What the State of a Thriving Nation 2026 report means for New Zealand businesses
Health and safety can become complicated quickly.
Legislation changes. Guidance evolves. Businesses grow. Contractors come and go. New risks emerge, and systems become more detailed.
Against that background, one of the most useful questions a business can ask is also one of the simplest:
Where does our health and safety exposure actually sit?
The Business Leaders’ Health and Safety Forum’s recently released State of a Thriving Nation 2026 report provides some valuable new evidence to help answer that question.
The report estimates workplace harm cost New Zealand $5.5 billion in 2025. There are positive signs too, with new workplace injury claims falling 28% over the past decade.
But some of the most useful findings for individual businesses aren’t necessarily about the overall numbers.
They’re about where harm is occurring.
And the findings challenge businesses to look beyond their own employees, beyond organisational boundaries and beyond assumptions about business size.
Your workforce may only show part of the picture
One of the standout findings from the report is that 41% of workplace injury claims occur while producing inputs for other businesses.
That matters because businesses rarely operate in isolation.
Contractors are engaged. Contractors may engage subcontractors. Specialist work is outsourced. Materials and services are supplied by other businesses. Multiple PCBUs may be working alongside one another or influencing the same work.
The health and safety performance visible within your own organisation may therefore tell only part of the story.
This is particularly relevant in contracting-intensive industries such as construction.
The Forum’s analysis provides a striking example. For non-residential building, the report records 109 injury claims per 1,000 workers within the sector itself. When injuries occurring throughout its domestic supply chain are incorporated, that estimate increases to 471 claims per 1,000 of the sector’s own workforce.
For residential building, the corresponding figures are 140 and 354. The report links these increases to the significant use of subcontractors operating in areas with relatively high injury rates.
Importantly, these are sector-level estimates. They are not a measure of the health and safety performance of an individual business.
But they raise an important question:
How well do you understand the exposure created by the work being undertaken within your wider contractor and supply chain?
Look beyond contractor onboarding
For businesses engaging contractors, understanding that exposure requires more than collecting documentation.
Prequalification, insurance checks, health and safety policies, SSSPs, competency records and inductions all have a purpose. Used well, they can help establish capability, expectations and minimum requirements before work begins.
But documentation cannot tell you everything about how risk is actually being managed once the work is underway.
That requires businesses to look at the work itself.
- What activities are actually being undertaken?
- Where is the potential for serious harm?
- Who could be exposed?
- Which controls are being relied upon?
- Where do responsibilities between PCBUs overlap?
And importantly, as the work and conditions change, how will you know those controls continue to work as intended?
This moves contractor management beyond simply confirming that a process has been completed.
It starts to provide clarity about where the exposure actually sits and where attention may be required.
Risk follows the work, not simply business size
Another significant finding from the report concerns the relationship between business size and injury.
Using ACC data covering 2.6 million employees and more than 200,000 claims, the Forum examined injury prevalence by industry and business size.
Its analysis found no consistent relationship between business size and injury rates when industry and size were considered together. Instead, the report says injury rates are primarily driven by the nature of the work.
For example, the report records construction at 126 injury claims per 1,000 workers compared with 40 for office-based services, with that difference remaining across business sizes.
This is particularly relevant as New Zealand businesses consider the implications of the 2026 amendments to the Health and Safety at Work Act.
The Forum has been critical of the new distinction affecting businesses with fewer than 20 workers, arguing that business size does not distinguish higher-risk workplaces from lower-risk ones. That is the Forum’s position on the reforms, but the underlying data provides a useful practical message regardless of business size: the nature of the work matters.
A small contractor undertaking high-risk activities may present very different exposures from a much larger organisation predominantly undertaking lower-risk work.
The number of people employed tells us something about a business.
It doesn’t necessarily tell us where serious harm could occur.
Start with the work that matters most
This is where understanding critical risk becomes increasingly important.
Rather than beginning with a generic list of hazards or assuming everything rated “High” or “Extreme” deserves equal attention, businesses should understand where the potential for fatal or life-altering harm actually exists within the work they undertake or influence.
Depending on the business, that could include work at height, mobile plant, lifting operations, excavation, electricity, hazardous energy or other significant exposures.
But the starting point shouldn’t simply be somebody else’s list.
Start with your work.
Understand the activities being undertaken. Engage with the people exposed to the risk. Identify where the potential for serious harm exists.
Then get clear about the critical controls being relied upon to prevent that harm.
This creates a much clearer line of sight between the work being undertaken, the risks that matter most and where attention should be focused.
From having controls to having confidence
Identifying critical risks and controls is only part of the picture.
Businesses also need confidence that the controls they rely upon are actually working in practice.
That is where verification becomes important.
A procedure may specify a control. A contractor may identify it in a risk assessment or SSSP. An inspection may confirm that something appears to be present.
But that doesn’t necessarily tell us whether the control is being implemented correctly, understood by the people relying on it, maintained as conditions change or capable of performing as intended when it is actually needed.
Verification needs to go further than simply asking:
“Is the control there?”
It should help establish whether:
- the control is in place and being applied correctly;
- the people exposed understand the risk and the critical controls they rely upon;
- changes in the work have affected the control;
- the control is being maintained; and
- it continues to work as intended.
That is the difference between having something documented on paper and understanding what is happening in practice.
And it is an important distinction when the controls being relied upon are there to prevent fatal or life-altering harm.
Business boundaries may change. The work remains connected.
The report also demonstrates how deeply smaller businesses are embedded within New Zealand’s supply chains.
For non-residential building, 21% of the sector’s own workers are employed in firms with fewer than 20 workers. Across its supplier industries, that proportion increases to 47%.
This is important context for businesses further up a contracting chain.
Legislative requirements may change, but the practical reality remains that businesses of different sizes continue to work together, influence the same activities and, in some circumstances, hold overlapping duties.
The Forum notes that the amended HSWA retains the PCBU structure and highlights the importance of a considered approach where those duties overlap.
For businesses, that makes clarity increasingly important.
Who is undertaking the work? Who has influence or control? Where are the significant exposures? Who is best placed to manage them? Where do responsibilities overlap?
And how will the businesses involved communicate, coordinate and cooperate in practice?
The answer shouldn’t automatically be more paperwork.
It should be greater clarity about the work, the exposure, responsibilities and the controls that matter.
Turning information into clarity
The State of a Thriving Nation 2026 report contains considerably more than can be explored in one article.
But its new analysis provides an important reminder for New Zealand businesses:
Your health and safety exposure may extend well beyond the boundary of your own workforce.
Understanding that exposure doesn’t mean trying to control everything another business does.
Nor does it mean treating every risk, contractor or activity in exactly the same way.
It means understanding the work your business undertakes or influences, where responsibilities intersect and where the potential for serious harm requires greater attention.
A practical place to start
For business leaders, five questions can help bring that into focus:
- What work are we undertaking or influencing?
- Where does the potential for fatal or life-altering harm sit?
- Which controls are most important in preventing that harm?
- Who is responsible for implementing and maintaining those controls?
- How are we verifying they continue to work in practice?
Those questions create a clearer line of sight from the work being undertaken to the decisions a business needs to make.
Because more information doesn’t automatically provide better health and safety.
More policies don’t necessarily provide greater assurance.
And more activity doesn’t always mean attention is being directed to the areas that matter most.
The opportunity is to turn information into clarity.
Clarity about where you stand.
Clarity about where your exposure sits.
Clarity about what deserves attention.
From there, businesses can build confidence in the systems and controls they rely upon and strengthen the capability of their people to manage what matters.
Know where your exposure is. Focus on what matters.
TruSafe — Providing Clarity & Confidence.
Source
This article draws on findings from the Business Leaders’ Health and Safety Forum’s State of a Thriving Nation 2026 – Health, Safety and Wellbeing in New Zealand. Readers should be linked to the Forum’s full report from the website.
