Strategy to improve workplace health
Focus will be on what constitutes ‘significant harm’
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Iain Lees-Galloway plans to expand the focus of what constitutes significant harm on the job in a draft health and safety strategy to lift the wellbeing of workers and in turn the productivity of the labour force.
The Government is seeking feedback on the draft plan with a view to finalising a health and safety strategy later this year. The draft strategy aims to design a system focused on achieving the biggest impact, such as ensuring businesses have proportionate and effective risk management, supporting small firms, high-risk sectors and the most vulnerable workers.
“New Zealand has made good progress in recent years in reducing the rate of acute harm. However, urgent work still remains,” Lees-Galloway said in a statement. “I want to ensure we are reducing all types of significant harm at work — this includes broadening the focus from acute harm to make sure we’re managing wider health risks, including mental health.”
The previous administration
A key priority highlighted in the strategy is ensuring better outcomes for Maori and other workers at greater risk who are over-represented in injury statistics and high-risk sectors, such as forestry and construction. Iain Lees-Galloway
softened planned health and safety law reforms in 2015 to ease the burden on small business, having initially supported the early legislation as an chance to address New Zealand’s rate of death and injury in the workplace.
The draft strategy was developed by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and WorkSafe, with stakeholders including BusinessNZ and the Council of Trade Unions.
The Government wants workrelated harm to drop in the coming decade to world-class levels, and says that workplace safety and health “is fundamental to the strength and productivity of New Zealand’s economy” by avoiding the economic cost of deaths, injuries and poor health.
A BusinessNZ and Southern Cross Health Society-sponsored survey last year showed an average absence of
4.4 days per employee in 2016 with non-work-related illness the main cause, followed by caring for an ill family member or dependent. The survey put the direct cost of employee absence to the broader economy at $1.51 billion.
The draft strategy paper said the level of work-related harm has improved but was still high by international standards, with more than
250 people killed and almost 2000 seriously injured on the job over the past five years. If that’s broadened to work-related ill health, the paper estimates between 600 and 900 people die a year in New Zealand.
“A key priority highlighted in the strategy is ensuring better outcomes for Maori and other workers at greater risk who are over-represented in injury statistics and high-risk sectors, such as forestry and construction, or more likely to be engaged in temporary, geographically remote or precarious employment,” Lees-Galloway said.