We aim to make it easy for businesses to do regular self-assessments of their health and safety environment, to identify what’s working well and areas they can improve.
The SafePlus self-assessment survey takes about 10 minutes to complete, and is suitable for workplaces of all sizes and in all industries.
Watch our video on how to use the resources:
Please note: the self-assessment survey results calculator that gives you your SafePlus rating is still undergoing testing and so is not available yet. We expect to make it available on this page in the coming weeks.
On this page
- Downloadable survey questions
- How to use the paper-based survey option
- How to use the online survey tool option
- How to use the combined option (online survey tool and printed forms)
About the SafePlus self-assessment resources
A SafePlus self-assessment survey helps you gather feedback from everyone in your business, from owners and senior managers to frontline workers. Asking all your workers for their perspectives is a great way to help you to understand if your health and safety practices are working well.
The questions are designed to help you:
- understand what your business is doing well
- identify areas for improvement
- see where your leadership and workers agree and where they hold different views.
The SafePlus framework focuses on three key areas that are important to achieve good health and safety outcomes:
- Leadership
- Worker engagement
- Risk management
You can use your survey responses to get a SafePlus rating of your health and safety maturity – developing, performing, or leading – in the three key areas.
The framework was designed by a team of health and safety experts with a unique understanding of workplaces in Aotearoa.
What’s available to help your business do a SafePlus self-assessment
The SafePlus self-assessment resources available on this page are free to use. However, if you choose to use an online survey platform to run the survey, this is at your own cost.
Downloadable survey questions
These can be:
- printed as ready-to-use survey forms, to run a paper-based survey.
- copied into a commercial online survey tool of your choice. A range of survey tools can be found online (at user’s cost).
There are ‘Senior manager’ and ‘Employee’ question versions.
The survey questions come in two versions, to recognise differences in work responsibilities:
- a Senior manager version, for the people who decide your organisation’s health and safety priorities and budgets
- an Employee version, for everyone else.
The questions are available in 14 languages.
Survey questions are available in 14 languages, to support worker participation.
Senior manager version
Employee version
Survey results calculator
In the calculator, enter the responses from your printed and/or online survey to see your overall question scores, ‘opinion gap’ scores between senior leaders and other employees, and an overall SafePlus health and safety ‘maturity snapshot’ rating.
Please note: the self-assessment survey results calculator that gives you your SafePlus rating is still undergoing testing and so is not available yet. We expect to make it available on this page in the coming weeks.
How to use these resources
The survey can be run by:
- using an online survey tool of your choice, or
- printing and distributing a paper survey, or
- combining both methods.
The paper-based survey is suited to organisations with up to 50 workers, that prefer not to use an online survey, or whose workers don’t have a work computer or mobile device.
There is a range of commercial survey tools online. Subscriptions to use these tools is at your own cost. Prices vary between tools, typically based on participant and question numbers.
Step by step – paper-based survey option
- Download and print a copy of the two survey versions (Senior manager and Employee).
- On both printed versions, indicate (with a tick or a cross) the optional questions you want to include in your survey. Optional question numbers have a hexagonal box.
- Photocopy enough so that everyone at work can take part.
- Hand out the surveys. Check you are giving people the right version (Senior manager or Employee) for their role.
- Download and save a copy of the results calculator.
- Collect completed surveys and use your saved copy of the results calculator to enter each participant’s question ratings (follow the instructions in the calculator). The calculator will automatically generate your SafePlus rating.
Step by step – online survey tool option
- Choose an online survey tool to run your survey (user’s own choice and cost).
- Download the two SafePlus survey versions (Senior manager and Employee) and create an online survey for each question version. You need to survey senior managers separately from other workers, so that opinion gaps between the two groups can be identified.
- Send out the link to your survey. Check you are giving people the right survey link (Senior manager or Employee) for their role.
- Download and save a copy of the results calculator.
- Use your saved copy of the results calculator and follow instructions in the calculator to enter survey responses. The calculator will automatically generate your SafePlus rating.
Step by step – combined option (online survey tool and printed forms)
Follow the steps for each method, described above. The results calculator has input fields for both printed and online survey types. Enter the results from each survey option (follow the instructions in the calculator). The calculator will automatically generate your SafePlus rating.
Choose your questions
There are 32 mandatory questions. These align with the 10 SafePlus requirements for good health and safety practice. You need to include these to produce your SafePlus maturity rating.
You can add any of the 17 extra optional questions, to understand how your workplace manages specific types of risk, such as from dust, noise or machinery.
The survey takes about 10 minutes to complete, depending on the number of questions you include.
Who to survey
Everyone at your work will have a unique view of what works well and what doesn’t. Hearing from a wide range of workers – a range of seniority, of experience, and of responsibilities – can give new and unexpected insights.
The questions rating scale
Core questions are rated on a five-point scale:
- Strongly agree
- Agree
- Neither agree nor disagree
- Disagree
- Strongly disagree
Optional questions on the Employee survey also have a ‘does not apply to me’ (N/A) response option, as not all the risks you may want to ask about will be relevant for all your workers.
The Senior manager survey version does not include an N/A option, as senior leaders should be familiar with all the types of health and safety risk that are important to any part of your business.
Before starting your survey
We recommend you give everyone information about:
- why your business is using this survey and what it is about
- how long people have to complete the survey (7–14 days should be enough, but consider your business and worker needs)
- how to return their completed survey (if paper-based)
- how you are managing people’s answers regarding their privacy and anonymity (see the information on privacy below)
- how you will share and use the results.
Your results
Using the results calculator, your question scores will produce an overall snapshot rating of your workplace’s self-assessed ‘maturity’ and capabilities in leadership, worker engagement and risk management. The ratings are developing, performing, or leading. To get your maturity rating you must:
- use all 32 mandatory SafePlus questions in your survey
- have responses from both senior managers and other employees to all the mandatory questions.
If either of these conditions isn’t met, the calculator will only produce individual question scores.
Once you have the results, we recommend sharing them with your team and involving them in deciding what actions you’ll all take as a result. Our website has guidance that may help you. We suggest you run regular follow-up surveys (every year for example), to check your progress.
An organisation at the Developing stage:
- may be aware of the need to improve their practices and performance to support better health and safety outcomes for workers
- may not have fully identified or addressed risk management requirements
- may involve workers in some health and safety activities
- may use personal protective equipment (PPE) and administrative controls as the main form of control for risks
- may have largely informal health and safety practices
- may have lower levels of strategic planning around health and safety risks
- may tend to respond reactively to address issues as they occur.
An organisation at the Performing stage:
- has proactive and visible leadership and governance
- actively reviews and monitors performance to support continual improvement
- actively seeks information on its health and safety risks, and implements and monitors actions to sustainably manage identified health and safety risks
- involves workers in all activities and empowers them to take action
- is committed at all levels to supporting good health and safety outcomes.
An organisation at the Leading stage meets the Performing requirements and:
- may actively seek opportunities to support the development of innovations that improve health and safety and address current and emerging health and safety risks for all in the sector
- may take a leadership role in industry to influence and assist others nationally or internationally to lift performance
- has health and safety integrated in core business activities and a sense of corporate social responsibility can be demonstrated
- invests in health and safety above (or beyond) job and legislative requirements
- has built a strong sense of ownership from workers at all levels
- actively supports workers to lead initiative.
Question responses are scored:
- ‘Strongly agree’ = 5,
- ‘Agree’ = 4,
- ‘Neither agree nor disagree’ = 3,
- ‘Disagree’ = 2,
- ‘Strongly disagree’ = 1.
The questions in a SafePlus self-assessment are grouped under three topics: leadership, worker engagement, and risk management.
The SafePlus results calculator works out:
- an average combined score for each question from everyone who took part in your assessment.
- an average score from all your Senior manager survey responses for each question
- an average score from all your Employee survey responses to each question
- an opinion-gap score, the difference between Senior manager and Employee average responses to each question.
Average combined scores under each topic are then assessed together to determine the overall maturity snapshot.
WorkSafe will not have access to any user data. The questions and calculator files need to be downloaded before you enter any information.
The Privacy Act applies to any person, organisation or business that collects and holds personal information about other people. Review your privacy responsibilities(external link). Other useful links:
- The New Zealand Privacy Commission’s general principles for collecting(external link), storing(external link) and using(external link) personal information
- If you choose to use an online survey tool, see the Privacy Commission’s guidelines for working with third-party providers(external link)
Some people may not be comfortable sharing their views in case their responses are identifiable.
We recommend you run your survey in a way that makes people’s feedback anonymous – and tell workers the steps you will take to do that (see anonymity tips below). This is a good way to reassure workers that they can safely give honest feedback.
Research indicates that people are more likely to answer truthfully if they trust that their answers can’t be linked to them. Stats NZ’s guide to good survey design(external link) notes that people fearing that information given will be misused is a known reason for no response or inaccurate response to surveys.
Making responses anonymous can result in unexpected and powerful feedback. For a business owner or leader, this may sometimes be challenging to hear, consider, and act on. But it can also unlock more productive ways of working
Anonymity tips
Let workers know the steps you are taking to protect their anonymity. You could discuss a process to achieve this with your workers, or a worker representative, for feedback before finalising your plan. Reassure workers that no-one who participates will be identified or negatively impacted by their participation.
Online survey tools have anonymity settings. We recommend you turn these on if that is not the default setting.
For paper-based surveys, you might choose to number the survey forms, to guard against more than one reply per person. If survey forms are numbered, let your staff know that, and make sure the surveys are given out in a random order, so there is no reliable way to identify who has completed a particular numbered form.
You might ask a worker representative to hand out the forms when everyone can see what’s happening, such as at a toolbox meeting.
Make sure you provide one or more anonymous ways for people to return their completed surveys safely. This might be a sealed collection box that survey forms can’t easily be removed from by anyone other than the survey owner.
Having the survey collection box somewhere that isn’t constantly visible to managers or the survey administrators may help to show you are not interested in linking any individual to their answers.
We want your help to improve our health and safety.
In about a week, we’ll be sending out / handing out [EDIT FOR METHOD] a quick survey. It should take you about 10 minutes to answer some multi-choice questions about your experience of health and safety at [ORGANISATION NAME]. [IF YOU CHOOSE FOR YOUR SURVEY TO BE ANONYMOUS] Your responses are anonymous – no one other than you will know how you answered – and will only be used to help us improve health and safety, so please be honest!
It’s really important that everyone participates so we get the most accurate picture possible of where and how we can improve.
The survey will be open for [DURATION] until [DATE] to give you time to give your feedback. [ADD how their surveys should be returned if you are handing out a paper survey]
Thank you for taking part.
[NOTE FOR SURVEY OWNERS: Anonymity settings in online survey tools may be set to ‘Off’ as the default. Check the settings for your survey tool and make sure your information for survey participants matches the anonymity settings that your organisation has chosen to use.]
The former SafePlus online self-assessment tool has been retired. You can save copies of your previous survey data yourself or request to be sent an export file of your data until 12 June 2025. After this, the data will be destroyed in accordance with the Privacy Act.
For more information, see the SafePlus online tool(external link)
These refreshed self-assessment resources include the same survey questions that were used in the former online tool, which has now been retired.
- There are two question versions – ‘Senior Manager’, for owners, directors and senior managers, and ‘Employee’, for all other workers. These versions equate to the online tool’s two role groups: ‘Leadership’ and ‘Operations’.
- You have more flexibility in how to encourage participation, with paper-based and online survey options (using an online survey tool may require a subscription, at user’s cost).
- A results calculator will report ‘opinion gap’ scores between senior leaders and all other employees, as well as give you a SafePlus health and safety ‘maturity snapshot’ rating from your question scores. The ‘opinion gap’ feature is similar to the ‘Responses’ information in your SafePlus online tool dashboard.
- The SafePlus rating of your business’s health and safety maturity is in the same format used in the online tool – either developing, performing, or leading – in each area of leadership, worker engagement, and risk management.
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