From strategy to action

“Means well but doesn’t focus well in class. Must try harder.”

If the Workplace Health and Safety Strategy for New Zealand to 2015 was a school student, this could be the teacher’s remarks on its end-of-year report.

The full review of the strategy’s first three years concludes that people approve of the fact there is a strategy, and that some progress in implementing it has been made. However, there is a disconnect between the strategy’s high level aims and what is actually happening on the ground.

To address this “implementation gap”, the review says the Department of Labour will develop a national action agenda covering the next three years, to be released in March. The agenda will prioritise achievable activities based on evidence and ensure they are time-bound and measurable.

The agenda will focus particularly on occupational health, high-risk industry sectors, better guidance for small business, competency standards for OHS practitioners, and worker participation (including supervisor/manager capability).

The review will also focus on the OHS risks facing Maori, who despite being over-represented in high-risk industries, and increasingly significant business players, have had little engagement with the strategy to date.

The review notes the original strategy came with an action plan when it was launched in 2005, but with more than 100 actions and a one-year timeframe, it “represented a year-by-year ‘to-do’ list rather than a strategic plan for action”.

 The review also recommends the development of specific national targets, citing examples in Australian and Singaporean strategies, and the development of a national OHS outcome indicators and measures report, which would annually consolidate and report on a range of performance indicators to track progress.

This report would emerge from the draft “outcome monitoring framework” developed last year by the DoL, and which pulls existing data together as an indicator of progress. The next stage in the framework’s development is to fill in the gaping hole that is occupational health data.

Another recommendation is for the DoL and other agencies to champion the health and safety performance of the public sector as a whole, both as a significant employer and as part of a drive to generate wider engagement and to demonstrate leadership.

Taking a wider view, the review acknowledges the difficult economic circumstances, and that any actions should not increase compliance costs. But it also uses economics to articulate a wider place for the strategy.

“The strategy and its future direction should be seen not only as the foundation of New Zealand’s approach to workplace health and safety, but also as a critical component of a productive and resilient New Zealand.”

The 58-page WHSS review report can be found at www.whss.govt.nz

This story appeared in Safeguard Update newsletter of 8 February 2010.

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