Worker engagement, briefings and sign-on

The Act requires two things that sound similar and are not. Engagement means involving workers in decisions that affect their health and safety. Participation means having ongoing ways for them to raise and improve things. A pre-start briefing and a sign-on sheet are where both become visible on a small job.

What the Act requires

Section 58 requires a PCBU to engage with workers, so far as is reasonably practicable, on matters that are likely to directly affect their health and safety. Section 59 sets out what engagement involves: sharing relevant information, giving workers a reasonable opportunity to express their views and contribute to the decision, taking those views into account, and telling them the outcome in a timely way.

Section 61 adds the participation duty: having practices that give workers reasonable ongoing opportunities to take part in improving health and safety. Section 62 deals with health and safety representatives, not the engagement duty itself.

The engagement duty has no size threshold. A two-person operation holds it in the same terms as a large one; what changes is what is reasonably practicable, not whether it applies.

What counts as engagement

Deciding something and announcing it is not engagement. The section asks for the views to be sought before the decision and taken into account in making it. For task-level work that usually means asking the crew how the job will actually be done before writing it down, not after.

Matters that trigger it include identifying hazards and assessing risks, deciding how to eliminate or minimise them, deciding on facilities and procedures, and proposing changes that affect health and safety. A change of method on site is squarely within it.

The pre-start briefing

This is the engagement duty at its most practical. Before the task starts, with the people who will do it, ideally where the work will happen:

1. Walk through the task steps as written.
2. Name the hazards and the controls for each, and say who is responsible.
3. Ask what is missing or wrong. This is the part that is actually the duty; the rest is telling.
4. Amend the document where the crew is right, in front of them.
5. Confirm emergency arrangements and the rescue plan where one applies.
6. Take the sign-on.

A briefing that produces no amendments, every time, over months, is usually a briefing where the question is not really being asked.

Why the sign-on is taken before the work

The sign-on records that a specific person was briefed on a specific document on a specific day. Collected afterwards, it records attendance and proves nothing about what anyone was told. On a site where the method changed mid-task, the difference between those two things is the whole question.

Keep the sign-on with the task document rather than in a separate folder. The pair is the evidence; apart, each is half of it.

Workers who are not your employees

The definition of worker in section 19 is wide: employees, contractors and their workers, labour hire, apprentices and trainees, and volunteers in some cases. If their work is influenced or directed by your business, the engagement duty reaches them. In practice that means the crew you brought on for the week gets the same briefing as the people on your payroll.

Health and safety representatives

A worker can ask for a health and safety representative at any time, at any size of business. Any PCBU, whatever its size, must initiate an election if a worker asks for one (s62, as replaced in 2023). A PCBU can also start one itself. Without a request, a representative is not required, but the engagement and participation duties still apply.

Sources

• Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, s19 (meaning of worker), ss58 to 59 (duty to engage), s61 (worker participation practices), s62 (health and safety representatives)
• Health and Safety at Work (Worker Engagement, Participation and Representation) Regulations 2016
• WorkSafe New Zealand, Worker engagement, participation and representation, good practice guidance
• Health and Safety at Work (General Risk and Workplace Management) Regulations 2016, regs 5 to 8

This guide is general information about New Zealand health and safety law as at the review date. It is not legal advice and it does not describe your site. Confirm what applies to you with WorkSafe New Zealand or your adviser.