Work Health and Safety (WHS)

What do you know? What do you NEED to know?

Work health and safety (WHS) is a multidisciplinary field focused on protecting the physical safety, mental health, and overall welfare of people while they are at work.  Victoria is the only state in Australia that still refers to WHS as occupational health and safety (OHS).

In Australia all states and territories have modelled their WHS or OHS for Victoria legislation off the Australian WHS Act and Regulations.

Core Goals and Focus of WHS/OHS 

• Preventing harm: Stopping workplace accidents, injuries, and illnesses before they happen.
• Controlling risks: Removing or minimising workplace hazards like dangerous machinery, toxic chemicals, and poor ergonomics.
• Promoting well-being: Supporting safe work cultures and healthy environments for employees, contractors, and visitors.

Key Responsibilities for Employers

• Safe equipment: Providing and maintaining safe machinery and tools.
• Clear training: Giving workers proper safety instructions, supervision, and training.
• Safe environment: Keeping workplaces clean, stable, and free of hidden dangers.

The Law

The key elements of the Commonwealth framework, which all states and territories have used as the base framework for their act and regulations governing workplace health and safety are:

• Work Health and Safety Act 2024 (Cth);
• Work Health and Safety Regulations 2011 (Cth);
• Occupational Health and Safety (Maritime Industry) Act 1993 (Cth)

Section 19 Division 2 of the WHS Act (Cth) states:

(1)  A person conducting a business or undertaking must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety of:

• workers engaged, or caused to be engaged by the person; and
• workers whose activities in carrying out work are influenced or directed by the person;

while the workers are at work in the business or undertaking.

(2) A person conducting a business or undertaking must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that the health and safety of other persons is not put at risk from work carried out as part of the conduct of the business or undertaking.

What must you do and how it affects you?

Under the above laws, your business must have a safe work environment. This applies to businesses of all sizes, including companies, partnerships and sole traders.

By law, you must protect people’s physical and psychological health and safety from hazards and risks in your workplace. That includes your workers and other people, such as customers or visitors.

Managing your WHS/OHS duties helps you:

• keep staff
• improve staff productivity
• reduce the costs of injury and workers compensation.

It can cost money and time to adopt practices and install safety equipment. But not acting can result in prosecution, fines and loss of staff.

Hazards and risks

Hazards are the situations or things at your workplace that could potentially harm a person. For example, staff working at heights (situation) or the chemicals you use (things).

Risks are the chances of the harm happening and how severe the outcome would be.

Hazards can be:

• physical, such as exposure to loud noises
• biological, such as exposure to toxins or viruses
• chemical, such as breathing, eating or drinking hazardous chemicals
• psychosocial, such as negative workplace interactions or behaviours
• seasonal, such as working during bushfires or floods.

Make sure you and your workers understand your workplace hazards and how they may be causing harm.

Psychosocial hazards

WHS includes managing psychosocial hazards. These are hazards of a job or workplace that could lead to psychological harm. Psychosocial hazards can affect all workers, whether or not they have existing mental health issues.

Psychosocial hazards can arise from:

• the way your business designs and manages work
• your work environment
• workplace machinery, tools or fittings
• interactions and behaviours in the workplace.

Examples of psychosocial hazards:

• Conflict or poor workplace relationships happen when unresolved negative interactions cause a relationship breakdown between co-workers, managers, or anyone you interact with at work. The conflict could be about a work task or other dispute.
• Harassment, including sexual harassment is unwelcome, offensive, humiliating or intimidating behaviour based on a personal trait. For example, age, disability, race or sex.
• Traumatic events or materials can include witnessing or investigating traumatic experiences and events. Exposure can be direct or indirect. For example, seeing a serious workplace injury (direct) or reading a victim impact statement from a violent crime (indirect).
• Poorly designed or faulty machinery, tools or fittings can make workers feel unsafe. This can lead to further mental health issues and physical injuries.

It’s important that you manage psychosocial hazards well. Workers with psychological injuries can have higher costs and need more time off work than workers with other injuries.

What are my employees/visitors/contractor’s obligations?

People working in your business also have obligations. They must:

• take care of their own health and safety
• not do anything that could hurt others
• follow WHS/OHS instructions
• follow the workplace’s WHS/OHS policies and procedures.
• WHS/OHS laws in your state or territory
• Each state and territory has its own WHS/OHS laws and a regulator to enforce them.

Hopefully with the above information, you are more educated on the laws and your responsibilities of Work Health and Safety, and how important these are to not only safety, but avoiding litigation issues in the future.

Next week, we would look closely at Work Health and Safety Management System (WHSMS or OHSMS)) which will define how you will manage the above in your workplace.

Shorlink’s Recommendation

If not already done, you must put health and safety practices in place as soon as possible.  Also, make sure they are compliant, up-to-date, workers are inducted, training being completed and appropriate and necessary forms being acknowledged to confirm this.

Under Australian WHS laws your business must:

• ensure the health and safety of your workers
• not put the health and safety of other people at risk.

To meet your obligations, your business must:

• have a safe work environment
• supply safe machinery and structures that you maintain
• have safe ways of working – the procedures and processes you have in place to minimise hazards and risks
• ensure the safe use, handling and storage of machinery, structures and substances
• give workers access to adequate facilities that you maintain
• have controls in place to eliminate or minimise risks from psychosocial hazards
• give any information, training, instruction or supervision needed for safety
• monitor the health of workers and conditions at the workplace.

You may also need to have a workers’ compensation insurance policy for your employees.

Tip

Very simple, the tip is – READ THE ABOVE, UNDERSTAND THE ABOVE…. IN DETAIL!

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to our office.

Next week, take a very close perusal of WHSMS/OHSMS and how to formalise the above in your workplace to ensure compliancy.