Where Is The Required ‘Step-Change’ In New Zealand Health And Safety?

In 2013, following the Pike River disaster, the Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety stated, “Our vision is that within 10 years New Zealand will be among the best places in the world for people to go to work each day and come home safe and sound. We believe that this is absolutely possible, but it will require an urgent, broad-based step-change in approach and a seismic shift in attitude.”

With 9 of those 10 years already passed, the “broad-based step-change approach” has not happened.

New Zealand still has an injury rate twice as high as Australia’s and four times higher than the UK. And this may be understated. So what’s the story? One issue impacting occupational health and safety (OHS) in New Zealand, is the minimal coordination between educators, employers, and OHS students/graduates. The New Zealand Institute of Safety Management (NZISM) is moving to create the required ‘step-change’ to resolve this particular issue.

NZISM is releasing their report: A CONCERTED APPROACH: Aligning New Zealand OHS qualifications and professionalism with our health and safety expectations.

This report considered the current New Zealand OHS environment through the eyes of employers, educators, and OHS students/graduates, and made four critical recommendations:

• That New Zealand OHS tertiary courses should be accredited by an agency – to ensure they are evidence-based and include current best practice.
• That the accredited courses provided by educational institutions are actively promoted to employers and students as being world-class qualifications.
• That OHS professional membership organisations ensure they have a ‘chartered professional’ (or equivalent) category to establish a nationwide benchmark for a highly-educated OHS professional. This benchmark should be vigorously promoted to all employers and students as being the required standard for advanced health and safety advice.
• That, as the largest OHS professional association in New Zealand representing 2500 health and safety practitioners and professionals, NZISM should encourage tertiary institutions to offer degree level and above health and safety qualifications, and actively promote these to NZISM members aspiring to higher achievement levels.

These recommendations will not occur overnight, but NZISM is confident that they are urgently required to support the systemic change required to improve New Zealand’s occupational health and safety outcomes.

The full report can be found here: A Concerted Approach

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