'Unacceptable': Business leaders call out 'stalled progress' on improving workplace safety

Business leaders in New Zealand are calling out in a new report the lack of progress in the country's 2018-2028 Health and Safety Strategy more than five years since it was launched.

The strategy, initiated by the New Zealand government in 2018, aims to set out a plan for improving health and safety at work over the next 10 years.

But a taskforce formed by the Business Leaders' Health and Safety Forum said the strategy has seen "no action plan or implementation" six years after it was initiated.

"This stalled progress, combined with an absence of regulatory clarity and a lack of accountability through inadequate coordination and action across government agencies and industry, is unacceptable," said Toby Beaglehole, taskforce chair, in a report the taskforce released this month.

Report on workplace safety

The independent taskforce was formed by the forum after its inaugural State of a Thriving Nation report last year uncovered New Zealand's "slow, costly, and poor safety progress."

It brought together a panel of seven experienced leaders, CEOs, as well as directors to explore where New Zealand is going wrong and to map out a plan for the country's health and safety performance.

"This report makes uncomfortable reading," said Forum CEO Francois Barton in the research. "A worker is almost twice as likely to be killed at work in New Zealand than if they were working in Australia."

The taskforce identified three key barriers that are holding back workplace safety progress in New Zealand:

1. There remains no credible national strategy to align, coordinate, and focus the country's finite resources to drive sustained reductions in harm, nor is there any organisation or group taking proactive and accountable "oversight" for our national performance
2. There is a lack of regulatory clarity for too many businesses about what's expected of them, resulting in an unhelpful and ineffective combination of businesses either duplicating "performative safety" efforts or taking no actions at all.
3. The incentives and sanctions for health and safety performance are confused, variable, and inconsistent, to achieve sustained and focused motivation and implementation by businesses to meet their responsibilities to keep workers safe, healthy, and productive.

"We need intervention to redress this shameful performance, keep workers safer, and reduce avoidable confusion for employers," read the report. "It became clear through our work that New Zealand has been here and done this before, and apparently learned little from it."

Recommendations to improve workplace safety

The report underscored the need for a "robust, sustained, and coordinated commitment" across government and businesses to implement what has been proven to work overseas.

"We need intervention to redress this shameful performance, keep workers safer, and reduce avoidable confusion for employers," the report read.

It outlined five recommendations that can be executed within six months to improve New Zealand's safety progress. They include:

1. Rewrite and relaunch the 2018-2028 Health and Safety Strategy, including both implementing comprehensive governance and a three-year action plan to capture and ensure progress, including the next two recommendations below.
2. Review and implement priority regulatory changes to ensure the most appropriate mix of regulations, codes, and guidance to clearly specify business' accountabilities and expectations.
3. Apply the rules clearly and fairly and oversee them expertly to ensure poor or negligent business practices are consistently held to account, and leading performance is incentivised.
4. Establish an independent oversight function for safety strategy, incorporating a small group of industry leaders to ensure progress and momentum for improving New Zealand’s health and safety performance.
5. Establish and maintain a coherent, credible and current body of government and industry data and insights to inform and focus WorkSafe NZ and business health and safety efforts.