The Institute of Organisational Psychology (IOP) is a member association of the Health and Safety Associations of New Zealand (HASANZ). It has competencies on the register of health and safety professionals, which businesses throughout NZ can access to find support. Chartered members of the IOP can apply to be on the register at no cost and will be considered as having the core competencies below.
You will need:
- your NZPsS membership number
- a short and long description of yourself and
- your IOP Membership certificate
- professional indemnity insurance cover
Click here to register and here for more information on the registration process.
Being listed on the HASANZ Register provides recognition and credibility, showcasing your qualifications and competence to potential clients and employers. It is an essential tool for career advancement, helping you stand out.
Core Competency Areas
| Area | Description | IOP Activity |
| Assist critical incident management | Providing guidance on how to prepare for, respond to, and recover from work-related emergencies or crises that severely affect the capacities of personnel to work in their usual ways. Why it matters: Ensures organisations are prepared and can respond quickly and effectively to protect people and assets during critical incidents, speeding recovery of both people and operations. Example: Developing crisis response plans for events like workplace violence, man-made damage, or natural disasters, and training staff in emergency and business continuity procedures. | Provide to Employees |
| Develop and maintain mental health at work | Recognizing and addressing psychological health issues in the workplace, such as stress, depression, or anxiety. | Design and develop systems for organisations and supporting employees |
| Develop and maintain wellbeing and EAP | Organisational programmes designed to assist workers’ mental, emotional, and physical health, including maintaining physical and mental fitness for work, assisting coping with change and recovery after setbacks, including through EAP. Why it matters: Improved employee wellbeing leads to higher productivity, and lower absenteeism. Example: Implementing Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs) to offer brief confidential counselling services for workers dealing with personal challenges and work-related difficulties such as work stress, family issues, or financial problems | Develop and design for organisations |
| Development of safety culture | Recognizing and addressing psychological health issues in the workplace, such as stress, depression, or anxiety. Why it matters: Monitoring and promoting mental health reduces employee burnout, absenteeism, turnover, and poor productivity by using leverage of protective skills and knowledge, decent conduct with others, and monitoring healthy antecedents of safer and more effective workplace. Example: Creating policies that support mental health, spanning from prevention of harm through workload management and flexible work schedules to rectifying lapses such as enforcing fairness and conduct policies and providing counselling when overwhelm occurs. | Design and develop systems for organisations and implement |
| Functional work analysis | A methodical examination of tasks and expectations to identify requirements to complete assigned work in acceptable time and to standard, including considering competence in tasks, interpersonal interactions, and standard of work as well as risks of harm to workers or others and to process efficiency and effectiveness. | Analyse and design for jobs, teams and organisations |
| Healthy and safe design of work and workplaces | Designing both the physical and psychosocial workplace and personal and team roles in a way that maximizes safety, efficiency, and effectiveness. | Design and develop systems for organisations and implement them |
| Investigate accidents and incidents involving human error | A structured process to identify behavioural root causes and contributing human factors to work-related accidents, incidents, mistakes or patterns of harm found among workers due to conduct choices, inadequate training, work system flaws, or other health, safety and environmental factors. Why it matters: Understanding human error helps develop systems and processes that reduce the likelihood of these mistakes and their impact. This awareness informs corrective and preventive actions to mitigate risk and improve safety practices. It also speeds recovery after incidents, of injured or offended people as well as of work flow and production. Example: Conducting a root cause analysis after a production failure to determine whether human error, personnel misconduct or breach of behaviour-related policies and regulation were contributing causes. | Design and develop systems for organisations and implement |
| Manage fatigue risk | Strategies to prevent fatigue-related risks, especially in industries where hours of work or duration of shifts can impair focus and safety or health. Why it matters: Fatigue impairs decision-making and increases the likelihood of accidents or errors. Example: Implementing policies that regulate work hours and provide adequate rest periods, particularly for shift workers in sectors like transportation or healthcare. | Analyse and manage for organisations and inidivuals |
| Manage impacts of adverse emotional responses to work actions or events | Help managers and workers to cope with pressure related to work and work situations in ways that doesn’t compromise their performance or unduly affect their wellbeing, covering preparation, operation and recovery. | Support and deliver for organisations and employees |
| Prevent and investigate bullying and harassing | Unwanted, repeated behaviours that create a hostile work environment, undermining an individual’s rights and responsibilities. Why it matters: Bullying and harassing adversely affect employee morale, productivity, and can lead to legal and reputational risks. Example: Developing anti-harassment training programs and clear reporting mechanisms for employees to address times when banter goes too far and harm occurs. | Investigate employees and develop prevention strategies for organisations |
| Promoting and maintaining wellbeing | A whole-of-workforce strategy that recognises risks, monitors condition, mitigates harm, and helps recovery across physical, mental, social and emotional health in the workplace. Why it matters: A strong wellbeing program improves employee satisfaction, reduces turnover and conflict, and enhances organisational performance. Examples: Scanning for risks that would affect health, safety and production; monitoring of fitness for work; workplace wellness fitness challenges, mental health days, and healthy eating initiatives. | Design, implement and promote for organisations |
| Recruitment, selection, training, deploying and reassigning of safe workers | Identifying and developing personnel who have the skills, knowledge and ability to work safely in the varied situations encountered | Design and develop systems and implement for organisations |