Something has gone wrong on site. Someone is hurt, or very nearly was. In the middle of dealing with it, you have to work out whether this is one you have to report — and you have to work it out quickly, because the clock started when you found out.
This is the part people get wrong under pressure. Not because the rules are impossible, but because nobody reads them in advance, and the moment you need them is the worst possible moment to start.
Three categories, and that is all
A notifiable event under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 is one of three things: a death, a notifiable injury or illness, or a notifiable incident. That is the whole list. If what happened does not fit one of those three, you do not have to notify.
The catch is that it has to arise from work. Not “happen at work” — arise from it. The cause can be the state of the site, the way the job was organised, or the way plant or substances were being used. It can also happen nowhere near your premises and still count. Someone having a heart attack at their desk for reasons unconnected to the job is not a notifiable event; someone collapsing because of what they were breathing is.
The injuries that count
A notifiable injury or illness is not “anything that needed a bandage”. The Act lists specific outcomes, and the ones that come up most are:
Amputation of any part of the body
Serious head injury, or serious eye injury
Serious burn, or serious laceration
Spinal injury
Loss of a bodily function
Serious degloving or scalping
Where the judgement actually sits
The word doing the work in that list is “serious”, and the Act does not define it with a number. A useful rule of thumb that practitioners fall back on: if the person needed to be admitted to hospital, treat it as notifiable and move on. You are not being graded on restraint.
And if you genuinely cannot tell — notify. There is no penalty for reporting something that turns out not to have been notifiable. There is one for the reverse. Anyone who has sat on a borderline call for two days while deciding will tell you the deciding was worse than the phone call.
Notifiable incidents: the near misses that count
This is the category people forget, because nobody got hurt. A notifiable incident is an unplanned or uncontrolled event that exposed someone to a serious risk — immediate or imminent — even if it missed entirely.
A scaffold that collapses at 6pm with nobody on it is still notifiable. So is an unplanned explosion or fire, a structural collapse, a crane going over, uncontrolled electrical contact, or a substance escaping, spilling or leaking in a way that put people at serious risk. The test is the exposure to risk, not the injury count.
How long you have
As soon as possible after you become aware of it. There is no stated number of hours, which people read as leniency — it is not. “As soon as possible” is measured against what you could reasonably have done, and a two-day gap is hard to defend when the notification takes ten minutes.
WorkSafe takes notifications on 0800 030 040, and may ask you to follow up in writing within 48 hours. For most work the regulator is WorkSafe, but there are exceptions: work preparing aircraft for imminent flight, and aircraft in operation, go to the Civil Aviation Authority instead.
The two obligations people forget
First: do not disturb the site. Once a notifiable event has happened, the scene has to be left alone, with narrow exceptions — helping someone who is injured, removing a body, making the area safe, or anything a constable or inspector directs. The instinct to tidy up before anyone official arrives is strong, and it is the wrong instinct.
Second: keep the record for at least five years from the date you gave notice. Not five years from the incident — five years from the notification. This is the one that quietly fails, because the notification gets made by phone and the record of it lives in somebody’s sent items until they leave the company.
What this looks like if it is handled properly
The notifiability question gets asked at the time, by whoever is recording the event, rather than remembered later. The decision and the reasoning behind it get written down, so that in two years you can explain why you did or did not notify. The record survives the person who made it.
That is roughly what incident management in HazNode does — it prompts the notifiability question against the HSWA limbs while the event is being entered, and keeps the record and the reasoning attached to it. The point is less the software and more that the question is asked while anyone still remembers the answer.
Frequently asked questions
What are the three types of notifiable event in New Zealand?
A death, a notifiable injury or illness, or a notifiable incident. All three must arise from work. Anything that does not fit one of those three categories does not need to be notified.
How quickly do I have to notify WorkSafe?
As soon as possible after you become aware of the event. There is no fixed number of hours in the Act, but “as soon as possible” is judged against what you could reasonably have done — so same-day, not next-week. The number is 0800 030 040, and WorkSafe may ask for written notice within 48 hours.
Do I have to notify a near miss?
Yes, if it was a notifiable incident — an unplanned or uncontrolled event that exposed someone to serious risk, whether or not anyone was hurt. A scaffold collapsing overnight with nobody on it is still notifiable.
What if I am not sure whether something is notifiable?
Notify. There is no penalty for reporting something that turns out not to have needed it, and there is one for failing to report something that did. If the person was admitted to hospital, treat it as notifiable.
How long do I have to keep records of a notifiable event?
At least five years from the date you gave notice to WorkSafe — not from the date of the event itself.
