr
Chair

Workplaces in Aotearoa New Zealand should be healthy and safe. No one should be harmed or killed because of work.

This is far from our reality. Every year 50–60 people are killed at work and 400–500 hospitalised with a serious work-related injury (acute harm), and an estimated 750-900 people die because of work-related ill health (chronic harm). While these awful figures have steadily reduced over time, there is a long way to go and much work to do by everyone who can influence health and safety in our workplaces.

The law that underpins our work health and safety system places the responsibility for managing risks, and ensuring work is healthy and safe, on businesses with the support and involvement from their workers. This responsibility is based on the fact businesses and workers best know their workplace, they best know their risks, and they best know how to manage them.

As the primary health and safety at work regulator, WorkSafe’s role is to influence businesses to carry out their responsibilities - and to hold them to account if they don’t.

While WorkSafe has a significant role in influencing better outcomes, it cannot do this alone. Other government agencies, industry bodies, iwi, and unions all have a vital role to play.

The refreshed WorkSafe strategy defines the wider health and safety at work system (te aronga matua) and reflects our role in the system (kawa), how we will undertake that role (tikanga), where we will focus our effort (kaupapa), and how we will measure our impact (mātauranga).

Understanding and incorporating cultural settings into our new direction will enable us to develop holistic initiatives that benefit all. It is imperative that we do not lose focus on reducing unacceptable harm inequities. For example, we know that Māori and Pasifika workers experience higher rates of acute harm than others.

As we deliver on our strategy, we look forward to working with everyone who can help influence better health and safety at work in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Our strategy on a page

Download our strategy on a page.

WorkSafe strategy on a page (PDF 47 KB)

1. What is New Zealand’s health and safety at work regulatory system?

Te aronga matua

This includes the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 and the various rules and regulations made under it. The Act places the primary responsibility for ensuring work is healthy and safe on businesses. It also recognises that workers play a very important supporting role, particularly through worker engagement, participation, and representation. The concept is that businesses and workers best know their work, the risks involved, and how those risks should be properly managed.

Our system also includes the WorkSafe New Zealand Act 2013, which is the legislation that created WorkSafe as an independent regulator.

WorkSafe and the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 were put in place after an Independent Taskforce led a national conversation about the fundamental shifts needed to improve New Zealand’s work health and safety performance.

But the system isn’t just about the law. It is also about:

• the information and guidance that helps people understand what they need to do and why
• the regulators and other organisations that support that understanding, and make sure people follow the rules, and
• all the different groups of people that are affected by and operate within the system of rules and create our work health and safety culture. This includes businesses, workers and their whānau, community and iwi groups, customers, health and safety professionals, and many others.

2. What is our role?

Kawa

The WorkSafe New Zealand Act 2013 sets out our main purpose, which is to ‘promote and contribute to a balanced framework for securing the health and safety of workers and workplaces’.

The words ‘promote and contribute’ make it clear it is not our role to secure the health and safety of work – that is the responsibility of businesses, with support and involvement from workers.

Rather, we promote and contribute by influencing businesses and workers to comply with their responsibilities to ensure work is healthy and safe.

The idea of ‘a balanced framework’ plays out in two ways. First, it sets out the balance of responsibilities between businesses, workers and the government. Second, it recognises that all work will involve some risk and there is a balance to be struck on how those risks are best managed.

The Act also sets out our additional role, which is to ‘promote and contribute to the safe supply and use of electricity and gas’.

3. How do we deliver our role?

Tikanga

The WorkSafe New Zealand Act 2013 sets out 16 functions for us to undertake as the regulator. Those functions describe the various ways in which we are expected to ‘promote and contribute to’ – or influence – health and safety at work. Broadly, these functions can be grouped under three general headings – engage, enforce, and permit.

We influence in three key ways:

• Engage: Helping businesses and workers to understand how to meet their responsibilities to ensure work is healthy and safe.
• Enforce: Taking action against those who fail to meet their responsibilities to ensure work is healthy and safe.
• Permit: Allowing businesses and individuals to carry out high-risk work activities that require permission to do so.

Engage

Engagement activities include:

• Education and training: We promote work health and safety being integrated into accessible education and industry-based training for those at highest risk of harm.
• Publishing information and resources: We develop and share data, insights, guidance and resources designed to empower businesses and workers to improve health and safety practice.
• Workplace assessments: We undertake planned inspections of workplaces or work activity to assess health and safety practice. These visits often focus on engagement and can also result in enforcement activities.
• Marketing and communications: We use a range of channels and tactics to reach businesses and workers, to influence action to improve health and safety practice in high harm areas.
• Advisory services: We contribute our subject matter expertise and foster collaborative action to improve health and safety practice in high harm areas.

Case studies

Support for worker representatives

Health and Safety Representatives (HSRs) play a key role in providing a voice for workers to raise issues and improve work practices.

Our inspectors regularly engage with HSRs as part of their workplace visits. To help strengthen the voice of workers we have established a new online platform. This platform enables HSRs to connect with subject matter experts, training and best practice guidance. We now have around 1,400 HSRs participating.

In addition, we have shared over 2,100 health and safety resources, 5 newsletters, responded to 180 HSR enquiries and delivered 145 follow up engagements to provide advice about effective HSR practices, to ensure workers can have their say.

Partnering with forestry industry and iwi

We formed a leadership alliance with iwi, industry leaders, forestry businesses and workers in Te Tairāwhiti to generate collective action to address causes of harm.

The initiative, Te Kawa a Tāne, aims to develop a locally led and owned plan for better health and safety outcomes. It includes business health and safety governance training, culturally appropriate worker health and safety training, and initiatives to resolve technology barriers and reduce risk for workers. Our work continues with industry to update their approved code of practice and the development of other guidance resources.

Enforce

Enforcement tools include:

• Improvement Notice: A written notice issued by a WorkSafe inspector directing that a work health and safety risk be addressed.
• Prohibition Notice: A Prohibition Notice may be issued requiring activity to cease immediately if a WorkSafe inspector determines that a serious health or safety risk is occurring or could occur.
• Infringement Notice: An ‘on the spot fine’ may be issued for certain types of straightforward breaches.
• Prosecution: We file charges for breaches of the law which may result in the Court imposing financial penalties or other sanctions.
• Enforceable undertaking: Voluntary agreements between WorkSafe and a duty holder. They are legally binding and are generally used as an alternative to prosecution.

Case studies

Prohibition Notice to prevent chronic harm

We were notified of a potential disturbance of asbestos-containing materials for construction work near a daycare centre. Stopping further exposure and harm was our first priority. We acted swiftly by issuing a Prohibition Notice to stop further construction work until the asbestos could be safely contained and removed. Immediate action was taken by the construction firm to clean up the site and make things right. Within 24 hours, work was able to safely resume.

Prosecution in response to acute harm

The worker of a manufacturing company was operating an unguarded machine. The worker was caught and pulled onto the machine’s roller table. They suffered multiple crush injuries, which resulted in an amputation. The failure of the business to ensure there was adequate guarding on machinery exposed workers to harm. To hold the business to account, we prosecuted the company, which was convicted and fined $220,000. The company also paid $172,000 in reparations to the worker.

Permit

Permitting activities include:

• Detailed technical requirements: We develop or set requirements that detail how particular work is carried out (for example, approved methods for asbestos, compliance certifier performance standards, electrical codes of practice, safe work instruments, and approved codes of practice).
• Authorisations: We permit businesses or individuals to perform certain highrisk work (for example, adventure activities or asbestos removal).
• Exemptions: We can exempt businesses from meeting certain legal requirements if we are satisfied that safety standards are not reduced.
• Monitoring: We monitor those businesses and individuals authorised to work in high-risk areas and take action where it is required.

Case studies

Authorising urgent repairs using an approved method

Storm damage in May 2023 caused a road to collapse, bursting a water pipe. The area under the road was likely to have asbestos fragments mixed into the soil, and use of high-pressure spray on asbestos or asbestos containing materials is prohibited. WorkSafe quickly developed and authorised an approved method to allow the contaminated soil to be removed under strict conditions, allowing the pipe to be repaired and the road to be reinstated quickly.

Working with regime participants to improve safety

Following a number of enforcement activities in 2019, a New Zealand multinational embarked on safety improvements across its sizable manufacturing division. WorkSafe maintained a close relationship with the business throughout this process to educate and guide it as it transferred health and safety practices from the major hazard facilities within its New Zealand operations to its wider operations, resulting in safety improvements to its 39 manufacturing facilities in four countries.

4. Where do we focus our effort?

Kaupapa

Key facts and figures:

• 600,000 businesses
• 2.9 million workers
• 600 WorkSafe staff

Acute harm

Acute harm is serious injury, illness, or death, that arises from a single event.

Every year 50–60 people are killed at work and 400–500 are hospitalised with a serious injury, some of which result in long-term disability. Some workers, such as Māori, Pasifika and older workers, have higher rates of acute harm than others.

Acute harm tends to be concentrated in a few industries, including:

• construction
• manufacturing
• agriculture
• forestry.

The key risks faced by workers that lead to serious and fatal acute harm are:

• vehicles and machinery
• falls from height
• falling and moving objects
• electrical and chemical hazards.

Chronic harm

Chronic harm is serious injury, illness, or death, that is caused over time.

It is estimated that each year between 750 and 900 people in New Zealand die as a result of work-related ill health. Of these, cancer and respiratory disease cause the largest proportion of deaths, as a result of repeated exposure to:

• asbestos
• silica dust
• welding fumes and toxic metals
• engine exhaust fumes
• wood dust.

Workers are most affected by exposures in the following industries:

• construction
• manufacturing
• agriculture.

Catastrophic harm

Catastrophic harm is serious injury, illness, or death, affecting multiple people – usually from a single event. Events like this are rare. However, while they make up a small proportion of overall work-related harm in New Zealand, their impacts can be severe and significant.

In some instances, the catastrophic risks of an activity are significant enough for the law to require that they be managed differently. Regulations can include specific processes to reduce the risks that could lead to events such as explosion, fire, collapse, and chemical spills. Some of these are focused at industry level such as mining, petroleum exploration, or businesses with very large quantities of hazardous substances such as chemical plants (known as major hazard facilities). Others relate to specific activities, such as managing the risk of explosive atmospheres.

5. How do we know we are making a difference?

Mātauranga

Our role is to influence businesses and workers to meet their responsibilities to ensure work is healthy and safe. We do this by focusing our engagement, enforcement, and permitting activities across the three different types of harm – acute, chronic and catastrophic – to make the biggest difference and address inequity.

We will measure and evaluate how effective we are, and adjust our approach to where evidence and insights indicate there are better ways to make an impact. We will also monitor long-term trends and patterns across all types of work to ensure we continue to focus on the areas of greatest risk and harm.

If we are effective in influencing businesses and workers, we will see a change in work health and safety behaviour and practices. Over time, this will result in reduced harm to workers and others affected by work activities.