How to prepare for a WorkSafe inspection (and what to have ready)

A WorkSafe inspector can knock on your door any time. Under section 168 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 (HSWA), inspectors have the legal right to enter any workplace at any reasonable time — no appointment necessary.

Most businesses that have been through a WorkSafe assessment will tell you it was less adversarial than they expected. Inspectors are there to help you understand your obligations, not to catch you out. But that does not mean being unprepared is fine. If your systems are patchy, your documentation is incomplete, or what you say does not match what they see on the floor, things can escalate quickly.

This guide walks you through how WorkSafe assessments actually work, what they are looking for, and how to get your workplace ready — not just for inspection day, but for ongoing compliance.

What triggers a WorkSafe assessment?

The most important thing to understand is that WorkSafe assessments are usually proactive, not reactive. According to WorkSafe, inspectors carried out over 10,400 workplace assessments in 2022/23, and the majority of these are planned, targeted visits rather than responses to complaints or incidents.

At least 80% of proactive assessments are directed at industries WorkSafe identifies as high risk: manufacturing, warehousing, logistics, agriculture, forestry, and construction. If your business operates in one of these sectors, an assessment is not a matter of if — it is a matter of when.

That said, reactive visits do happen. If a notifiable event occurs at your workplace (a serious injury, illness, or near-fatality), WorkSafe will attend. The same applies if a worker or HSR (Health and Safety Representative) raises a formal concern.

What WorkSafe actually looks for

WorkSafe assessments follow a broadly consistent four-part structure, though the emphasis changes depending on industry, complexity, and what the inspector finds along the way.

Part 1: The initial conversation

The inspector will sit down with whoever is in charge and have a discussion about your business, the hazards you have identified, and the steps you are taking to manage them. This is not a quiz — it is a genuine attempt to understand how your safety system works in practice. They want to hear how you think about risk, not just whether you have a policy document.

WorkSafe inspectors are trained to focus on worker involvement in safety. Do your workers know the risks? Do they have a way to raise concerns? Is there a Health and Safety Representative in place? These questions matter as much as whether your machinery is compliant.

Part 2: The walkabout

After the initial conversation, the inspector will walk through your workplace. They are checking whether what you described in the conversation matches what is actually happening on the floor.

WorkSafe's current sector priorities concentrate on three categories of harm:

If your facility involves forklifts, heavy machinery, or vehicle movement — common in warehousing, logistics, and manufacturing — you can expect particular scrutiny on pedestrian-vehicle separation, exclusion zones, and the visibility of high-risk intersections.

Part 3: Deeper investigation

If anything during the walkabout raises concern, the inspector will dig deeper. They may speak directly with workers (separately from management) to understand how safety is experienced at ground level. They may ask a worker to demonstrate a task, or walk them through how a piece of machinery is operated.

This part of the process is not about catching people out. It is about understanding whether safety is embedded in practice, not just on paper.

Part 4: Documentation review

The inspector may ask to see records and documents that support your safety system. These commonly include:

• Hazard and risk registers

• Incident and near-miss logs

• Training records and certifications

• Equipment and maintenance logs

• Safe operating procedures (SOPs)

• Records of worker engagement on health and safety matters

• Evidence of corrective actions taken following incidents

They are looking for evidence that your systems are actively used, not just filed away.

What happens after the assessment

Most assessments do not result in enforcement action. WorkSafe's regulatory approach is engagement-first: the inspector's goal is to help you understand what needs to improve, not to issue notices for the sake of it.

If the inspector identifies concerns, there are several possible outcomes:

Directive letter or improvement notice: WorkSafe will set out what needs to change and by when. Improvement notices are formal and must be complied with.

Prohibition notice: If a serious risk is identified, the inspector can require you to cease an activity immediately. Ignoring a prohibition notice is a serious offence. One business in the construction sector was fined $180,000 after continuing work in defiance of a prohibition notice on three separate occasions.

Infringement notice: An on-the-spot fine for more straightforward breaches.

Prosecution: Reserved for the most serious cases. Under HSWA, a PCBU found to have recklessly exposed workers to risk of serious harm faces fines of up to $3 million for organisations, or up to $600,000 and five years' imprisonment for individual officers. Courts have shown they are willing to impose significant penalties: recent cases have seen starting points of $450,000 to $700,000 before discounts for mitigating factors.

The key point is that enforcement escalates with the seriousness of the breach and the organisation's history of compliance. A business with robust systems that is genuinely trying to improve is in a very different position to one that has been ignoring known risks.

What to have ready before an inspector arrives

You will not always know in advance when a WorkSafe assessment is coming. That is the point. But if your systems are genuinely working, you should be able to pull together the following at short notice:

Documentation to have accessible:

Physical workplace readiness:

People readiness:

That last point is more important than most businesses realise. An inspector speaking directly with a frontline worker who cannot name the primary risks in their area, or who says safety events are never discussed, will prompt significant follow-up questions — regardless of what the paperwork says.

The documentation problem most businesses do not see

Here is the issue many EHS managers face going into an assessment: they have the documentation, but they cannot easily connect it to what is actually happening in the workplace.

Incident logs show recorded events, but they cannot tell you how representative those records are of actual risk. Training records show who has been trained, but not whether people are applying that training on the floor. Risk registers list hazards, but cannot tell you how frequently those hazards are actually occurring.

This is the gap that WorkSafe inspectors probe hardest: the space between what your system says and what your workplace does.

How continuous monitoring closes the gap

This is where computer vision AI changes the picture for high-risk workplaces. Rather than relying on periodic audits and manual observation, a system like inviol monitors your facility continuously, capturing real safety events as they happen across your highest-risk areas.

That monitoring produces several things that are directly useful in a WorkSafe assessment:

An objective event log. Every detected safety event — a pedestrian entering an exclusion zone, a forklift operating above speed in a pedestrian corridor, a worker in a high-risk area without appropriate PPE — is captured and time-stamped. This is a genuine record of what is happening at your facility, not a self-reported estimate.

Evidence of corrective action. inviol's coaching platform connects detected events to coaching sessions and follow-up outcomes. When an inspector asks what you do when a safety event is identified, you can show them a documented workflow: event detected, reviewed by supervisor, coaching session conducted, outcome recorded. That kind of closed loop is exactly what WorkSafe's documentation review is looking for.

Leading indicator data. Rather than presenting only injury and incident rates (lagging indicators that WorkSafe already knows are unreliable), you can show trend data on the types and frequency of safety events over time — and evidence that your interventions are working. Average risk reduction across inviol customers is 67%, with a 42% reduction in incidents over three years. That is the kind of demonstrated improvement that shows a regulator your system is genuinely functioning.

Heatmap insights. inviol's heatmap feature shows where safety events cluster across your facility. For inspection preparation, this is genuinely useful: it tells you where to prioritise physical remediation before a visit and provides documentary evidence that you have identified and are managing your highest-risk zones.

inviol works with your existing CCTV infrastructure, with on-premise processing that keeps 99% of data on-site. All footage used in coaching sessions features face and people blurring to protect worker privacy — a consideration that matters increasingly as WorkSafe pays closer attention to worker rights. The platform is SOC2 and ISO 27001 certified, with full GDPR compliance.

To understand what inviol can show you about your current safety risk profile, book a demo.

A note on the HSWA reform landscape

It is worth noting that New Zealand's health and safety regulatory environment is currently in a period of reform. In March 2025, Cabinet agreed to sharpen the purpose of the HSWA, clarify duties for small businesses, and strengthen Approved Codes of Practice (ACOPs). In June 2025, further decisions were made around defining critical risk and clarifying notification requirements.

The direction of reform is generally towards clearer duties and stronger ACOP guidance — not a relaxation of obligations for high-risk workplaces. If anything, the reforms are designed to make it clearer what compliance looks like, which means there is less room for ambiguity when an inspector visits.

For warehousing, logistics, and manufacturing businesses, the practical implication is unchanged: the duty to proactively identify and manage risk remains, and systems that demonstrate you are actively doing so will continue to be what inspectors are looking for.

The mindset shift that makes the difference

The businesses that tend to do well in WorkSafe assessments have one thing in common: they are not preparing for a visit. They are running their safety system as if an inspector is watching all the time, because they care about the outcome the system is designed to achieve.

That sounds obvious, but the organisations that struggle are almost always the ones who see compliance as a documentation exercise rather than a genuine risk management system. Inspectors are experienced enough to tell the difference quickly.

If your documentation is solid, your workers can speak to safety without hesitation, and your corrective action processes close the loop on identified events — you are in good shape. The assessment becomes a conversation about continuous improvement, not an examination you might fail.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can WorkSafe NZ inspect my business without notice?

Yes. Under section 168 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, WorkSafe inspectors can enter any workplace at any reasonable time without prior notice. Inspections may be proactive and planned, or reactive following a notifiable event or complaint.

What documents does WorkSafe typically ask for during an inspection?

Inspectors commonly request hazard and risk registers, incident and near-miss logs, training and certification records, equipment maintenance logs, safe operating procedures, and records of worker engagement in health and safety processes. HSWA also requires notifiable event records to be retained for at least five years.

What is the difference between an improvement notice and a prohibition notice?

An improvement notice directs you to address a health and safety risk within a specified timeframe. A prohibition notice requires an activity to stop immediately because a serious risk is occurring or could occur. Failing to comply with a prohibition notice is a serious offence and can result in prosecution.

What are the maximum fines for HSWA breaches in New Zealand?

For the most serious offences (reckless conduct in respect of a duty), organisations face fines of up to $3 million. Individual officers who are PCBUs face fines of up to $600,000 and/or imprisonment of up to five years. Courts have shown willingness to impose significant penalties where the breach is serious.

How can computer vision AI help with WorkSafe inspection readiness?

Computer vision AI platforms like inviol generate continuous, objective records of safety events, coaching actions, and corrective outcomes. This provides documentary evidence that your safety management system is actively functioning — which is exactly what WorkSafe inspectors look for when reviewing documentation and speaking with workers.