Governing Health and Safety Risk

Who is this guide for?

It is for company directors, board members and trustees of New Zealand organisations who carry an officer duty and want to govern health and safety risk well.

It focuses on the governance role: setting expectations, testing assurance, and knowing the difference between governing risk and managing it, so the board adds value without stepping into operations.

A short governance guide

Plain-language lessons with a brief reflective activity, built for busy directors.

What the courts have just told New Zealand directors

Officer due diligence stopped being an abstract idea on 31 March 2026, when the High Court dismissed Mr Gibson's appeal. If you sit on a board or hold an officer role, that case is the clearest statement yet of what section 44 actually asks of you, and it is worth ten minutes of your attention.

The court confirmed that section 44 imposes a personal duty. You are not automatically liable when the business breaches its duty. You are accountable for whether you met the standard of a reasonable officer. Those are different things, and the difference is where most boards get comfortable too early.

The three findings that should change how your board operates

Reliance has to be active. Delegating health and safety to a competent manager is not due diligence on its own. Where an officer is aware of a critical risk, they are expected to inquire into it and follow it up, particularly when the reporting they receive does not seem to line up with the safety plan they approved.

Being mostly diligent is not a defence. The court was direct on this. Due diligence that is reasonable for the most part does not excuse an omission in a specific critical risk area the officer knew about. A board can have a strong overall programme and still fall short on the one risk that matters.

Verify resources and use, not just existence. It is not enough that a control was written down. Officers are expected to satisfy themselves that controls exist, that they are properly resourced, and that they are actually being used. In the Gibson case the shortfalls were documented exclusion zones around operating cranes, the resourcing behind them, and any monitoring of whether people complied.

What the 2026 amendment changes, and what it does not

The Health and Safety at Work Amendment Bill refocuses the system on critical risks and reduces the compliance load on smaller businesses. For officers specifically, it does two notable things. It clarifies that your governance duty does not extend into the other roles you may hold in the business. And it turns the definition of due diligence into an exhaustive list rather than an open-ended one.

Read that second change carefully before you relax. An exhaustive list makes the duty more predictable. It does not make it smaller. You still need to understand the hazards, ensure appropriate resources exist, and verify that they are used. That is very close to what the Gibson decision said the standard already was.

Five questions to put to your next board meeting

• Can we name our critical risks, in order, without looking at a document?
• For each one, what is the hard control, and when did anyone last verify it is in place and being used?
• What are we measuring that tells us about work as it is actually done, rather than work as it is written down?
• When did a director last ask a question about safety that management could not immediately answer, and what happened next?
• If an inspector asked each of us to describe our personal due diligence, would we give the same answer?

If the fourth question makes the room uncomfortable, that is the useful one. Boards that never generate an unanswerable question are usually not asking hard enough.

Sources: Gibson appeal, High Court, 31 March 2026, on officer due diligence under section 44 HSWA 2015. Health and Safety at Work Amendment Bill 2026 (Bill 244), explanatory note. This page is general information, not legal advice.

Common questions

Who is this guide for?

Company directors, board members and trustees of New Zealand organisations who carry an officer duty for health and safety.

How is it different from the leaders’ guide?

This one is angled to governance: the questions a board should ask and how to test assurance. The companion guide is for CEOs and senior leaders who lead the work day to day.

Is this legal advice?

No. It is general guidance to help boards govern well and ask better questions. It is not legal advice.

How long does it take?

It is short and self-paced, designed to fit around a director’s schedule.

What did the Gibson appeal actually change for directors?

It did not create a new duty. It clarified the existing one. The High Court confirmed that section 44 is a personal duty, that relying on management has to be active rather than passive, and that due diligence which is reasonable for the most part does not excuse a gap in a critical risk the officer knew about.

Does the 2026 amendment reduce what officers have to do?

It makes the duty more predictable rather than smaller. The Bill turns due diligence into an exhaustive list and confirms that your governance duty does not extend into other roles you hold. You still need to understand the hazards, ensure resources exist, and verify they are used.

We are a small business. Does any of this apply to us?

The officer duty applies regardless of size. What the Bill changes for businesses with fewer than 20 workers is the scope of the core duties, which focus on critical risks, and welfare facilities are still required in full. If you are a director or an officer, section 44 still applies to you personally.