Small businesses are no safer or riskier than big ones, according to a new report from the Business Leaders’ Health and Safety Forum, and that finding lands squarely on one of the central ideas in the Government’s health and safety law changes due to take effect next April.
The forum’s fourth State of a Thriving Nation report, written by economist Shamubeel Eaqub and released on Wednesday, estimates that workplace harm cost New Zealand $5.5 billion in 2025. Occupational ill health made up $3.1 billion of that, or 57 per cent, while work deaths cost an estimated $1.1 billion and injuries a further $1.3 billion.
The headline figure is up from the $5.4 billion the forum’s 2025 report estimated for 2024, which was itself up from $5.2 billion the year before.
The sharpest part of the new report goes to firm size. The Government’s overhaul of the Health and Safety at Work Act draws a line at 20 workers, with smaller businesses expected to manage critical risks, the hazards that can kill or seriously injure people, but freed from some of the wider compliance duties that larger firms carry.
“The 20-worker threshold separates small businesses from large ones, but it does not separate safe workplaces from unsafe ones,” Eaqub said in a statement reported by RNZ.
He told RNZ the data did not support the assumption behind the threshold. “When we looked at the injury rate by different sizes of firms and industries we found no consistent pattern – so there was no evidence that small firms were somehow less risky than larger firms,” he said. Eaqub added that the law changes made things murkier.
Critics of the reform have argued it will create a two-tier system, with big firms held to a higher standard than small ones. The forum stops short of calling for the changes to be scrapped, instead asking the Government and businesses to accept that the size of a business does not decide how safe or unsafe it is.
The Health and Safety at Work Amendment Bill passed its third reading at the start of July. Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden argued the existing regime was confusing and expensive for businesses without making workers safer, and that attention should go to the risks most likely to cause death, serious injury or serious illness. Labour promised to repeal it.
The start date was later pushed back from 1 November 2026 to 1 April 2027, which leaves a window after the 7 November election in which a new government could change course before the law takes effect.
The report’s broader verdict is that New Zealand is getting safer at work, but too slowly. Workplace injury claims have fallen 28 per cent over the past decade, and some of the biggest drops have come in the industries with the worst histories of harm. The report says rates of harm are still much higher than in Australia or the United Kingdom, and that work-related mental wellbeing is the one area getting consistently worse.
Eaqub told RNZ that New Zealand’s regulation is broadly comparable to those two countries, but they get much better results. In his view the difference lies in applying the rules in a way that makes sense.
Forum chief executive Francois Barton put the problem down to how the system is run rather than how many rules it contains. “New Zealand has extensive health and safety regulation but lacks sufficiently clear stewardship and coordination across the system,” he said.
The report gives several examples. There are more than two dozen approved codes of practice, the detailed guidance that tells businesses how to meet their legal duties, but no public register listing them, which makes it hard for a firm to work out which ones apply to it. Regulations meant to keep plant and machinery safe have been slated for improvement since 2021 and are still not finished. And the Health and Safety at Work Strategy 2018 to 2028 sets a direction but, the report says, has no delivery mechanism, performance measures or oversight of its own.
“We need better regulatory practice, not more law,” the report says.
That puts the forum at odds with both sides of the political argument to some degree. The Government’s reform is built around narrowing duties and giving smaller firms a lighter load, while Labour has gone further in the other direction, promising a corporate homicide law that could send employers to prison for life when failures kill workers. The forum’s argument is that neither more legislation nor lighter rules will fix a system that businesses struggle to navigate in the first place.
Eaqub welcomed extra money for WorkSafe inspections but said “we can’t inspect our way to improvement”, because inspectors cannot be everywhere.
The report also asks the Government and businesses to understand the real toll of work-related road deaths, harm that happens on the road rather than on a worksite.
Barton pointed to encouraging signs, including better core safety practices, more engagement from workers and a firmer grasp of risks across supply chains. “Better alignment across the system would help, but business leaders have the most influence when it comes to creating safer, healthier and more productive workplaces,” he said.
The $5.5 billion estimate is a reminder that the cost of harm falls on the wider economy, not only on the firms where people are hurt.
With the April start date now less than seven months away and the election in between, the question of whether a 20-worker line makes sense is likely to come up again on the campaign trail.
Should small businesses carry lighter health and safety duties, or should the same rules apply to every workplace? Tell us what you think in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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