Workplace Relations and Safety Minister, Brooke van Velden, says the Government is looking to cut health and safety red tape for smaller, low-risk businesses, with a focus on lessening the cost and burden of compliance.
The proposed changes – outlined below – are part of the ACT-National Coalition’s commitment to reforming the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 (HSWA), with the intent of bringing a ‘common-sense’ approach to workplace health and safety.
The HSWA is a complex piece of legislation, and it can be difficult for smaller, low-risk businesses and officers to navigate and understand their respective obligations. The proposed changes may be a positive step forward in providing a more practical health and safety regime for smaller and low-risk businesses and those in governance.
We will be watching these changes with interest – in the meantime if you have any questions about the proposed changes, or other workplace health and safety issues, please contact our workplace health and safety experts.
Bearing the burden: costs to small businesses
According to Van Velden, smaller, low-risk businesses are currently unsure of what health and safety risks to focus on and are struggling to meet the costs of complying with stringent health and safety requirements.
As such, the first change will be a carve-out for smaller, low-risk businesses from general HSWA requirements. These businesses will still have to manage critical risks and provide basic facilities to ensure worker welfare.
Cabinet has also agreed to several other changes to the health and safety system including:
- Reducing tick-box activities: The primary purpose of the HSWA will be sharpened to focus on critical risks, reducing activities that do not protect workers from harm.
- Clarifying overlapping duties: The boundaries between the HSWA and other regulatory systems that manage the same risks will be clarified to address over-compliance.
- Cutting compliance costs: Notification requirements to WorkSafe New Zealand (WorkSafe) will be reduced to only significant workplace events, such as deaths, serious injuries, illnesses, and incidents.
Clarifying Overlapping Duties
We are also interested in how the health and safety responsibilities of operational management verses the governance of businesses will be distinguished. The proposed legislation intends to ensure that the “day to day management of health and safety risks” is left to managers, so that directors and CEOs can focus on the guidance and oversight of their businesses.
It is notable that managers are not considered liable as officers (although they are as workers) for health and safety failures under the HSWA, while CEOs and directors of companies, are liable as officers. We will be curious to see whether there is a trend against findings of liability of directors, and recently CEOs, following these changes.
Cutting Compliance Costs – Notifications
The less stringent approach to notifiable incidents may also lessen the burden on WorkSafe.
The current notification requirements are reported to result in WorkSafe being overrun with minor incidents, which potentially prevent it from efficiently addressing critical risks to health and safety.
However, critics might fairly say that it is better for workplaces to be overly compliant, than for health and safety measures to slip through the cracks.
