In the five years since WorkSafe’s establishment, we have grown into a more visible health and safety leader – raising the profile of why good health and safety at work matters. We are using strategic engagements with industry, business and workers, strengthening our regulatory focus and starting to develop more comprehensive and targeted harm prevention interventions.
WorkSafe at a glance
Who we are
System leader for health and safety at work and energy safety.
Our three core roles are: system leadership, regulatory effectiveness and harm prevention.
What we are striving for
To transform New Zealand’s health and safety towards world-class.
Three goals:
- people value health and safety
- health and safety improves wellbeing
- collective approach to health and safety.
How we do this
We use our primary levers to support our three core roles.
Education
Engagement
Enforcement
Who we work with
Workers, unions and worker representatives, energy consumers
Business industry and sector bodies
Specialist advisors and training organisations
Iwi and community
Other regulators and government agencies
Our people
people
people make up our inspectorate
locations across New Zealand
equal gender split across our staff and management staff
the average age of our staff
Governance
Board members
in 2018/19 with a range of expertise across the public and private sector and a focus on the tripartite perspectives of workers and business representatives and government
Our funding
One appropriation
working safer levy
energy safety levy
major hazard facility levy
Other revenue
ACC revenue
targeted fees/other
We have five funding sources that support the delivery of activity across our core roles. In 2018/19 our funding was distributed as above. For further information please refer to our 2018/19 Statement of Performance Expectations.
Our highlights for the year
Co-led development and launch of Government’s 10-year Health and Safety at Work Strategy with MBIE
Signed a 10-year Master Agreement with ACC to fund harm prevention initiatives.
Our Safe at the Farm stand made the New Zealand Herald’s top five things to do at Fieldays
Top five in the Colmar Brunton Public Sector Reputation Index 2019 for improved reputation with the public
Three out of four people in the target audience changed how they think and behave at work after seeing the Be a safe guy campaign
Case study: Be a safe guy
Kia noho haumaru, heoi e mea ana koe
However you say it, be a safe guy
Taking a Te Ao Māori approach to harm prevention communication proved highly successful, with ‘Be a safe guy – kia haumaru tonu koe’ the most effective WorkSafe campaign ever.
Māori workers are disproportionately at risk of being killed, injured or suffering ill health due to work, with younger, male workers at particular risk. Anecdotal feedback suggested our previous communications were not resonating with this hard to reach group.
The evidence-based Be a safe guy campaign was developed in collaboration with unions, businesses, and the target audience itself. It built on the principles of manaakitanga – focusing on celebrating the knowledge, skills and values of Māori – and kaupapa Māori, to create a humorous campaign with a serious message.
The campaign involved highly targeted social media advertising, including our first ever use of Snapchat, as well as radio, online, billboards and events. Talented young comedian D’Angelo Martin’s take on the different types of ‘guys’ you find in a workplace proved incredibly popular, exceeding all reach, engagement and behavioural change metrics set. Importantly, this was not only a highly effective campaign, but one that shows how taking a Te Ao Māori approach can help develop communications that resonate with Māori and non-Māori alike.
A sequel to Be a safe guy launched in August 2019.
Our operating environment
WorkSafe has largely focused on acute and catastrophic harm, reflecting its origins in MBIE and the Department of Labour. Looking to the future, the global economic and social environment we operate in is changing. We face growing pressures and challenges that we will need to respond to as our operating context changes.3 These include:
How we are responding
WorkSafe’s four-year strategy, outlined in the Statement of Intent 2018/19–2021/22, sets out the improvements we need so that New Zealand can lift its health and safety performance towards world-class. We will do this by focusing on the areas that will have the biggest impact, by targeting harm prevention initiatives and by working with and through others. We are engaging with sector and industry partners to take ownership and lead good health and safety practices for their people – 2018/19 was our first year for this long-term strategy.
WorkSafe's performance at a glance
Our impact on workplace health and safety
We track our progress through the impacts we want to make. Our impact measures help us understand our performance against what we are aiming for – that everyone who goes to work comes home healthy and safe.
We determine how successful we are in achieving our goals in a number of ways, including asking workers and employers. In 2018/19 we replaced our workers and employers Health and Safety Attitudes and Behaviour Survey with the Workforce Segmentation and Insights Programme (WSIP) Survey. The new survey programme replicates the questions but the data collection methodology has changed from postal/online to online/telephone. The target population for the new survey programme has expanded from focusing primarily on employers and workers in WorkSafe’s four higher-risk sectors. This broader focus will ensure the survey results are more nationally representative.
We are on track for all (five) measures that are directly comparable to previous years. Three measures are not directly comparable. Two of these measures are sourced from our new WSIP survey. The third measure has had a change in how it is defined so is no longer comparable to previous years or the target. The new definition has been documented to ensure consistent methodology going forward. We chose to report no result for one measure that did not reflect new regulations concerning Major Hazard Facilities.
Our performance against our impact measures
Over the medium term we are seeking to make a difference
People value health and safety
Our work encourages people to value health and safety as part of good business
Health and safety improves wellbeing
Our work enables good health and safety to improve people’s quality of life
Collective approach to health and safety
Our work leads the health and safety system towards shared goals
Delivering our core roles
We also track our progress against activities within our three core roles – regulatory effectiveness, harm prevention and system leadership as detailed in our Statement of Performance Expectations. Over the last year we nearly met all of our targets. We achieved a high level of performance for the two measures that were marginally below target (ie not statistically significant). Both results are from the Service Excellence Survey, which uses a sample of those duty-holders and workers who have had a recent interaction with WorkSafe. Often those interactions are as a result of non-compliance with regulatory obligations. This can lead to a negative perception about WorkSafe’s proportionality, particularly if enforcement action was subsequently taken.
Our financial performance
The financial result for the year was a small deficit of $0.3 million, lower than the $3.7 million deficit which had been budgeted to reflect increasing activity and use of surpluses from previous years. The net difference from budget is 3% of total expenditure, and reflects time being taken to ensure new programmes are well planned and robustly established. This spend will be reinvested in future years as these programmes gather momentum.
Our core roles
Regulatory effectiveness
- Undertaking regulatory activity – educating, engaging and enforcing – to provide confidence that health and safety is appropriately managed.
- Enabling New Zealand to have confidence in WorkSafe as the primary health and safety regulator.
- Supporting confidence in the effectiveness of the health and safety regulatory regime.
Harm prevention
- Targeting critical risks at all levels (sector and system- wide) based on evidence.
- Delivering targeted interventions (including on improving workforce capability, worker engagement and effective leadership) to address the drivers of harm.
- Influencing attitudes and behaviour to improve health and safety risk management.
System leadership
- Leading, influencing and leveraging the health and safety system to improve health and safety outcomes.
- Promoting and supporting tripartite leadership of health and safety with industry and workers.
- Leading by example through WorkSafe’s own health and safety goals.
Footnotes
3 For further information about our operating environment please refer to page 16 of our Statement of Intent 2018/19–2021/22.
Last updated