Timesheets
New Zealand's employment framework changed significantly in February 2026, including a new gateway test for contractor classification. We set out the foundations that have not changed, what did change, how health and safety duties overlap on shared sites, and the right to work checks that carry penalties regardless of intent.
Compliance is the part of employing people that costs nothing when it is done properly and a great deal when it is not. In our experience the businesses that get caught out are seldom acting in bad faith. They are busy, the rules changed, and nobody had the job of noticing.
New Zealand's employment framework also moved significantly in 2026, so a refresher is worth the time. What follows is a plain summary of the obligations that matter most to employers in construction, manufacturing, logistics and agriculture. It is general information rather than legal advice, and for anything specific we would always recommend checking with Employment New Zealand or your own adviser.
Every employee must have a written employment agreement, and you must keep a signed copy or your current offer. Verbal agreements are not sufficient. The agreement has to cover the basics: the parties, the role, the place and hours of work, the wage or salary, and how the employment can be ended.
Minimum wage, annual holidays, public holidays, sick leave, bereavement leave and family violence leave are set by legislation and cannot be traded away, no matter what an agreement says. Rates and entitlements are reviewed periodically, so the safest practice is to check the current figures each year rather than relying on what was correct last time you looked.
Wage, time, holiday and leave records must be accurate and kept for seven years. This is the obligation most often found wanting during an investigation, and it is entirely preventable. If your records cannot show what someone worked and what they were paid for it, you carry the risk.
Both parties owe each other good faith. In practice this means being open, communicating honestly, and not misleading each other. It applies to everyday management, not just to disputes, and it is the standard against which a process will be judged later.
The Employment Relations Amendment Act 2026 took effect on 21 February 2026 and made four notable changes. If your employment documents and processes were written before then, they are worth reviewing.
There is now a defined test for when a worker can be treated as a specified contractor rather than an employee. All of the criteria have to be met, including a written agreement stating that the worker is an independent contractor, freedom to work for others, and a reasonable opportunity to take independent legal advice. Where the criteria are not met, the courts return to the traditional assessment of the real nature of the relationship.
For our sectors this matters a great deal, because contractor arrangements are common and the consequences of getting classification wrong include back-paid holiday entitlements and minimum entitlement claims. Our comparison of labour hire versus contracting is a useful companion read when deciding which model suits a piece of work.
New employees no longer have to start on the terms of an applicable collective agreement for their first 30 days, and the active choice form is no longer required.
Employees earning $200,000 or more per year under new agreements can no longer raise a personal grievance for unjustified dismissal. Employees already above that threshold had a transition period before it applied to them, and the figure is scheduled to be adjusted annually from 1 July 2027.
The Employment Relations Authority and the Employment Court must now reduce or remove certain remedies where an employee's own conduct contributed to the situation, and serious misconduct can remove remedies altogether. Procedural defects alone no longer make a dismissal unjustified, although unfair treatment arising from a flawed process still can.
None of this reduces the need for a fair, documented process. It changes what happens at the remedies stage, not the standard of behaviour expected of an employer.
Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 every person conducting a business or undertaking has a primary duty of care. The point most often missed on shared sites is overlapping duties. Where a labour hire agency supplies workers to a client site, both organisations hold duties to those workers, and both must consult, cooperate and coordinate with each other. You cannot contract that responsibility away.
Practically, that means the host business is still responsible for site-specific inductions, hazard information, supervision and safe systems of work for temporary workers, while the agency remains responsible for competency verification, monitoring and worker wellbeing. We have set out how this works in our article on how labour hire agencies ensure health and safety compliance on site.
Every employer must verify that each worker has the right to work in New Zealand before they start. Employing someone without that right carries penalties regardless of intent, so the check has to happen every time and be recorded.
If you are recruiting from offshore, accreditation and job check requirements apply, and processing timeframes are set by Immigration New Zealand rather than by anyone's programme. Our overseas hiring service exists partly to carry that administrative and compliance load for clients who need skills that are not available locally.
When we supply workers under our labour hire recruitment solutions, we are the employer. That means employment agreements, payroll, leave entitlements, ACC, right to work verification and competency records sit with us, and we work alongside your team on the site-specific duties that cannot be transferred. For many of our clients that is the main attraction, ahead of the labour itself.
Get the foundations right first: written agreements, correct minimum entitlements, accurate records kept for seven years, and genuine good faith. Then review anything written before February 2026 against the current framework, particularly contractor arrangements. On shared sites, remember that health and safety duties overlap rather than transfer, and verify right to work every time without exception.
If you would like to talk through how a compliant labour hire arrangement would work for your business, get in touch with our team.
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