Over the last few months, WorkSafe, ACC and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) have been working hard to redesign the Safety Star Rating initiative – an injury prevention initiative to help lift the performance of workplace health and safety in New Zealand businesses.

We can now announce, that for the first time in New Zealand, a new health and safety toolkit will be available to provide a credible and authoritative definition of what good health and safety performance looks like and provide advice and guidance on how to improve. This definition will be above minimum legal compliance.

This is the culmination of the Safety Star Rating scheme work. It has been designed in close collaboration with health and safety experts and tested with businesses – both as a prototype in 2014 and through a 2016 pilot, which many of you took part in.

Below you’ll find a summary of the new toolkit and what’s coming up.

An announcement was made by the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety Michael Woodhouse, and ACC, at the Safeguard Conference held today, Thursday 1 June, to let businesses know that the new toolkit will be rolled out in stages over the next year.

Businesses will be able to use the toolkit to identify gaps and help improve their health and safety performance in a way that best suits their needs.

At the heart of this is a framework that defines 10 performance requirements, fundamental to achieving good health and safety performance in a business.

These are organised into three core concepts: leadership, worker engagement and risk management - underpinned by continual improvement.

We’ve incorporated the lessons from the 2016 pilot into the final toolkit design. Thank you to the 95 businesses that participated in this and provided us with valuable feedback.

Refinement design work has included simplifying the performance requirements and their maturity scales, developing guidance material, creating an assessment report template that clearly communicates information and supports continual improvement activities, defining who will deliver the assessments including the necessary competencies they will need, and improving the functionality of the online assessment tool design.

We will be dropping the name Safety Star Rating because it is no longer relevant. There will be no stars or ratings as such. The new name and identity will reflect what the toolkit is – a definition of good health and safety and an educative performance improvement toolkit for businesses. Assessments will measure and illustrate a business performance, helping to provide a degree of confidence and to support ongoing performance measurement.

The toolkit will be available as three separate products. You will be able to choose what works best for your business – or use them all:

• Access resources and guidance on the WorkSafe website (around September 2017).
• An independent onsite assessment by accredited assessors (approximately September 2017).
• An online self-assessment (approximately mid-2018).

Resources and guidance (approximately September 2017)

Resources will explain what the performance requirements and their maturity scales are and provide guidance on how you could use them.

Independent onsite assessment (approximately September 2017)

An independent accredited assessor will be able to make an assessment on how well you are performing against the performance requirements and provide advice on how to improve.

The onsite assessment uses a behavioural based approach to measure performance and give fresh, expert insights and advice.

The assessment will:

• observe behaviours, attitudes, practices and culture onsite
• interview workers, managers and senior leaders
• review systems, practices, and perceptions
• trace three key risks (including one work-related health risk) through your business to assess how these are managed.

Your business will receive a detailed report with an illustration of performance and tailored advice so you can have confidence about your performance and focus on the right issues.

The onsite assessment is open to all businesses but is most likely to appeal to medium and large sized businesses. Private market assessors will charge a market rate for their onsite services.

Online self-assessment (approximately mid-2018)

An online self-assessment is being developed so business can identify gaps in health and safety performance and receive tailored advice and guidance on how to improve. It will use a 360 degree approach to get insight from workers as well as managers and be available free of charge. This self-assessment will be suitable for all businesses, including SMEs.

There’s still a lot of work to be done as the joint agency programme team gets everything ready.

The assessor accreditation is underway, training courses and guidance material is being developed, the online self-assessment tool design and build is progressing and a new name and visual identity are being developed to better communicate what the initiative is all about. 

If you have any queries, the best thing to do is go to the WorkSafe website and sign up for updates – and the team will let you know how to sign up and where to access more information.

We’re looking to get the first component of this toolkit out to market around September 2017.

As announced in our email newsletter at the beginning of the year, as of April 2017, ACC is no longer offering Workplace Safety Discount (WSD) and Workplace Safety Management Practices (WSMP) products. They don’t align with the new Health and Safety at Work Act and ACC found there was no strong connection between the products and a reduction in injury claims.

This toolkit is not a replacement for WSMP or WSD. It defines good health and safety practice - above and beyond compliance, uses a behavioural and evaluative assessment approach and offers business guidance and advice on how to improve.

There will be no levy discount attached to using the toolkit. Instead, ACC is taking a new approach to helping New Zealand businesses create healthy and safer workplaces. 

ACC would like your help on shaping how their products might motivate businesses to drive improvements in their health and safety performance (for example, experience rating, accredited employer programme, and targeted financial incentives).

For more information and if you would like to be involved in helping to shape the new approach, please visit https://www.shapeyouracc.co.nz/
 

Take a look at the updated information on our website or send us an email starrating@worksafe.govt.nz