Top 5 Things to Improve the Health & Safety sector | Top 5 Things to Improve the Health & Safety sector

April 2023 (election year)

A letter to all political parties summarising the findings from NZISM's "Top 5 Things to Change" survey, undertaken March 2023.

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New Zealand Institute of Safety Management
National Office
PO Box 128 6020
Remuera, Auckland 1541
09 575 6020
www.nzism.org
26 April, 2023
Kia ora koutou katoa,
We are the New Zealand Institute of Safety Management (NZISM), New Zealand’s leading
professional association for health and safety practitioners. We are a 2,600-strong community,
operating nationwide through a network of 14 branches, and our members support the entire
spectrum of New Zealand business. As the credible, trusted authority for the Health and Safety
Profession in New Zealand, we want to ensure you are informed about our key challenges.
We recently surveyed our members on the top five things the profession believe would have the
biggest impact on health and safety in workplaces in Aotearoa.
Improving Regulatory Engagement
Unsurprisingly the issue that had the largest response was improving regulatory engagement.
Our members understand that WorkSafe’s ability to be an effective Regulator is fundamental
to improving health and safety in workplaces. This means ensuring the Regulator is adequately
resourced, improves the capability of the Inspectorate workforce and utilises this workforce to work
proactively with organisations to educate and create opportunities for improvement at both an
individual workplace and system level.
Our members would also like to see effective accountability for those who don’t invest in caring for
their people to create real disincentives to poor performance. An increase in targeted enforcement
action, including timely action against those who are ultimately responsible for serious health and
safety failings would help to both raise standards and create a more level playing field. We want
WorkSafe to be set up for success and expect them to step up and into their role of engaging,
educating, and enforcing. This includes them being more overt about the strategic intent behind
their actions so that others clearly understand what the substantive issues are.
To achieve this, there needs to be a fundamental change to the funding mechanisms between ACC,
WorkSafe and other regulators as these currently create conflicts due to different priorities and
return on investment criteria. This is not about more money as much as better use of the resources
currently invested in the system.
Improve the Suite of Priority Regulations and Guidance Documents
The second biggest issue members identified is the need to improve the suite of priority Regulations
and guidance documents. This was the failure identified by the Independent Taskforce in relation
to the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992 and we are seeing this replicated with the 2015
HSWA. We have seen little movement in terms of the regulatory review from the Ministry of
Business, Innovation and Employment. Specifically, the proposed Plant, Structures and Hazardous
Work Regulations, which had significant input from industry and are still sitting with MBIE, with no
updates on what action is being taken to introduce them and when.
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