An important piece of legislation protecting and facilitating the ability of kaimahi to report concerns of serious wrongdoing in the workplace has come into force this year.
The Protected Disclosures Act 2000 gave current and former kaimahi the ability to act as ‘whistleblowers’ and report serious wrongdoing in the workplace. Protected disclosures are treated confidentially and the discloser is protected from retaliatory action from their employer.
On July 1, the Protected Disclosures (Protection of Whistleblowers) Act 2022 replaced the previous legislation and implemented a number of improvements to the Act including:
- extending the definition of ‘serious wrongdoing’ – this could now apply in situations of bullying and harassment
- enabling people to report serious wrongdoing directly to an appropriate external authority at any time
- clarifying internal procedures for public sector organisations (such as Te Pūkenga and its subsidiaries) and requiring them to state how they will provide support to disclosers
- You can find the new policy and procedures on Te Aka.