Should my workplace have a health & safety policy?

All Kiwi businesses have a duty of care to protect workers' health and safety. However, New Zealand’s workplace health and safety record lags behind other countries we compare ourselves to.

Research by the Business Leaders’ Health and Safety Forum found:

• Nearly 50% of New Zealanders have been affected by a workplace incident to themselves, colleagues, family or friends.
• Preventable workplace harm cost New Zealand $5.4 billion in 2024 (1.3% of our GDP).
• The number of workplace injuries is decreasing, but the time off work from each injury has doubled in the past decade.
• Kiwi workers remain significantly more likely to be killed at work than workers in many other OECD countries, including being 6.5 times more likely than workers in the UK and twice as likely as workers in Australia.
• Of the 25 OECD countries with better productivity than New Zealand, 80% have lower fatality rates per 100,000 employed.

To improve the health and welfare of New Zealand workers, our health and safety (H&S) regulations have shifted the focus from monitoring and reacting to incidents to proactively identifying and managing risks.

While it may seem obvious for a business in a high-risk industry - such as forestry, construction, or heavy manufacturing - to detail and share their health and safety procedures, even small businesses and sole traders need to take health and safety seriously.

A written H&S policy is an effective way to ensure your organisation takes a systematic approach to identifying and managing all the risks to the health and safety of not only your staff, but to customers and other people you deal with in your daily activities.

This post takes a close look at health and safety policies, why every organisation should have one, and what it should cover.

Why do I need a H&S policy?

All workers have the right to a healthy and safe working environment.

Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, all businesses need to ensure workers' health and safety (and the health and safety of others affected by the work that you do) and manage work risks ‘so far as is reasonably practicable’.

That means identifying and managing short- and long-term risks to both:

• Physical health, e.g. injuries and illnesses.
• Psychological health, e.g. harassment, bullying, stress, and burnout.

Every business (officially called a “Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking” or PCBU) also needs to make sure information about H&S is shared with workers, workers are engaged in H&S matters, and can contribute to workplace H&S decisions (this includes asking for employee input and providing ways for workers to participate in improving day-to-day health and safety in the workplace).

While the Act doesn’t explicitly require every organisation to have a "written health and safety policy", you are required to demonstrate a proactive approach to health and safety — and having a documented policy is one of the best ways to do that.

The focus of the law is on the reality of working in your business, so a fancy written policy won’t save you if you ignore H&S and have a genuinely unsafe workplace.

The policy needs to reflect the actual day-to-day experience of working in your business, be current and regularly reviewed to ensure it’s up to date, and communicated to all your team members.

Aside from protecting your workplace and ensuring you meet your legal responsibilities, having a H&S policy can increase employee productivity, reduce absenteeism, and give your workers, management, and customers confidence and peace of mind.

Benefits of having a H&S policy

• Helps identify all risks to health and safety, and establish ways to eliminate or reduce them.
• Helps you comply with legal obligations and WorkSafe NZ expectations.
• Demonstrates leadership commitment to health and safety.
• Builds H&S capability, engagement, and participation across the organisation.
• Can protect your business from liability in case of incidents.
• Useful for insurance and client contracts.

What to include in a health & safety policy

The policy doesn’t need to be long, but it should describe, in clear and simple terms, what is involved in keeping your workplace safe and healthy, how every member of staff contributes, and the procedures necessary to achieve it.

The aim is to build an H&S culture that’s open and collaborative, so all your team members are involved and understand what they need to do.

Workplace health & safety policy template

While the specific content of your workplace H&S policy will differ from other workplaces, they will probably follow a similar format. We recommend using this template as a starting point when developing your H&S policy:

• Purpose - introduction to the policy and why you have it (i.e. what you’re trying to achieve with this policy).
• Scope - who the policy applies to (e.g. workers, visitors to site, and anyone else affected by your activities).
• Overview and key concepts - explain important health and safety concepts in plain language.
• Details of the policy:
  • The roles and responsibilities of the PCBU, managers/officers, and workers.
  • Obligations of the PCBU, managers, workers, and other stakeholders.
  • Procedures for managing risks - hazard identification, incident reporting, emergency planning etc.
  • Worker engagement and participation procedures, e.g. if you have H&S representatives and/or a committee.
  • Procedures for reporting incidents or emergencies.
  • Review and update process.
• Appendices - include any information sheets, instruction documents (e.g. operating instructions) or forms, and where workers can get more resources (e.g. related reading).

Find out more about creating H&S documents at WorkSafe.

Other ways to improve workplace health & safety

The Business Leaders’ Health and Safety Forum State of a Thriving Nation 2025 report recommended that employers embed health, safety, and wellbeing into every decision they make, how work systems are designed, and how success is defined.

That means seeing H&S not just as a compliance issue, but instead engaging in continuous learning and closing the gap between how work is planned and how it actually happens.

The report highlighted four lessons for businesses that want to improve their safety and operational performance:

1. Secure and maintain funding for H&S - identify all safety-critical risks, have a clear budget, and collaborate with specialist providers to reduce costs.
2. Track and value all benefits of H&S, e.g. staff turnover, retention, and training costs alongside safety performance, and factor reputational risks into investment decisions.
3. Keep people at the core of work design and delivery - design processes and environments to prevent unsafe shortcuts, and train workers and managers to recognise real-world hazards.
4. Integrate safety into daily operations - align procurement and management systems with safety objectives and include safety outcomes in managers’ performance criteria.

How MyHR can help

If you need help crafting robust company policies, MyHR knows what to do. Our team of HR experts can ensure your H&S policy is tailored to your unique requirements and that your employees are a key part of your H&S programme.

Our powerful, unified HR platform makes it easy to ensure all new hires read and sign documentation, and to issue updated policies to your entire team. With Notes, you can accurately record H&S incidents and set reminders to track important dates like first aid training events or the expiry of NZQA working at heights unit standards.