If a health and safety practitioner aspires to be regarded as a professional, they need to be or become “critical consumers” of research, including grey literature that can inform a risk assessment or decision. However, some free-to-access grey literature may be of variable reliability. As part of a continuing research project, some sources of grey literature believed to be reliable are identified and criteria are suggested to enable judgement of reliability of grey literature. A downloadable set of bibliographic records of some grey literature is described that will help search for potentially relevant, reliable documents.
Working in Residential Aged Care Facilities (RACFs) is associated with high physical and mental workload for Registered Nurses (RNs) and Healthcare Assistants (HCAs). In particular, workplace-related injuries often accompany manual hazardous tasks that include lifting, holding, carrying, pushing, and pulling. This research aimed to investigate the frequency of manual hazardous tasks and respective physical workloads in kilograms conducted by RNs and HCAs according to shifts and RACF providers to demonstrate the risk level for workplace-related injuries and overloading of the human musculoskeletal system. Our research showed that RNs implemented 10 high-risk nursing actions and moved 546 kilograms of weight, whereas HCAs experienced a physical workload of 1,175 kilograms and 18 manual hazardous tasks per shift. HCAs are exposed to a 53 per cent higher physical workload and implement 80 per cent more manual hazardous tasks than RNs per shift. The most intense work demand for RNs was during the night shift, while for HCAs, it was the morning shift.
This research analyses New Zealand’s legal response to the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on employer-imposed vaccination mandates. It examines WorkSafe guidance and Employment Relations Authority decisions to clarify employer obligations and employee rights during the pandemic. The Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 requires employers to mitigate workplace risks, which prompted many employers to mandate vaccinations. Employees were subsequently dismissed for refusing vaccinations, lodged personal grievance claims for unjustified dismissal and unjustified disadvantage under the Employment Relations Act 2000. This research highlights how the Authority prioritised good faith consultation in implementing vaccination mandates and reinforced strict procedural requirements for termination. The study critiques the Authority and employers for restricting vaccine exemptions primarily to medical grounds, arguing that the Authority missed an opportunity to clarify the broader legal framework for exemptions.
Since late 2023, the National-led Coalition (with ACT and NZ First) has advanced a rapid agenda to reshape employment relations (ER) and occupational health and safety (OHS) in New Zealand: repealing the Fair Pay Agreements (FPA) regime, restoring 90-day trial periods to all employers, proposing major changes to the Health and Safety at Work Act (HSWA), focusing on “critical risks,” reducing notifications to the regulator, and altering the governance/management split of due-diligence obligations. The Coalition is also introducing an Employment Relations Amendment Bill to reclassify more workers as “specified contractors,” cap unjustified dismissal claims for high earners, and “recalibrate remedies” in personal grievance processes. This commentary reviews the changes against international research and New Zealand’s own regulatory impact statements, arguing that the reform programme lacks an evidence-based foundation and will likely degrade workplace environments — particularly for low-paid, vulnerable, and precarious workers — while weakening the institutional capacity of WorkSafe New Zealand amid ongoing and persistently poor safety outcomes.
How do educators and agency-based social workers experience and understand workplace wellbeing? The complexity and importance of cultivating healthy workplaces, managing psychosocial risks, and fostering psychological safety were identified as essential ingredients in workplace wellbeing. Forty-five participants from six organisations, pre- and post-Covid-19, were interviewed about their experiences with workplace wellbeing. Workplace wellbeing was defined and explored by participants, and four critical themes were identified: feeling valued; relationships and communication; healthy, safe, and robust systems; and the impact of Covid-19. The research findings align with noted Māori values, and a bicultural perspective on holistic wellbeing is discussed.
This study examined how experienced health and safety professionals in Aotearoa New Zealand define and use evidence. Evidence can be understood as the use of data, facts, information, or research to support decisions, changes, or conclusions. It finds that the concept of evidence in health and safety remains poorly defined. A semi-structured interview protocol was developed, and interviews were conducted with ten health and safety professionals, each with at least 20 years of experience. The interview data were collated and analysed to identify key themes and constructs. Analysis revealed eight main themes, which included a lack of agreement on the definition of evidence and uncertainty about which sources should be used. Participants described research evidence as often dense, contradictory, and difficult to interpret, while “best practice” guidance was seen as frequently impractical or not transferable across different workplace contexts. The study also explored the use of Mātauranga Māori (Māori concepts, values, and perspectives) in practice, highlighting its sporadic and inconsistent application. Additional themes included the wide diversity of evidence sources, which contributed to siloed practice; the need for information to be concise and accessible for workers; and the importance of worker participation in both the use and creation of evidence. Finally, participants perceived that small and medium-sized organisations are not well served by the current health and safety landscape. While this was a small exploratory study intended to generate hypotheses for future research, the findings provide valuable insight into how practitioners in Aotearoa New Zealand understand and apply evidence in health and safety practice.
Working from home (WFH) or teleworking using information technology (IT) has enabled employees to work flexibly away from their employer’s location, part-time or full-time; a practice known as hybrid working. Although few publications have systematically reviewed the effects of WFH on the health and wellbeing of teleworkers, no overview has been published of the collective state of knowledge. This paper addresses that research gap. We reviewed eight systematic reviews published between 2011 and 2022, focusing on knowledge workers who worked in an office or other locations using IT for communication. We developed a comprehensive framework by employing the Job Demand Resource theory (JD-R) in our narrative synthesis for reviewing and theorising WFH/hybrid working. Our findings identified resources that improved productivity and demands that affected health and wellbeing by reduced job satisfaction and increased work and emotional exhaustion. The framework suggests WFH/hybrid working as a model with its resources and demands. Our findings contribute to the advancement of theoretical knowledge and would also enable informed policies, practices, and decisions about hybrid working with an evidence-based framework. It has practical implications for developing the health and wellbeing of hybrid workers and insight for future research.
This study examines safety culture within New Zealand’s kiwifruit sector, focusing on culturally diverse packhouses and cool stores. Using surveys and interviews, it identifies risks such as traffic hazards, outdated machinery, and manual handling injuries. Key findings include poor alignment between management expectations and frontline realities, communication barriers, and under-addressed psychosocial issues like bullying. The research recommends inclusive training, culturally safe practices, stronger leadership, and engaging workers in safety design to foster a more resilient, participatory safety culture. Addressing these gaps is vital for improving health, safety, and wellbeing outcomes in an increasingly diverse and high-risk sector.
This paper analyses the officers’ duty of due diligence in New Zealand’s Health and Safety at Work Act 2015. The paper discusses not only the duty’s construction, but also its ambition, tensions, and potential. In doing so, we discuss two important regulatory dynamics: first, we argue that there is an inherent, unacknowledged, tension in the duty when duty holders are effectively tasked with “marking their own homework.” We also argue that the regulatory strategy behind the duty works to undermine the central purpose of the Act to prevent harm to workers. Importantly, very few, if any, regulatory instruments, tools, or guidance, acknowledge or consider the potentially limiting effects of these dynamics. This article contends that, by making these aspects explicit, regulatory stakeholders may be better positioned to achieve the profound, yet presently unrealised, impact that this duty might have on work health and safety in New Zealand.
Our paper explores the renewed focus on welfare benefit sanctions, in particular the ‘Traffic Light System’ introduced by the National-led coalition government (formed through an agreement with two other political parties – the ACT party and New Zealand First) in August 2024. Given the recent nature of these policy changes, we review international research to outline the evolution and impact of sanctions policies. We also analysed government data on the use of sanctions from 2014 to 2025. Our findings show that rather than improving beneficiaries’ situation, the current sanctions regime is likely to worsen their disadvantage. Conditional welfare needs to be revised to provide genuine support through skills training, mental health services, and the removal of real barriers to employment.
Immigration has become a key policy response to labour and skills supply in New Zealand, especially in the wake of the Global Financial Crises (GFC). But it also has become the default and largely unintended population policy as the increasingly critical factor in determining whether there is population growth for the country or regions and centres. However, there are tensions, especially given the rhetoric that erupts periodically around the number of arrivals – and sometimes, where they come from. It does not help that governments struggle to manage the volatility that occurs in relation to arrival numbers and the net gain, often invoking the need for targets or sustainability when neither is specified in detail or as part of an overall policy of managing the population[1]. It is therefore interesting to see how policies have evolved under a Coalition Government that was elected in 2023, especially given the presence of one party that has major reservations about immigration and immigrants. This article seeks to describe both recent policy adjustments and the tensions/gaps that continue to be associated with immigration. Immigration issues were specified in the coalition agreements between the National Party, and its coalition partners, New Zealand First and ACT, although the issues and tone were different in each case. Through the early years of the Coalition Government, the Minister of Immigration has made a number of changes but, on the whole, these can be generally classified as adjustments rather than major policy shifts. Immigration numbers have dropped significantly from an all-time high in 2023 and early 2024 to modest arrival numbers and a net gain that is a fraction of what it was two years earlier. This drop might help depoliticise the issues and moderate the size of the constituency that is anxious or opposed to immigration or immigrants. It will not resolve, however, the economic and social impacts of the unprecedented exodus of New Zealand citizens since 2023. [1] There are caps on various visa categories which do represent a target of sorts, but they tend to operate as limits for specific categories (such as Parent Resident Visa) which has a quota.
Providing negative performance feedback to employees is a complex and difficult task that all managers and supervisors face in their roles. This research employs qualitative design to investigate managers’ attitudes towards giving negative feedback to staff. Seventeen managers from two organisations in Aotearoa New Zealand participated in audio-recorded semi-structured interviews. The findings show high levels of stress and various negative emotions associated with giving negative and critical feedback. While many participants in the study indicate that they have been exposed to some coaching on providing negative feedback, more detailed and consistent training, mentoring, and coaching are recommended.
There has been a radical change in economic policies under the current New Zealand coalition government in 2023-2025.[1] This has coincided with changes in other policy areas as well as significant changes in employment relations and labour market trends. A critical analysis of economic policies highlights negative economic impacts, emphasising the economic downturn prompted by monetary policy and how a fiscal ‘straitjacket’ prevents fiscal policy addressing economic, social and labour market impacts. While it is briefly suggested that the coalition government’s economic policy thinking has bypassed how to tackle New Zealand’s embedded economic policy problems (for example, poor productivity growth, ensconced inequality, and social issues), the commentary’s focus is on employment relations and labour market implications. Employment relations have witnessed yet another phase of policy reversals and will result in further labour market pressures. Overall, it has taken the government longer than anticipated to get the economy ‘back on track’ and it is unclear how and whether the long-term negative labour market and social consequences will be compensated.
This study investigates how perceptions of ability-motivation-opportunity (AMO) enhancing high-performance work systems (HPWS) affect turnover intentions among Fijian employees in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The findings reveal that a positive perception of AMO-enhancing HPWS leads to decreased turnover intentions, with this relationship mediated by affective commitment. Notably, the study finds that ability-enhancing HPWS reduce turnover intentions more than motivation or opportunity-enhancing HPWS, which challenges some previous research. This study contributes to the human resource management literature by examining the concept of AMO “bundles”, employee perceptions, and the context of SMEs in Fiji’s developing economy.
When the National, ACT New Zealand and New Zealand First coalition government came to power they inherited a series of policy and legislative challenges regarding the status and protections for workers labelled as contractors. This involves defining which workers are employees, with the rights and protections that involves, and the potential that some workers may be misclassified as contractors. Alongside this are workers in a ‘grey area’ between contractor and employee classifications. These people are not truly self-employed in the sense of being independent entrepreneurs, but instead are constrained in a variety of ways, including being economically dependent on one employer or constrained in the way their contracts function. This article critically evaluates the government’s proposed amendment to the test of employment status in s6 of the Employment Relations Act 2000 (ERA) and argues that the amendment is unsatisfactory on several grounds. While it is important that workers are not exploited and are able to live decent lives, there are industries which are not configured in a way which easily lends itself to the imposition of standard employment relationships. There are also workers who do not want to work under the traditional employment relations model. The article concludes that a more nuanced approach – beyond the current employee versus independent contractor binary – is needed. It highlights the potential of commercial law to offer improved protections for workers in contracting arrangements as a promising avenue for future development.
This article illustrates how vignettes were utilised as prompts in a semi-structured interview study of multiple job holders during the Covid-19 pandemic, to overcome challenges created by the latent nature of the topic under investigation and the atypical situation created by the pandemic. Our illustrative qualitative study sought to understand how multiple job holders identify their ‘main job’. Three key benefits of using vignettes are outlined. The first of these was the ability for vignettes to encourage participant reflexivity (introspection) in a way that was conducive to ‘unpacking’ a tacit research problem to produce rich data. The vignettes also enabled efficient use of participants’ scarce time, helped significantly by providing an interesting experience rather than a laborious one. Lastly, focusing participants’ attention on the hypothetical vignette situations helped to enable some sense of normality in an atypical context which could have otherwise considerably skewed the data. On this basis, we present vignettes as a useful research tool that other employment relations researchers may wish to employ.
This study draws on qualitative semi-structured interviews conducted with a cohort comprising 31 Samoan CEOs and senior managers across various New Zealand industries to explore the phenomenon of a ‘brown glass ceiling’. The results reveal that Samoans encounter barriers in their career trajectories, hindering or stalling their progression into senior management roles. Our study indicates that cross-cultural differences in communication led to missed opportunities in addition to issues, such as racism, occupational segregation, and tokenism. Notably, some Samoan women experienced interracial and gender discrimination, particularly as afa-kasi (half-caste). Samoan career facilitators included mentorship from ‘white’ New Zealand Europeans, establishing future legacies, and a commitment to embracing their Samoan cultural identity. Our results have significant implications regarding how barriers to the glass ceiling shape and impact the careers of Samoans within New Zealand organisations. Consequently, our study contributes to the existing glass ceiling literature by incorporating insights from indigenous Samoans, who have received limited attention in glass ceiling and management research.
New Zealand was once at the vanguard of international adoption of neoliberalism in labour market policy. However, international institutions have weakened or even reversed their commitment to these ideals over time. In addition, economic theory has moved towards a model that takes account of monopsony and power. Fair pay agreements, briefly introduced and the abolished in 2023, were considered a crucial legislative change, but they cannot be the full solution to the problem of low worker power in New Zealand. Instead, consideration needs to be given to broader factors behind the continuing loss of employee influence. Finally, the concrete effects of neoliberalism are likely much more persistent than the ideas themselves.
The 2016 Australian census data showed that one in 10 Australians aged 15-24 years was not in education, employment or training (NEET). The assumption that NEET harms wellbeing underpins theoretical and policy discourses on youth disengagement from work and study. However, despite the extensive literature on the profiles of Australian NEET youth, the evidence on the consequences of NEET for future labour force participation and career progression is limited. Using data from the Australian Census Longitudinal Dataset, this study shows that a spell of NEET at ages 15-24 years is significantly associated with reduced full-time employment prospects and increased risks of being out of the labour force at ages 25-34 years. Even if NEETs find a job later in life, they are more likely to end up in low-skilled occupations. Our findings highlight the importance of distinguishing between full-time and part-time employment while measuring long-term impacts of NEET status. We also showed that some NEETs face higher future labour market risks than others.
