WorkSafe aims to transform New Zealand’s health and safety performance towards world-class.

Overview

What we do

System leader for health and safety at work and, energy safety.

Our three core roles are:

• system leadership
• regulatory effectiveness
• harm prevention.

What we are striving to achieve

To transform New Zealand’s health and safety towards world-class.

Our three core goals are:

• people value health and safety
• health and safety improves wellbeing
• collective approach to health and safety.

Who we work with

How we do our work

We use our primary levers to support delivery of our work: 

Governance

Board members

Our board members have a range of expertise across the public and private sector and a focus on the tripartite perspectives of workers and business representatives and government.

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Our funding

One appropriation

working safer levy

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energy safety levy

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major hazard facility levy

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Other revenue

ACC revenue

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targeted fees/other

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Our funding is distributed across five sources.

Our people

FTE (permanent and fixed)

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in our operations group

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Inspectors

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What we do

As the regulator, WorkSafe leads, contributes to, and promotes, improved workplace health and safety and energy safety through living our values of integrity, courage and responsibility. Our people are working to transform health and safety performance towards world-class so that everyone who goes to work comes home healthy and safe.

We have three core roles that drive our performance:

Regulatory effectiveness Te whai hua o te ture	Undertaking regulatory activity – educating, engaging and enforcing – to support and promote effective health and safety management. 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 Te ārai i te kino	Targeting critical risks at all levels (sector and system-wide), based on evidence. Delivering targeted interventions (including on 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 Kaiwhakahaere pūnaha	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 business and workers. Leading by example through WorkSafe’s own health and safety goals.

We want to move health and safety from being a legal obligation to being part of our DNA; our culture of work.

The impact we want to have, working towards our vision

The Government is committed to building a productive, sustainable and inclusive economy, and to improving the wellbeing of New Zealanders and their families. As work forms a major part of people’s lives, it is a significant contributor to their wellbeing.

WorkSafe is committed to improving New Zealand’s health and safety at work. We want this commitment and positive impact to be embraced by workers, employers, businesses and the community.

We are working to enable everyone to take ownership of health and safety, and to drive culture change.

Who we work with, and who will help us drive culture change

WorkSafe partners with workers, worker representatives and unions including the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions - Te Kauae Kamahi. Individual employers, businesses, and industry and sector bodies, along with Business New Zealand are important partners and stakeholders. We also work with other government agencies and regulators.

WorkSafe is committed to its obligations under Tiriti o Waitangi - the Treaty of Waitangi and working collaboratively with Iwi and Māori communities to increase the health and safety of Māori workers and workplaces. Māori, Pacific Peoples and other workers with greater needs are important members of the wider New Zealand community who will help us drive culture change. We seek specialist and expert advice from te ao Māori and from other experts to support our work, and we work with education and training organisations.

How we do it

We use different levers and tools, and undertake a range of activities with our partners and stakeholders to improve New Zealand’s system of health and safety. WorkSafe’s core levers are:

To use our levers effectively to make a measurable difference to health and safety, we are transforming WorkSafe into a modern, intelligence-led regulator; a regulator that makes strategic and evidence-based decisions about its activities.

Our funding for 2020/21

WorkSafe’s primary funding source is through Crown Revenue appropriation, which for 2020/2021 is $109.758m; largely drawn from the Working Safer levy, with smaller amounts from the Major Hazard Facility (MHF) and Energy Safety levies. The Working Safer levy is collected from all businesses by the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) on behalf of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE).

We receive funding from ACC for harm prevention initiatives under the joint WorkSafe/ACC Harm Prevention Action Plan [PDF, 225 KB] through a multi-year partnership agreement of up to $15.00m per annum. There are also some targeted fees for specific regulatory activity undertaken by WorkSafe.