Time to Talk About Training Fraud in Health & Safety

As part of the government’s workplace safety review, we need to address a serious issue: the potentially widespread, fraudulent awarding of unit standards.

Take unit 10851 Forklift – worth 7 credits. NZQA states that 1 credit = 10 hours of learning. So where’s the evidence of the 70 hours needed to justify this qualification, when it's routinely delivered in a single day?

After 25 years in the H&S training sector – both public and private – I can confidently say: unit standards do not guarantee quality or safety.

Many workers struggle with English or learning at Level 3.

* 'Open book' answers are often handed out.

* There's little to no genuine learning or assessment.

* Most short-course unit standards are awarded this way.

Want to check? Pick a short course, multiply the credits by 10. Then ask:

*How long was the course?

*Were any extra learning hours documented?

*If not, what is that qualification really worth?

Even worse, some industry associations pushing unit standards are also training providers themselves. That’s a clear conflict of interest, and they must not be allowed to mandate these standards in codes of practice.

It’s time we asked:

* How long have employers been paying for training that isn’t real?

* How much if any public funding is still subsidising this?

* What happens when one of these potentially unqualified workers gets injured?

This isn’t just about cutting costs.

It’s about credibility, liability, and safety.

Customised inhouse training specific to the work is the most effective. Let employers continue to train their own staff - as long as they have robust systems, proper supervision, and focus on true competency, it's just better.

If the training feels relevant, employers and employees are more likely to do safety.