WorkSafe's Sophies Choice restructure

On 23 October, WorkSafe began consulting with its staff on its latest restructure. The restructuring wasn’t a surprise given the news in May that ACC was discontinuing the injury prevention funding to WorkSafe from early 2025.

What has been a surprise is the scale of the proposed restructure. WorkSafe proposes to disestablish 180 roles (60 of which are currently vacant) and create 140 new roles. An anonymous source has shared the WorkSafe change proposal with us and many others and we have significant concerns. We and other stakeholders have met with WorkSafe to discuss these concerns.

WorkSafe’s shrinking funding means that they are faced with difficult and unpalatable decisions. Last year’s restructure took all of the discretionary spending out of the organisation and now WorkSafe needs to cut programmes to stay within budget. And if WorkSafe wants to do something new, it needs to be at expense of existing work.

We support many of the areas of new investment by WorkSafe. The restructuring includes reasonably significant investment in inspector capability and support. Alongside this, further resourcing and support are provided to the four priority sectors.

The problems come on the other side of the ledger. The cuts are wide and deep.
WorkSafe plans to dramatically downsize the teams dealing with work-related health including disestablishment of the Human Factors and Ergonomics team and significant cuts to the Mentally Healthy Work and Occupational Health teams. Given the scale of harms due to work-related illness, these cuts are hard to justify:

• WorkSafe’s recent Overview of Work-related Harm and Risks in New Zealand indicates that musculoskeletal disorders are responsible for the loss of 10,300 Disability-Adjusted Life Years every year. That’s almost double the number lost to all injuries (5,350)
• WorkSafe’s recent research on work-related suicide suggests that as many people die from work-related suicides as by accidents at work each year
• We’re yet to come to grips with the harms caused by airborne dust inhalation (such as the horrors of accelerated silicosis).

It is proposed that the legal team is cut nearly in half. While we understand that this is mostly about legal advice outside of WorkSafe’s health and safety work (ie. corporate law, contracting and human resources) it is remarkable given the recent Crown Law review of WorkSafe’s prosecution function and its recommendation that the lawyers be involved early on in the process.

WorkSafe also plans to stop all research outside of that needed to support the priority sectors and reduce their education and guidance development. There are cuts to the partnership teams and the strategy team will be narrowly focused on the four priority sectors. WorkSafe is also disbanding their internal Health, Safety and Sustainability Team; I am concerned that this could lead to accusations of “do as we say not as we do” from WorkSafe.

My fear is that this loss of expertise and institutional knowledge will haunt WorkSafe for a long time and hamper its efforts to address work-related harm. I think WorkSafe runs the risk of becoming a less-intelligent and less intelligence-led regulator.

WorkSafe was criticised in the SageBush report for lack of focus and accountability for its interventions and has been working hard to address these concerns. However, the SageBush reviewers also said “We expect that WorkSafe will require increased funding to deliver on its legislative mandate and achieve its outcomes.” The reviewers wrote that in 2022 - and the expiry of time-limited and now ACC funding have significantly shrunk WorkSafe’s funding. These cuts have gone from trimming the fat, to cutting into muscle and now bone.

Ultimately, this is a question of resourcing and the political will required to ensure we have a functional health and safety regulator. I understand there is unspent money in the Working Safer Levy account that could be directed to WorkSafe without any increases to the Levy.

I recognise that these sorts of dilemmas are not unique to WorkSafe and hard decisions like this are being made all over the Public Sector. But forcing Sophie’s choices on the WorkSafe Board and management will ultimately cost lives and livelihoods. If this Government is serious about social investment then they should invest in our health and safety regulator.

NZISM will continue to advocate for WorkSafe to be adequately resourced. We sympathise with the staff at WorkSafe (including our members). But this issue is bigger than the individuals involved: We need a well-functioning WorkSafe to succeed as a country.

Ngā mihi

Jeff Sissons
NZISM CEO