At McLeod, we take health and safety seriously. As a business deeply committed to the well-being of our people, we have always strived to implement best-in-class safety systems, training, and protocols.
So, when we consider the ACC’s current experience rating scheme, we have strong views on how it could better serve New Zealand businesses and workers.
ACC recently proposed two options for changes to their Experience Rating and No Claims Discount programs. While both options aim to redistribute levies and reduce cross-subsidisation, they don’t address the fundamental challenge:
Incentivising proactive health and safety behaviours in businesses.
We believe there’s a better way to improve safety outcomes while rewarding those who invest in their safety systems.
The Current Issue: Experience Rating Based on Claims Data
The experience rating system currently relies heavily on claims data, meaning businesses are often judged solely on the number of claims they make. This approach fails to capture the broader context of a company’s health and safety efforts. While claims data might reflect outcomes, it doesn’t account for the many ways businesses actively prevent injuries before they occur.
At McLeod, we believe that rewarding businesses for their proactive health and safety efforts—such as ongoing training, hazard identification, and safety system audits—would create a more meaningful incentive for businesses to keep improving.
Relying solely on claims data is like trying to prevent a fall by looking at the bottom of the hill, rather than focusing on prevention at the top.
Option One and Option Two: What’s Missing?
ACC has put forward two options:
Option One - removes the No Claims Discount and reduces cross-subsidies for larger businesses, meaning more businesses would see a reduction in levies. However, those who have a 10% No Claims Discount could face higher levy increases.
• Option Two goes further by removing all cross-subsidies, providing a larger reduction in levies for smaller businesses and making the experience rating system self-funding. This option spreads the financial impact more evenly but still leaves us reliant on claims-based metrics.
Both options focus on redistributing costs rather than incentivising preventative measures or recognising businesses that invest heavily in health and safety.
At McLeod, we ask: where is the reward for businesses that go above and beyond in keeping their people safe?
A Better Way Forward: Proactive Audits and Real Incentives
To drive meaningful change in workplace safety, ACC needs to reward good safety practices, not just penalise poor outcomes. We propose bringing back an audit-based system, where qualified health and safety professionals evaluate businesses based on their proactive efforts to prevent injuries, not just the number of claims they’ve had.
An audit-based system, similar to the old ACC tertiary program, would allow health and safety professionals to look at key sector-specific risks and help businesses address the root causes of injuries. This would create a culture of prevention, reducing injuries before they happen, rather than focusing on what went wrong after the fact.
Note: When we refer to an audit, we mean a qualified professional physically visiting your site to assess your health and safety practices in person—tailored to the specific risks of your business. This is not an online tick-box exercise that turns health and safety into a paperwork battle, disconnected from your actual operations and based on someone else’s risk perceptions.
Streamlining Pre-qualification: A National Standard
Another opportunity lies in standardising health and safety prequalification across industries. Many businesses are currently burdened by a proliferation of prequalification schemes, each with its own set of requirements. This creates unnecessary complexity and administrative load for businesses that are trying to do the right thing.
By adopting a national prequalification standard, such as CHASNZ’s Tōtika, ACC could reduce this burden and ensure that businesses have a clear, unified pathway to meeting health and safety requirements. This would simplify compliance for businesses and ensure consistency in safety standards across New Zealand.
The Time for Change Is Now
New Zealand’s businesses need a health and safety system that recognises and rewards prevention, not just response. The proposed changes to ACC’s experience rating and No Claims Discount program present an opportunity to shift the focus from claims data to proactive safety measures. By doing so, ACC can help create a safer work environment for all New Zealanders.
At McLeod, we are calling for a system that encourages businesses to keep improving safety, rewarding those who invest in their people, and ensuring that good safety systems are recognised—not just penalising businesses when things go wrong.
By bringing back real value in health and safety through audit-based assessments and adopting national standards like Tōtika, we can create a system where prevention is the priority and everyone benefits.
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