By EMA Manager of Employment Relations and Safety, Paul Jarvie

Planned amendments to New Zealand’s Health and Safety at Work Act represent a shift towards reducing compliance burdens and offering businesses clearer guidelines.

However, while these changes may streamline processes and alleviate some administrative stress, they fall short in addressing the deep-rooted issues that contribute to New Zealand’s unacceptably high rates of workplace harm.

On the week of March 31, Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, Brooke van Velden, announced the following proposed changes:

Reducing general H&S requirements on small businesses

• Small, low-risk businesses will only need to provide basic facilities and manage critical risks in their health and safety practice.
• Notifiable incident requirements will be restricted to significant workplace events such as serious injury, illness, death and incidents (including those on the Schedule 2 ACC list).
• Over-zealous and over-compliant health and safety practice can be reported to a hotline.

Freeing up landowners from liability in third-party recreational activities 

• Landowners or managers who allow public access to land for recreational activities will not be liable for injuries.
• Health and safety responsibilities will fall on the organisation running those activities.

Directors to focus on governance and oversight, not day-to-day management of health and safety risks

• A clear distinction will be made between health and safety governance and operational management.
• There will be a reduction in overcompliance of health and safety policies and duplication of plans.

Greater use of Approved Codes of Practice  

• Compliance with an Approved Code of Practice (ACOP) will become the same as compliance with the Health and Safety At Work Act in many cases.

• The definition of what ‘reasonably practicable’ means in specific industries will become clearer.
• Industry organisations will be allowed to initiate work on ACOPs, with final approval reserved by the Minister.

The EMA has been heavily involved in recent work with ACC to co-design a Harm Reduction Action Plan for Manufacturing, so we know the issues and complexities businesses face in navigating the health and safety landscape.

The simplification of  the Health and Safety At Work Act, such as exempting small, low-risk businesses from extensive reporting requirements, will undoubtedly ease the strain. The reduction of ‘tick-box’ exercises, which often detract from addressing genuine safety risks, is a positive development.

Additionally, the clarification of responsibilities between directors and managers is a positive change. By delineating governance from day-to-day operational oversight, the reforms empower managers to better focus on immediate safety concerns, while directors are freed up to concentrate on strategic decisions.

This clarity should reduce confusion and make it easier for businesses to allocate resources effectively.

For industries such as manufacturing, where risks evolve quickly, the introduction of Approved Codes of Practice (ACOPs) offer flexibility, allowing businesses to develop industry-specific guidelines that adapt more rapidly to changing circumstances.

But while these reforms may reduce administrative burden, they do little to tackle the deeper, systemic issues that continue to plague New Zealand’s workplace safety record.

Despite being based on Australian and UK legislation, both of which have much stronger records in reducing workplace injuries and fatalities, New Zealand still suffers from alarmingly high levels of harm.

Our workplace injury and fatality statistics remain among the worst of the developed nations, with twice the rate of Australia and four times that of the UK.

Clearly, something more profound is needed.

The fundamental question remains: will these reforms genuinely reduce harm or are they simply a band-aid solution to a much deeper problem?

The root cause of high workplace injury and fatality rates in New Zealand is the lack of clarity in regulations and the failure to address key areas like enforcement, education, and multi-employer workplace coordination.

Without a modern regulator that is there to help, the reforms run the risk of becoming another set of guidelines that businesses pay lip service to, without making any real changes on the ground.

It’s not enough to merely simplify compliance, we need to foster a culture of safety that goes beyond paper compliance and drives practical, meaningful change.

For instance, while the introduction of ACOPs tailored to industry subsectors is an innovative approach, it assumes that businesses have the capacity and resources to develop and implement them effectively.

In manufacturing, there are more than 70 subsectors, each requiring either industry or business associations to engage and create these practical guidelines if they are needed.

This argument assumes we have the economies of scale within subsectors to resource these ACOPs.

I’ve been involved in the drafting of ACOPs in the past  – they come in and out of fashion – and they were a process of endless meetings and wordsmithing.

Some useful ACOPs came out of this process. There are currently 23 existing ACOPs on areas such as asbestos removal, but there was a real lack of resourcing to successfully build on these and, in many subsectors, they weren’t completed.

In reality, the lack of economies of scale in smaller subsectors means that resources for drafting, updating, and enforcing these codes are often insufficient.

In practice, the absence of a well-resourced and coordinated effort by government agencies such as WorkSafe means that some subsectors will continue to be underrepresented, leaving workers at risk.

Moreover, the government’s budget for health and safety enforcement remains a point of concern. The announcement of an additional $2.7 million in funding for new inspectors is a step in the right direction, but it’s worth remembering that the annual cost of workplace harm in New Zealand is estimated at $4.9 billion.

This raises the question: is $2.7 million enough to reverse years of underinvestment in workplace safety?

The situation is made more urgent by the recent restructuring of WorkSafe, which has seen the reduction of core roles and functions.

Imagine you’re driving down a straight road with your pedal to the metal. If you look in your rearview and there’s a police car, what do you do? Of course, you’ll slow down and drive more carefully.

If you see that police car then pull off the road, you’ll be more inclined to keep travelling as you were. Consider the millions spent on road safety to get the driving public to become confident and competent. The argument is, should we need a police force to monitor our driving? Law only ever prescribes the minimum requirements for a particular issue.

The EMA believes New Zealand needs more detailed health and safety regulations, similar to those of Australia and the UK, and we need a national strategic plan to make workplaces both safer and healthier.

WorkSafe NZ needs to be stabilised and given a clear mandate to work with businesses on making the workplace safer. It needs to be a modern regulator, not one focussed solely on non-compliance and enforcement.

New Zealand has to accept that, as a country, we are not doing workplace health and safety well.

Discussions with the Minister and her team at MBIE indicate that there are more health and safety changes in the pipeline, which is welcome news.

We need not reinvent the wheel but rather learn from countries with strong health and safety regulations and implement known and successful interventions.