On this page

Reporting on progress

On a quarterly basis – starting in Q1 2025 – Health NZ will report on our progress with each of the initiatives in our Plan.

As part of our first report-back, we will publish implementation plans for each of our initiatives, outlining by when we expect to deliver on different milestones for each initiative.

What does good look like?

Alongside tracking our delivery of initiatives, there are key outcomes for our workforce which we want to measure over time – to ensure that what we’re doing is making a difference.

Outcomes for workforce are generally slow-moving:

  • Retention initiatives can be delivered quickly, but often rely on changing culture or how we work – which are usually gradual, slow shifts.
  • Immigration is our ‘fastest’ way to grow workforce, but still typically takes between 12 and 18 months to add capacity.
  • Most training takes at least 3 years to produce new graduates.
  • Changes to models of care and how we work also take time, because we need to ensure they’re designed to be safe and clinically appropriate.

Given this, we do not expect the Workforce Plan to immediately change the profile of our workforce needs by 2025 – or even by 2027. Instead, we expect to measure our success mainly in terms of long-term sustainability.

  • By the time of our next Health Workforce Plan, our future predictions of shortage should show an improved picture – because the impact of the changes we’ve made will show in our models of future supply.
  • At the same time, we will expect to see reductions in vacancies in priority areas where we’ve focused our attention – though these reductions may be relatively small compared to what we expect to see over five or ten years.

As we refresh this Workforce Plan, we will grow the range of measures we use to evaluate our workforce performance – including looking over time to introduce more nuanced measures of factors like culture and productivity.