2024 Stakeholder satisfaction survey

A summary with graphs is available via PDF:

2024 SNZ Stakeholder Feedback summary [PDF, 1.9 MB]

2024 Commissioner Feedback

We asked representatives of a number of organisations to tell us about their experience commissioning standards development work from Standards NZ over the past 12 months (ending 31 March 2024).
This is what we were told.

Why choose Standards NZ?

• Organisations cited standards in legislation
• Standards give regulation important technical detail
• Standards help organisations ensure compliance with regulation
• Organisations sought national direction and harmonisation
• Standards NZ is the national standards body
• Most organisations had a previous working relationship with Standards NZ
• Organisations did not want to do the project management work themselves
• Project management skills are important and Standards NZ is known for theirs
• Commissioned work is intended to protect the environment and improve public safety
• Standards NZ has a strong working relationship with Australia and reduces barriers to trans-Tasman trade
• Standards NZ provides international reach, is actively participating in International standards development and can connect the commissioning organisations with that work and those contacts
• Standards NZ represents good value for money
• Standards NZ committee members are well curated and capable of having very technical conversations
• Standards NZ brings independence to the standards development process
• Standards NZ brings together subject-matter experts and facilitates consensus-based outcomes
• Standards NZ is less controversial
• Standards NZ provides quality assurance and rigour
• Standards NZ provides on-going maintenance and access to the organisations' cited standards
• Standards NZ offers Online Library service
• Standards NZ has wide-reach across government and industry.

How did their projects go?

• Scoping exercises were very comprehensive and useful
• Standards NZ was responsive and provided a high quality service
• The use of a technical writer can help alleviate the burden placed on volunteers, one commissioner funded this resource mid-way through the project; but, thought it should have been within scope of the project from the beginning
• Getting started took longer than they expected
• Budgets can be challenged; the process can end up taking longer than planned, making it harder for the organisation to budget for their project
• It was a surprise to a new commissioner to discover how much the project relied on volunteer committee members, causing delays outside the control of their organisation and Standards NZ
• Standards NZ staff turnover and loss of project and institutional knowledge impacted the work
• Both sides worked to overcome difficulty and continuously improve
• Communication/updates from Standards NZ should be differentiated between Commissioner and Technical Expert(s)
• The process is dependent upon strong relationship management and works best with regular personal interaction; but, getting everyone in the room (real or virtual) is often a challenge
• Standards NZ was flexible, sought to resolve problems quickly and communicated well throughout the process
• There was a lot of well-earned trust placed in Standards NZ and gratitude for the services provided
• The relationship was positive, productive and collegial
• One commissioner told us that Standards NZ Project Managers "bent over backwards to achieve [our] objectives, beyond what they should have done . . . certainly appreciate the work and couldn't have asked for better."

Looking ahead

• The organisations interviewed are all committed to an on-going relationship with Standards NZ, though some indicated they have no other choice
• For both the commissioners and Standards NZ, the lack of sufficient resources and uncertainty around funding is a concern that restricts long-term strategic planning
• Policy work is required to ensure greater investment in standards
• There is a high public safety risk where standards don't exist or are out of date
• There is a consensus that Government needs to change the Standards NZ funding model
• Standards NZ should receive Crown funding for the public good they provide
• The Trans-Tasman relationship is important
• Resolve de-jointing issue and improve working relationship with Australia
• Standards NZ should communicate earlier around Standards Australia-proposed joint projects, to give relevant stakeholders more time to influence that work
• Standards NZ should communicate earlier in advance of items going to NZ Standards Approval Board
• Commissioners would like to see more Joint and International standards, more timely reviews of existing standards and more work that is proactive instead of reactive
• Regulatory stewardship work needs to be done by organisations around the citing of standards in regulation
• Standards NZ could better explain to customers the links between standards and regulations
• Standards NZ has the potential to do more in terms of the products they offer
• Standards NZ could better educate potential commissioners around the different products they offer, including non-standard products like Publicly Available Specifications (PAS), Technical Specifications and Rulings
• Standards NZ could do more to improve the induction of commissioners and volunteers into the standards development process (including NZS, Joint AS/NZS and International processes) before they begin, to better manage expectations andensure everyone fully understands their responsibilities
• More work is needed to reduce the time required to commission and complete a project, ideally a project should not golonger than a year
• There needs to be systemic incorporation of Te Ao Māori (importance of relationships between nature and people) inthe standards development process
• Organisational support for the sponsoring of free public access to specific standards remains strong.

2024 Standards Development Projects - Member Feedback 

Wesurveyed the volunteer committee members of 15 closed and on-going standards development projects,for the 12-monthsending 1 March 2024. This is a summary of what they told us.

89% agree that members are treated equally
86% agree the work is allocated appropriately to area of expertise
84% think their input is valued by the group
82% agree that the roles and expectations of the members are well communicated
78% say they feel supported by the project team
75% agree the group receives timely updates about the process
72% say they would volunteer to be part of another standard development process
64% agree that adequate time is given to members to complete work
90% of respondents recommend participating in a standards development project

For those 55 respondents keen to participate in another standards development project, an NZS project interests them the most.

Reliability of findings

During the month of March 2024, 255 current and former standards development project committee members were sent a survey; of these, 76 (30%) responded. Results are indicative of what all volunteers might say within a +/-9% margin of error. In other words, given 90% of respondents recommend participating in a standards development project, we may confidently assume that between 81% -99% of the volunteers that did not respond to the survey would also recommend participating. A similar assumption and margin may be applied to the other percentages presented. Individual comments, presented verbatim, may not necessarily be the views of Standards NZ nor broadly representative of all standards development volunteer members.

2024 Standards Development Projects -Member Feedback

We surveyed the volunteer committee members of 15 closed and on-going standards development projects, for the 12-monthsending 1 March 2024. This is a summary of what they told us.

Most comments are complimentary of our project management and the support participants are given.
There are some complaints about the time-consuming nature of the standards development process.
Some suggest we could improve our communication with and between participants, motivate more active participation, and balance the allocation of work to reduce volunteer burn-out.

Feedback around our project management

• "Face to face meetings work far better than emails."
• "Communication could be enhanced."
• "There seemed to be a long-time span between meetings."
• "Sub teams weren't very well supported or guided through the process."
• "The Komiti software was not always updated with working group meeting minutes and was not user friendly if you did not have the skills. . ."
• "Committee papers were circulated without sufficient time to digest the relevant material."
• "Numerous changes to SNZ personnel are unsettling and disrupting."
• "Felt the Guidelines process a bit rushed and a bit of an afterthought"
• "This project did not have a project manager assigned to it. This led to large delays in this scoping project, and a lot of additional work was done by the funder to ensure the final scoping report actually represented what was agreed by the scoping group."
• "Very well managed by the SNZ PM The collaboration between committee members and subgroups of the review committee team has gone very smoothly, a credit to the entire team and its leader."
• "As chair I have felt well supported."
• ". . . On the positive side, the meetings themselves generally went well and to schedule. Has flowed better than other standards I've worked on."

Feedback around the committee/group

• "Some members are not very active"
• "Bearing in mind that committee participation is voluntary with no financial compensation, there is not so much incentive to place the committee work at the top of the list."
• "I found the committee generally to be respectful of each others' time and commitment"
• "We have been under a bit of time pressure. This is less to do with the schedule and more to do with the technical nature of the work and the number of organisations to review and agree proposals."
• "Committee members are easy to work with"

Member suggestions for improvement

• "Some committee members did not attend a large proportion of the meetings -should standards consider [asking] committee members to stand down if they are not actively engaging[?]"
• "More engagement with reviewers over the process and timeframes, to better set expectations."
• "Ensure cover for PMs -if someone is away, planned or unplanned, you need to be able to cover."
• "More thought to how current documents can be effectively shared -I don't think that worked as well as it could have."
• ".. . send very clearly written feedback from the committee to the public about the process . . . and a clear explanation to keep the public well briefed that their suggestions were considered in depth, but if they were not incorporated in the final version, it would have been to get consensus."
• "Project managers need to . . . assist drafting up the scoping report etc, even if they are not technical experts in the area, as it is too much/causes too many delays to progress relying solely on committee/scoping group members who have other full time commitments."
• "Try and get a sponsor or actively solicit sponsors and make NZS 3910 freely available like NZS 3902."
• "I would appreciate it if Standards can be reviewed more often . . ."
• "It would help if you had better funding for standards development."

Most survey respondents represent the closed revision project P3910: Conditions of contract for building and civil engineering construction.

2024 Customer Satisfaction Survey Results

We surveyed customers who purchased or otherwise accessed our products during the 12-months ending 1 March 2024. This is a summary of what they told us, along with a comparison to similar survey results in 2019 and 2022.

88% are satisfied with our performance overall
90% are satisfied with the quality and relevance of our products
87% are satisfied with standards.govt.nz website
83% are satisfied with the purchasing process overall
87% are satisfied with their access to Online Library
90% are satisfied with the delivery of their hard copy/print orders
89% are satisfied with the customer services they receive via phone or email

2024 Customer Satisfaction Survey Results

We surveyed customers who purchased or otherwise accessed our products during the 12-monthsending 1 March 2024. This is a summary of what they told us.

Respondents were asked to tick all the product formats they would like to use when accessing standards.
PDFs (85%) are purchased individually, downloaded via Online Library subscription and as sponsored standards, making it the most commonly understood, and preferred, format that customers use. 
Digital format products, like HTML (27%) and eReader (6%), may become more popular after users experience these formats first hand. 
Digital formats are the primary formats offered by most other national standards bodies.

Customer feedback around our website

• "Not every sparky or other tradie is that well versed on a computer . . . Your web designers should talk to the user of what they'd like to see e.g. menu structure, layout -showing what's important, etc"
• "Provide plain English descriptions or previews of the documents to be purchased"
• "The changed website requires more clicks or navigation to download a particular standard."
• "When purchasing one standard, it would be nice if a list of standards referenced in the purchasing standard were provided as 'extras' to the one I am purchasing."
• "The response time is very slow. Fix that. You may need to change the hosting arrangement."
• "Remove/update links that have become disconnected"

Customer feedback around access to standards

• "Stop charging for electronic formats"
• "The Online Library option is interesting but is very poorly advertised. The lack of any pricing information online is not encouraging."
• "The search function for the Online Library is extremely limited. You should be able to search on keywords, titles and other pieces of information from a standard, not just the number."
• "All Standards available in HTML"
• "I didn't appreciate the watermark on every page of the pdf I purchased, makes it harder to read especially with my 71yr old eyes."
• "Allow for purchased standards to be downloaded indefinitely."
• "More up to date standards"
• "I find the range of available standards other than AS/NZS or NZS to be very limited but I would prefer to purchase via Standards NZ . . ." [Note: Standards NZ offers over 3,000 adopted anda further 126,000 unadopted standards products from international and other national standards bodies on our webshop.]

Customer feedback around our customer service

• "The hold music is torture, especially given the length of time taken for a phone call to be picked up."
• "When I've phoned, the call centre has been a generic MBIE call centre with no specialist knowledge of standards. Was waste of time."
• "Make contact details available at the top of the website."
• "It is difficult to order a standard that you don't have in your subscription, there is quite a process to go through online, and then you are not sure if you have it within your library."
• " . . . maybe a pop up dialogue box with download links straight after purchasing"