Raraunga Ohumahi - Te hauora i roto i te mahi Workforce Data - Wellbeing at work

In Te Taunaki Public Service Census, 69% of the participants said they were satisfied or very satisfied with their job, and only 4% were very dissatisfied. This compares to 77% of employed New Zealanders who were satisfied with their job in the most recent General Social Survey 2018.

Wellbeing data for New Zealanders: job satisfaction — Stats NZ

Job Satisfaction(PDF, 292 KB)

Wellbeing data for New Zealanders: job satisfaction — Stats NZ

Workplace injuries

The Commission has worked with the health and safety functional lead, ACC and Stats NZ to produce two Health and Safety metrics (as shown in the visualisation below).

• All ACC claims in the Public Service per 1,000 FTEs.
• Entitlement ACC claims per 1,000 FTEs (serious claims that involve additional payments beyond medical fees).

Historically. the incidence of such claims in the Public Service workforce is around half that in the wider New Zealand workforce.

In the Public Service, the rate of ‘All ACC claims’ had remained relatively unchanged until 2020, when it dropped, and has now dropped further in 2021 and 2022 (from 43 per thousand FTEs in 2019, to 28 per thousand in 2022). There was also a sharp fall in all work-related claims in the wider New Zealand workforce in 2020, and Stats NZ notes that this coincided with the national COVID-19 lockdown in the first half of 2020.

The rate of ‘ACC entitlement claims’ in the Public Service has been slightly more variable over time but tracked along at roughly a fifth of the ‘All ACC claims’ rate. This ‘ACC entitlement claims’ rate peaked in 2019 (at 10.7 per thousand FTEs) but has now returned to a more normal level in both 2021 and 2022 (at 7.9 per thousand).  Stats NZ report that the New Zealand incidence rate for claims involving entitlement payments was 16 claims per thousand FTEs in 2022. This rate has remained relatively stable since 2017. 

Note that the Public Service results for the latest year are provisional.  They are generally revised upwards in the following year when more complete administrative ACC data is available.

The health and safety functional lead was established in August 2017 within the Public Service to work with organisations and the sector generally.

Stats NZ has the latest official workplace injury statistics.

Injury statistics: work-related claims: 2022 — Stats NZ

Workplace injuries(XLSX, 10 KB)

Turnover, sick and domestic leave, and tenure

Unplanned turnover measures the rate that organisations lose permanent staff due to reasons they hadn’t planned for, such as resignations, retirements and dismissals. The 2023 figure is 15.9% which although down from 17.3% last year (the highest rate since measurement began in 2000), is still at historically high levels.  This is likely being driven by the continued tight labour market conditions affecting the wider economy.

Health measures by occupation and age group(XLSX, 37 KB)

Workplace health measures(XLSX, 57 KB)

In the year to 30 June 2023, Public Service employees took on average 9.5 days of sick and domestic leave, up from 8.3 days in 2022, to the highest level since measurement began in . The 2023 Southern Cross / Business NZ Workplace Wellness Report found that average employee absence rates from New Zealand workplaces were at their highest level since the survey began in 2012. The report discusses potential drivers for this increase, such as COVID-19.

Workplace Wellness Report

The 2023 Workforce Data shows that the average length of service of Public Service employees decreased by 0.3 of a year to 7.9 years. This measure is based on tenure within a single organisation, not the Public Service as a whole, and excludes those on fixed-term employment agreements. This measure has been trending down since 2016, when it was 9.5 years. Since 2016 the number of new recruits at agencies has been increasing each year and was at a record level in 2023.