28/04/2026
New Zealand’s most significant proposed health and safety reform since HSWA 2015 is underway and it could substantially reshape how PCBUs and officers approach compliance.
WorkSafe’s 2025/26 strategic reset signals a major shift toward “critical risk” - focusing more heavily on serious harm, fatalities, occupational illness, and catastrophic events, while reducing unnecessary over-compliance and administrative burden.
This is not about doing less.
It is about focusing harder on what matters most.
Key reform directions include:
• Greater focus on identifying and managing critical risks
• Reducing unnecessary compliance pressure, particularly for smaller businesses
• Clearer guidance on what is “reasonably practicable”
• Expanded use of Approved Codes of Practice (ACOPs) to create more practical compliance pathways
• More proportionate, practical, and educative regulatory engagement
• Stronger emphasis on governance, accountability, and real-world risk management
For businesses, this could mean moving away from broad box-ticking and toward sharper, evidence-based systems that prioritise the risks most likely to cause serious harm.
The opportunity:
Less noise. Less over-compliance. More clarity.
The challenge:
Correctly identifying critical risks and proving your controls are practical, proportionate, and effective.
Bottom line:
This is not a reason to lower standards.
It is a reason to become more precise.
PCBUs and officers should be reviewing now:
• Critical risk frameworks
• Governance systems
• Contractor coordination
• SOPs and guidance alignment
• Practical evidence that safety systems actually work
The direction is becoming clearer:
Less paperwork for the sake of paperwork.
More focus where the stakes are highest.
