WorkSafe New Zealand: How Health and Safety Duties Apply Across Workplaces
Under New Zealand's Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, duty holders must understand their core responsibilities for worker health and safety across all workplaces.
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Country: New Zealand. Research snapshot: 2026-10-20. Source / development date: not established; do not infer a new legal change.
Unresolved verification flags
The source is a regulator's summary of the Act, not the full current statute. Verify mental-health definitions, officer duties, shared duties and any enacted reforms against current legislation.
Resolve these limitations and the article-specific legal checklist before approval. This draft is educational information, not legal advice.
Country: New Zealand. Development date: not established. Research snapshot date: 20 October 2026.
The Statutory Framework of the HSWA
A workplace is defined broadly under section 20 of HSWA as any place where work is carried out or usually carried out for a business or undertaking [source: launch-source-09]. This definition captures any place where a worker goes or is likely to be while at work, including outworkers and homeworkers who carry out work for an enterprise [source: launch-source-09].
The Scope of Health and Safety Duties
The primary duty of care falls upon the PCBU under section 36 of HSWA [source: launch-source-09]. A PCBU—which may be an individual person or an organisation, including businesses, self-employed persons, partnerships, government agencies, local councils, or universities—must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety of its workers [source: launch-source-09]. The PCBU must also ensure that other individuals are not put at risk by the conduct of its work [source: launch-source-09]. Because risks to health and safety arise from people being exposed to hazards, managing those risks requires eliminating hazards where reasonably practicable, or minimising them where elimination is not possible [source: launch-source-09].
Worker Roles and Reciprocal Obligations
Under section 45 of HSWA, workers must take reasonable care of their own health and safety, and take reasonable care that their acts or omissions do not harm others at work [source: launch-source-09]. Workers are additionally obligated to cooperate with reasonable health and safety policies and procedures that have been communicated to them, and must comply, as far as they are reasonably able, with reasonable instructions issued by the PCBU to ensure compliance with the Act [source: launch-source-09]. Other individuals present at a workplace, such as visitors and customers, must similarly take reasonable care and comply with health and safety instructions under section 46 [source: launch-source-09].