By EMA Health and Safety Advisor Rebekah Stephens
Countries such as the UK, Australia and the Nordic nations consistently record lower workplace fatality rates than New Zealand and are often viewed as leaders in workplace health and safety.
Yet despite having health and safety legislation broadly similar to the UK and Australia, New Zealand continues to lag behind. In the construction sector alone, our fatality rate is four times higher than Australia’s and seven times higher than the UK’s, according to the latest ACC statistics.
The Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 was never intended to be a compliance-heavy piece of legislation. It was designed to be risk-based, with a strong emphasis on leadership, responsibility and worker engagement.
In practice, however, many businesses interpreted it through a compliance lens, focusing on systems, paperwork and documentation rather than changing behaviours. That wasn’t a flaw in the Act itself, but it highlighted how easily its intent could be reduced to a checklist.
Over the years, I’ve worked with a wide range of New Zealand businesses and observed a consistent pattern. Most have policies, procedures and registers in place. Many can demonstrate a well-documented health and safety system.
Yet harm still occurs, risks go unaddressed and workers often keep concerns to themselves.
That’s because compliance alone doesn’t change behaviour. Culture does.
Closing the Gap Between Policy and Practice
Through the EMA’s Safety Culture Programme, I’ve worked directly with small and medium-sized businesses across New Zealand.
A common theme is that many of them have already invested in management systems, reporting frameworks and training. However, there is often a gap between what’s written on paper and what happens day to day.
Rather than introducing more processes, our focus is on strengthening everyday behaviours. That means working alongside leaders to improve how they talk about safety, how they respond to issues and how visible they are in the system.
We build capability through targeted training in areas such as due diligence, risk management and incident investigation.
But the real change doesn’t come from the training itself. It comes from what happens afterwards, when leaders start applying that knowledge through their conversations, decisions and actions.
We’ve Overcomplicated Safety
The upcoming amendments to the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 are long overdue.
Due to take effect on 1 April 2027, the changes aim to simplify expectations, sharpen the focus on critical risks and make responsibilities clearer for business owners.
For too long, we’ve layered on paperwork, processes and administration, often losing sight of a simple question: what could seriously harm people, and what are we doing about it every day?
For many small businesses, a greater focus on critical risks may expose an uncomfortable reality. If you haven’t built trust with your workers, you may not fully understand where your biggest risks lie.
What I See in Businesses
One of the biggest challenges I encounter is overconfidence in safety data.
Leaders often assume their reporting accurately reflects what’s happening on the ground. In my experience, that’s rarely the case.
If workers believe they’ll be blamed, judged or ignored, they won’t report what they’re seeing. They’ll filter information, downplay concerns or remain silent altogether.
Through the Safety Culture Programme, we work to remove those barriers. We introduce simpler reporting tools, including real-time platforms, and focus heavily on creating a no-blame approach to reporting.
The impact is often immediate. Reporting increases, conversations improve and leaders gain visibility of risks they didn’t know existed.
Too many businesses still treat health and safety as the responsibility of a coordinator or advisor. But workers take their cues from what leaders do, not what they say.
Real progress happens when leaders become visible, engaged and accountable. When they participate in safety discussions, listen to concerns and follow through on feedback, trust grows and behaviours change.
Working with local businesses has made me optimistic. Many are genuinely willing to reflect, learn and improve.
Unfortunately, the broader health and safety system we’ve created hasn’t always helped. In many cases, we’ve made safety feel more complicated than it needs to be, distracting people from the fundamentals that actually prevent harm.
Culture change can be uncomfortable, particularly when it reveals a gap between what leaders believe is happening and what workers are actually experiencing.
Culture Is the Real Test
If there’s one message I’d leave with business leaders, it’s that your culture is already telling you how effective your health and safety approach is.
It shows up in what people report, what they ignore and what they believe will happen if they speak up.
A workplace can be fully compliant on paper and still be unsafe in practice. I see that more often than I should.
The EMA Safety Culture Programme was developed to help close the gap between what’s documented and what’s lived.
The businesses that build strong safety cultures aren’t necessarily the ones with the most paperwork. They’re the ones whose people trust them enough to tell the truth.
And if we’re serious about reducing harm in New Zealand, that’s where our focus needs to be.