The Legal Position Is Clear
Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 (HSWA), a person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) has a primary duty of care to ensure the health and safety of workers — including contractors, subcontractors, and their employees — while they are at work on your premises or under your management or control.
WorkSafe NZ is explicit: engaging someone as a contractor rather than an employee does not reduce your duty of care. If a contractor is working on your site or under your direction, you share responsibility for their safety. This duty cannot be contracted away.
Contractor induction training in NZ is not a nice-to-have. It is one of the clearest ways to demonstrate that you discharged your duty of care — and one of the first things WorkSafe investigators look for after an incident.
What Contractor Induction Must Cover
There is no single prescribed curriculum, but WorkSafe guidance and case law establish a baseline of what a reasonable induction includes for contractors working on your site or under your control:
Site hazards and controls — a walk-through or documented briefing on every significant hazard the contractor may encounter, and the controls in place. This must be specific to your site, not a generic handout.
Emergency procedures — evacuation routes, muster points, how to raise an alarm, and first aid location. Contractors need this information before they start work, not on day three.
Incident and near-miss reporting — how to report an incident or near miss, and to whom. A contractor who does not know your reporting process will not use it.
PPE requirements — what personal protective equipment is required in your environment, whether you supply it, and what standards it must meet.
Site rules — permit to work systems, restricted areas, vehicle movement, smoking, drug and alcohol policy, and any other site-specific rules the contractor is expected to follow.
Health and safety roles — who the contractor's point of contact is, who the site health and safety representative is, and how to raise a concern.
For contractors doing higher-risk work — working at height, confined spaces, electrical work, operating plant — a general site induction is not enough. You need additional task-specific briefings before work commences.
The Overlapping PCBU Problem
Many businesses assume the principal contractor handles induction. Often that assumption is wrong — or only partially right.
Under HSWA, where multiple PCBUs share responsibility for a worker (for example, a labour-hire worker placed by an agency but working under your direction), all relevant PCBUs must consult, cooperate, and coordinate with each other. You cannot simply hand off induction responsibility and assume it has been done.
If a contractor arrives on site and says they have been inducted by their employer, verify what that induction covered. If it did not cover your site-specific hazards, you are still exposed.
Use a health and safety induction checklist to document what was covered, by whom, and when. Get the contractor to sign it. Retain the record.
What WorkSafe Looks for After an Incident
WorkSafe's investigation process after a notifiable event involving a contractor focuses on:
- Was the contractor made aware of the relevant hazards before starting work?
- Was there a documented induction — and can you produce it?
- Was supervision appropriate for the risk level of the task?
- Were the controls in the health and safety plan actually in place at the time of the incident?
Businesses that cannot produce an induction record for an injured contractor are in a difficult position. The absence of documentation is not proof that induction did not happen — but it makes it very hard to demonstrate that it did.
WorkSafe has issued improvement notices and initiated prosecutions where inadequate contractor management was a factor in an incident. Fines under HSWA can reach $1.5 million for a PCBU found guilty of a Category 1 offence.
Short-Term and Repeat Contractors
One of the most common gaps is around short-term or repeat contractors. Businesses often deliver a thorough induction for a long-term contractor and nothing for a one-day tradesperson.
The risk exposure is the same regardless of how long the contractor is on site. A one-day electrician who does not know about your confined space hazard is as much at risk as a six-month project team member.
For repeat contractors, you need a process for re-induction when:
- They return after a significant period (define "significant" in your policy — many organisations use 12 months)
- Site conditions or hazards have materially changed since their last visit
- The scope of their work changes to include areas or tasks not covered in the original induction
Building a Scalable Contractor Induction Process
For businesses using contractors regularly, a manual induction process does not scale well and creates inconsistency. Common solutions:
- Online induction module: Contractors complete a site induction course before arriving on site. They cannot start without a completion certificate. This works well for sites where the same hazards apply to all visitors.
- Induction register: A simple tracked system where each contractor is recorded, what they were inducted on, and when it needs renewal.
- Supervisor sign-off: The contractor's direct supervisor on site confirms the induction happened and what was covered before work starts.
WyzAZ lets you build contractor induction courses, track completions, and generate compliance records — so you always have evidence on file if WorkSafe comes asking.