The role of intermediaries in delivering an occupational health and safety programme designed for small business - a case study of an insurance incentive programme in the agriculture sector

Intermediaries play an important role in disseminating national Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) programmes to small businesses but not much is known about the factors that influence their role. The aim of this paper is to elucidate the factors that influence intermediaries’ contribution to the transformation
and dissemination of a national OHS programme for small business that built on an Insurance incentive scheme – the New Zealand Workplace Safety Discount scheme. It is a case study of this scheme implementation in the agriculture sector. Data was collected from scheme documentation and semi-structured interviews with the scheme owner, representatives from intermediary groups and the targeted small businesses. The interviews were tape recorded, transcribed
and thematically analysed in relation to the scheme’s programme theory. The intermediaries introduced new programme mechanisms and recruitment strategies that were not considered in the design. These were shaped by the intermediaries’ understanding of the target group and by their own business interest. To engage Non-Governmental Intermediaries the scheme owner had to
establish a close relation to them and to link the aim of the scheme to the intermediaries’ business goal. The scheme had different benefits for the various types of intermediaries and this determined their contributions. In that way they reached different parts of the target group. Even though the intermediaries
played an active role, the outreach was still limited. This highlights the importance of analysing the business interests of intermediaries and their client
groups when identifying intermediaries to integrate into OHS schemes for small businesses.