By EMA Head of Advanced Manufacturing Jane Finlayson

In an industry where precision, productivity and performance define success, safety must never be treated as a background concern.

For manufacturers, every injury represents not just harm to a valued person but also disruption to production, increased costs and reputational risk.

Yet despite decades of progress, manufacturing remains New Zealand’s highest-harm sector.

At the Employers and Manufacturers Association (EMA) we’ve been looking at ways to assist the sector and one result was the Manufacturing Safety Dashboard, which we launched earlier this year.

It’s a dynamic online tool designed to help manufacturers understand, benchmark and reduce workplace harm.

This dashboard can be a catalyst for cultural change in manufacturing businesses. It was designed to take what has too often been a reactive approach to safety and turn it into a proactive, informed strategy for harm reduction.

Recently, I had the opportunity to present the dashboard to a group of structural steel manufacturers and distributors.

Drilling into the data revealed not only the levels of harm prevalent in their subsector but also the types of injuries occurring most frequently, and how that compares to other manufacturing subsectors.

This level of visibility sparked meaningful conversations about risk mitigation, training, seasonal workforce management, and the role of leadership in fostering safer workplaces.

The Manufacturing Safety Dashboard was developed initially by WorkSafe, in partnership with ACC and data specialists at Flock, with a clear objective: to make harm data accessible and actionable.

Drawing from ACC claims data and overlaying it with BIC (Business Industry Classification) codes, the tool provides a transparent picture of injury trends across the many subsectors that make up manufacturing.

Whether a company operates in plastics, food processing, metal fabrication, or structural steel, the dashboard allows users to filter by industry, region and time period to understand patterns of harm.

One of the most powerful features is its ability to compare subsectors. During the structural steel session, we explored how injury rates in steel distribution compared with other heavy manufacturing categories.

The data revealed a higher incidence of crush injuries and falls from height. That’s unsurprising given the nature of the work but still sobering when quantified. This can lead to practical discussions about PPE compliance, refresher training cycles, equipment upgrades, and even job design.

What makes the dashboard so valuable is that it shifts the conversation from compliance to asking how well we prevent these most prevalent types of harm in our business and what could we do to stop this specific type of harm from happening.

Numbers, on their own, do not keep people safe. But when those numbers are presented in context, they reveal patterns of harm, missed opportunities and, crucially, where prevention will make the biggest difference.

The dashboard can provide the foundation to a comprehensive harm reduction action plan for manufacturing. For example, if a business sees a spike in repetitive strain injuries, they can access ergonomic assessment tools, job rotation models and training options. If falls are prevalent, they can access fall-prevention audits, ladder-safety modules, and PPE best practice guidelines.

Manufacturers tell us repeatedly that they want transparency and relevance. They are tired of generic averages and broad, sector-wide assumptions. They want to know how they are really performing relative to their peers. The dashboard gives them that.

For the structural steel manufacturers we met, it validated anecdotal concerns with hard evidence, including seasonal spikes in musculoskeletal injuries during peak construction months. This knowledge means that safety planning can be timed, resourced and measured for impact.

Of course, data alone will not change a culture. The EMA’s role is to support members in translating insight into action. Alongside the dashboard, our Safety Adviceline provides immediate access to expert guidance on safety issues, compliance and best practice.

Our on-site assessments identify risks and practical opportunities for improvement. Our training, whether public or tailored in-house, builds capability across all levels of an organisation. Our events bring manufacturers together to share lessons, innovations and success stories, because learning from each other accelerates progress.

In a sector where there are specific and ongoing skills shortages, safe workplaces attract and retain skilled staff, reduce downtime and protect the reputation of both businesses and the wider sector.

If you have not yet explored the EMA’s Manufacturing Safety Dashboard, I urge you to do so. Whether you are running a small workshop with 10 staff or a large-scale distribution centre with hundreds, the data is there to guide you. It will show you where your risks sit, how you compare with your peers, and where to focus your energy for the greatest impact.

You can find the dashboard here: ema.co.nz/services/manufacturing/dashboard