Hazard Register for a Small Business in NZ: How to Set One Up
- A hazard register is a simple table that proves you identify and manage risks, not a complex system.
- Build a business-wide register first, then add three to six site-specific lines for each job.
- A register nobody reads does nothing; reading it out and reviewing it regularly keeps it alive.
Every small trade business knows its hazards. The electrician knows about the live board. The painter knows about the ladder and the solvent. The plumber knows about the trench and the hot water. What most of them do not have is the knowledge written down in one place, in a form that shows what they are doing about it, and that is the gap a hazard register closes. It is a table, not a system, and it takes an hour to build.
What the register is for
The General Risk and Workplace Management Regulations 2016, regulation 6, require a business to identify reasonably foreseeable hazards and to manage the risks they create, eliminating them where reasonably practicable and otherwise minimising them. The Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 puts the duty on the business (section 36) and, where several businesses share a site, requires them to coordinate (section 34).
A hazard register is how you show that you have done the identifying and the managing. It is also, more usefully, how you make sure the apprentice knows what you know.
The five columns
Hazard. The thing that could hurt someone. Be specific: “working from the roof edge, two storeys” rather than “heights”.
Who could be harmed. Your workers, the client, the public, other trades.
Risk. How likely and how bad. A simple high, medium or low is enough for a small business; a 1 to 5 matrix if you prefer. The point is to put the serious ones at the top.
Control. What you do about it, following the hierarchy: eliminate first (do the work from the ground with a pole), then minimise (edge protection, harness and anchor, a second person). Personal protective equipment is the last resort, not the first.
Owner. The person responsible for making sure the control is in place on the day. Usually you, sometimes the lead hand on that job.
Add a date reviewed and you have the whole thing.
Build the business-wide register first
Sit down with a coffee and list the hazards that turn up on most of your jobs. For an electrical business: live conductors, working at height, confined spaces in ceilings, asbestos in older switchboards, driving, manual handling, the public. For a painting business: ladders and scaffold, solvents and dust, lead paint in pre-1980 houses, sun, driving. For a plumber: trenches, hot water, gas, confined spaces, sewage, driving. Ten to fifteen lines covers most trades. Write the control you actually use for each, not the control a textbook would suggest.
Then the site-specific lines
For each job, copy the business-wide register and add what is particular to this site: the dog, the client’s children, the shared driveway with the neighbour, the asbestos soffit, the overhead lines at the back fence. Three to six extra lines is normal. This site-specific version is what goes in the safety plan, what you say in the toolbox talk, and what the main contractor wants to see.
Keep it alive
A register that was written once and never changed is evidence that nobody looks at it. Review the business-wide version every six months or after any incident. Add a line when a near miss shows you a hazard you had not listed. Date every change. If WorkSafe ever asks, a register with twelve dated revisions says more about your business than a glossy one that has never been touched.
A register that was written once and never changed is evidence that nobody looks at it.
Make the crew part of it
A hazard register that lives in the office does nothing. Read the site lines out at the start of the job, ask what anyone has noticed, and add it. Across 20,286 publicly posted reviews of NZ electricians, plumbers and painters, clear explanation is praised in 35.5% of positive plumber reviews, and tidiness and clean-up in 15.3% for plumbers and 15.0% for electricians. Explaining things and keeping the site tidy are habits customers notice, and they are the same habits that make a site safe.
What not to do
Do not buy a 200-line template and leave 180 lines in it that have nothing to do with your work. Do not list “slips, trips and falls” as a hazard with “take care” as a control. Do not have a register that nobody on the tools has ever seen. A short, specific, dated register that the crew has read beats all three.
A template
The site safety plan and hazard register in our resource library has the register table with the five columns, the two-page site safety plan it slots into, an induction sign-on and a toolbox talk record. Free, in PDF and Word, with the Act and the regulation referenced and dated.
You already know the hazards. Write them in the table, give each one an owner, and read it out on Monday.
What to do on Monday
- List the ten to fifteen hazards that turn up on most of your jobs with their controls.
- Copy the business-wide register and add the site-specific hazards for today’s job.
- Read the site lines out to the crew and ask what else they have noticed.
Sources and legal references
Legislation and agency links checked on 9 October 2026. This is general information, not legal or tax advice.
