Submissions from WorkSafe staff showed widespread worries the agency would not cope under the cutbacks. File photo. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
New Zealand's pared-back work safety regulator has had to reassure staff it will still be able to its core job.
WorkSafe has a new strategy and a new operating model, with new business plans due this month.
The workplace health and safety regulator's struggles came to a head a year ago, and it has admitted it "spread itself too thin".
Documents show a lot of misgivings among staff at the salvage plan, launched in November.
The agency has pledged better leadership, financial management and to add to inspector numbers.
But staff questioned if cuts to support staff would undermine that frontline work, papers show.
The agency has yet to finish and issue a new plan for how it is all going to work.
It has been beset by a deficit of $17 million and poor performance reviews, and has cut more than 100 staff and dumped non-core operations in a months-long salvage job.
More than 420 submissions were made on the proposed changes, which were a precursor of the sweeping job cuts across the wider public service.
"Many expressed disappointment at the position WorkSafe is in," said the internal staff feedback summary, released under the Official Information Act.
The document shows executives trying to address widespread worries the agency would not cope under the cutbacks.
"Concern in all areas of the organisation that reduced capacity will hinder WorkSafe's ability to deliver against our core regulatory obligations," was another key theme.
The overhaul was being done "in the absence of a strategy to align to", many said.
Others questioned if the axe was falling evenly, "with strong views that the leadership structures are too top heavy".
People still understood WorkSafe had to cut back to the core to reduce operational spending, the confidential November 2023 "decision document" said.
The internal verdict from staff follows WorkSafe's attempts to exercise broad new powers after being set up a decade ago in response to the health and safety system's failings in the Pike River mine disaster.
The government stepped in with a review in 2021, which found the agency's regulatory performance was okay, but its financial situation was not.
WorkSafe is now paring itself back, with the aim to 'reduce or stop work that can be funded or delivered by other agencies".
The start of July was a key date when the changes were meant to embedded, with business plans in place.
It had shed 113 jobs by February in order to save $5.4m, after Cabinet had told it to save at least $5m, and was ditching tasks and tightening spending.
"In late 2023, WorkSafe began to change the way we operate following the wide recognition that we had taken on too much and spread ourselves too thin," its strategy launched in May said.
Cuts have included pulling out of ACC-funded injury prevention work, and cancelling trauma and income protection insurance policies for staff that were costing half a million a year in premiums.
Interim chief executive Steve Haszard - who was parachuted in last year for the restructure - left last week, and new chief executive Sharon Thompson starts soon.
The staff feedback stressed leadership had to improve, but WorkSafe has still not finished the plan for making its new strategy work.
It made early headway cutting work deaths and injuries, but has fallen well behind the rates of countries such as Australia and the UK.
With more than 670 jobs impacted in some way by the restructure, most staff "felt the proposed changes would impact WorkSafe's ability to deliver its core regulatory activities in some way", such as:
- lack of project management support "will result in WorkSafe continuing to carry unacceptably high issues and risks in regulatory failure".
- reducing regulatory practice roles was a "reputational risk to WorkSafe with reduced capacity".
- the triage team who take calls about deaths and injuries, and decide if WorkSafe should get involved, would remain "under resourced" and create a backlog.
The entire restructure offered "inconsistent and unclear explanations" on what work would carry on and what would stop.
But executives told staff they had moved quickly to bring in new controls "to ensure we are not in this position in the future".
They had "reviewed our legislation and associated regulatory requirements and have made decisions that we believe allow us to deliver our regulatory activities as best we can within our funding envelope".
A key change was creating a new Workplace Inspectorate, and hiring to fill it.
Inspector numbers rose from 195 in August to 199 in April, now making up almost a third of all staff, because other roles have been cut from 580 to 420.
But there was a persistent concern that the extra inspectors would be left without support services due to cuts elsewhere and have to do more to make do.
"We recognise our ways of working will need to adjust based on the reduced roles," the executives said in the OIA document.
Back in 2020 the leadership promised to set up a specialist unit to take pressure off investigators. There is already concern among staff the new inspectorate "was too large", and its top job was "too broad".