Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Learning Program
As you progress through this unit of study, you will develop skills in locating and
understanding an organisation’s policies and procedures. You will build up a sound
knowledge of the industry standards within which organisations must operate. You will
become more aware of the effect that your own skills in dealing with people have on your
success or otherwise in the workplace. Knowledge of your skills and capabilities will help you
make informed choices about your further study and career options.
Congratulations! By undertaking this course, you have taken the first steps in becoming an
effective safety officer in the workplace.
But what does this mean? Essentially, it means that you will become a safety advocate and
a key player in influencing organisational change to improve work health and safety (WHS)
in your organisation. The position comes with big responsibilities, but it can also be
extremely rewarding. So how do you achieve successful outcomes in this role?
Starting with the basics, there are a few keywords that you need to understand as they relate
to safety.
These are:
▪ Hazard – Anything that has the potential to cause harm or injury to people or
equipment.
▪ Risk – In relation to any potential injury or harm, the likelihood and consequence of
that injury or harm occurring. (AS/NZS 4804:2001, Occupational Health and Safety
Management Systems Standard, s. 3.18)
▪ Risk control – The process of eliminating or minimising risks. This may be an object,
work process, or system of work. (AS/NZS 4804:2001, Occupational Health and Safety
Management Systems Standard, section 3.4)
Resilient
Increasingly informed and
• We
consulted Proactive understand
• We risk and we
Compliance- continuously are
driven improve chronically
Reactive hazard control uneasy
• Our risk
• Safety is management and we seek
Vulnerable important, we systems are to be safe by
respond well compliant design
• What more
could be done to accidents
- it was an Increasing trust and
accident accountability
You will need to have a good understanding of relevant legislation to ensure compliance and
provide accurate safety advice. As a safety officer, you have a professional obligation to
ensure that the safety advice you provide is accurate.
Some of the terminology you will need to understand in relation to legislation is:
▪ Due diligence – The duty imposed on officers of an organisation to meet their
requirements under legislation.
▪ Duty of care – Duty of care exists where one person is obligated to take proper care
to avoid causing injury to another. For duty of care to exist, the persons involved must
be in a ‘special relationship’ (such as one road user to another, employer to
employee, manufacturer to consumer, doctor to patient, or solicitor to client) or
there has been a precedent set by previous legal cases.
As a safety officer, you are required to remain up to date with current WHS knowledge. The
easiest way for you to stay current is to familiarise yourself with the Safe Work website in
your own jurisdiction. You will need to either subscribe for updates to these sites or visit
them on a regular basis to keep up with any changes.
Safe Work Australia is a statutory agency set up by the Australian government tasked with
improving work health and safety arrangements across the country. When determining
which legislation applies to your organisation, the Safe Work Australia website is a good
place to start since they provide details of the regulators for each jurisdiction. Once you
arrive at the relevant regulator website, you can find the appropriate legislation governing
WHS in your industry.
One of the best skills you can develop as a safety officer is navigating relevant and current
legislation and information. It is not always apparent where the required information will be.
Legislation can be hundreds of pages long and legal documents, in general, can be difficult
to interpret. Here are some tips:
▪ Ensure you are using the most up-to-date information from reliable sources. Check
that the legislation you are using has not been repealed or amended.
▪ When you access the legislation, make sure you have the right jurisdiction. Some
have the same name but apply to different jurisdictions. It is good practice when
Further Reading
For more information on current WHS laws and related
documentation, you can visit the following websites.
Safe Work Australia
Australian Legal Information Institute
Legal
Framework
Statutory Law
Common Law
(Legislation)
Acts Precedents
Regulations
Codes of
Practice
Regulator
Australian Industry Other WHS
guidance
standards standards material
material
1.2.2 Act
An act is a public legal document that details a bill that has been enacted by Parliament. It
provides provisions that contain the statements and rules for implementing the policy it
addresses. Acts are enforceable by law and must be complied with. Non-compliance may
result in fines. Each jurisdiction has a WHS Act that sets out the requirements for ensuring
workplace health and safety. These acts spell out the duties of different individuals and
groups who play a role in WHS. Basically, the act tells us what we must do to obtain legal
compliance.
1.2.3 Regulations
Regulations explain the duties of particular groups of people in controlling the risks
associated with specific hazards. They are based on the acts and explain how to engage with
the latter to achieve compliance. Like acts, regulations are enforceable by law and can result
in fines if breached. They set the minimum requirements for addressing specific hazards or
work practices, the registration of plants, licensing or granting or approving certificates.
Should May
Recommended Optional
course of course of
action action
Codes also include various references to sections of relevant WHS acts and regulations to
provide context within legal requirements. These references are not exhaustive. The words
‘must’, ‘requires,’ or ‘mandatory’ indicate that these legal requirements exist and must be
complied with.
1.2.5 Standards
Standards Australia defines standards as “published documents setting out specifications
and procedures designed to ensure products, services and systems are safe, reliable and
consistently perform the way they were intended to. They establish a common language
which defines quality and safety criteria”.
Standards Australia is the independent body responsible for developing Australian Standards
consistent with international standards.
Standards are similar to codes of practice in that they provide guidance on how to meet
accepted requirements and are not generally enforceable. Standards can also be mandated
under legislation. In such cases, the specific standard becomes mandatory.
An example of a mandatory standard is AS/NZS 2299.1:2007 Occupational diving operations
— Standard Operational Practice which is mandated under the Work Health and Safety
Regulations 2011, Part 4 High Risk Diving Work, Section 183.
Uniform legislation
It has been determined that although there are many similarities between the laws of
different jurisdictions, there are also some differences that may cause confusion. It has been
determined that Australian workers should be entitled to the same WHS standards,
regardless of the jurisdiction in which they operate. This is called the National Uniform
Legislation.
In response, the Commonwealth and each State and Territory government have agreed to
harmonise their WHS laws, including acts, regulations, and codes of practice, so they are
similar across jurisdictions. To facilitate this, the Commonwealth government created the
Model Work Health and Safety Act 2011 and the Model Work Health and Safety Regulation
2011.
Under the Intergovernmental Agreement for Regulatory and Operational Reform in
Occupational Health and Safety, the different Australian jurisdictions agreed to adopt the
model work health and safety legislation, with minor variations as necessary to ensure
consistency with relevant jurisdiction-specific drafting protocols and laws and processes.
At this stage, all jurisdictions aside from Victoria and Western Australia have enacted new
WHS legislation in line with harmonisation reforms.
Only legislation and codes of practice approved and enacted by a jurisdiction’s parliament is
valid for that jurisdiction. Check before you use any ‘model’ sources of information for
compliance requirements.
Australian Capital Territory ▪ Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (ACT)
▪ Work Health and Safety Regulation 2011 (ACT)
New South Wales ▪ Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW)
▪ Work Health and Safety Regulation 2017 (NSW)
Northern Territory ▪ Work Health and Safety (National Uniform Legislation) Act
2011 (NT)
▪ Work Health and Safety (National Uniform Legislation)
Regulations 2011
Queensland ▪ Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Qld)
▪ Work Health and Safety Regulation 2011 (Qld)
South Australia ▪ Work Health and Safety Act 2012 (SA)
▪ Work Health and Safety Regulation 2012 (SA)
Tasmania ▪ Work Health and Safety Act 2012 (Tas)
▪ Work Health and Safety Regulation 2012 (Tas)
Victoria ▪ Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (Vic)
▪ Occupational Health and Safety Regulations 2017 (Vic)
Western Australia ▪ Work Health and Safety Act 2020 (WA)
▪ Work Health and Safety (General) Regulations 2022 (WA)
Commonwealth ▪ Work Health and Safety Act 2011
▪ Work Health and Safety Regulations 2011
Due diligence includes the officer personally taking reasonable steps to:
▪ Obtain and store up-to-date information on work health and safety matters.
▪ Recognise the nature and operations of the work and its associated hazards and risks.
▪ Make sure PCBU uses appropriate process to remove or reduce risks to health and
safety.
▪ Ensure the PCBU has appropriate processes to receive and consider information
about incidents, hazards and risks, and to respond in a timely manner.
▪ Make certain PCBU complies with duties and work health and safety obligations.
(Source: Guide to Work Health and Safety Act 2011)
Shared duties
The legislation also recognises that more than one person may have the same duty. In this
case, all the persons sharing the duty are fully responsible for that duty.
For example, each member of a company’s board of directors have a duty relevant to their
position, and each director will be fully responsible for that duty.
Once you have an understanding of what legislation applies to your workplace, you will need
to ensure you make all stakeholders—including management, workers, and others as
defined in the legislation—aware of what WHS-related responsibilities they have. You need
to inform them about the consequences of non-compliance and may need to update any
outdated or non-compliant organisational policies and procedures.
As a safety officer, you have a duty under the WHS legislation to ensure that the information
you are providing is up to date, accurate, based on sound analysis, and applicable to the
organisation that you are advising.
To achieve this, you need to ensure that you fully understand the organisation’s business
objectives, policies and procedures and culture. You will also need to ensure you are
accessing the most recent legislation and will continually need to conduct research to ensure
the data you are analysing and interpreting is current.
This is an area where your own communication skills will be important. You need to ensure
you understand the organisation’s management processes and need to provide the
appropriate advice in line with these processes. This may be a formal meeting with
management or a formal report. Where you communicate via a meeting, you should ensure
that minutes are kept so that you have a record of what was discussed and what the
outcomes were.
The kind of source that you will need depends on the question you want to answer. Specific
questions require direct information from internal sources, while general queries may be
sufficiently addressed by external sources.
Some internal sources of WHS information, such as the staff handbook, should be made
available to workers once they join an organisation. Other sources may require special
permission or request forms before you can access them.
When using external sources of information, make sure that you are accessing reputable
sources, such as official government websites or websites of recognized groups.
2.2 Assist With Providing Advice to Individuals and/or Parties About Their
WHS Duties, Rights and Obligations Within Scope Of Own Role
Each member of an organisation has rights, duties, and obligations that differ depending on
their specific roles. These rights, duties, and obligations can be found in the legislation for
your jurisdiction. They are more or less the same across all States/Territories, but there may
be minor differences in the details of each. Check the applicable legislation for your
jurisdiction to be sure.
Providing advice also encompasses explaining the consequences of non-compliance to your
organisation’s duty holders. Specific penalties can also be found in the legislation.
Advice may be given during one-on-one meetings or via written communication such as an
email. It is important that you are able to properly convey the information needed. This may
require you to reword legal jargon and phrases using terms that can be understood by
laymen.
Further Reading
For more information about regulators and their functions, you can
visit their websites:
WorkSafe ACT
SafeWork NSW
NT WorkSafe
Workplace Health and Safety Queensland
SafeWork SA
WorkSafe Tasmania
WorkSafe Victoria
WorkSafe WA
Comcare website
3.1 Assist With Assessing Workplace Compliance With Relevant WHS Laws
Comcare is a regulatory body established by the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act
1988. It exhibits measures to assess, direct, and enforce compliance.
Once you have concluded your analysis, you will need to present your findings. How you
present the information will depend on what the objectives of the research were and the
requirements of intended recipients of the information. You may be asked to present the
information as a formal presentation to a group of relevant personnel, or you may need to
produce a written report. Alternatively, it may be an informal presentation or email to the
person requesting the research.
Regardless of how you need to present the information, you will need to prepare your
conclusions, be able to justify how you arrived at those conclusions, and present any
graphical information that will support your presentation.
If you are required to present your findings through a formal presentation, you will need to
prepare what it is you are going to present. You will need to seek guidance on the
expectations of the presentation from the person setting the task and follow any
organisational requirements for presenting information.
You should also monitor the record-keeping systems you have in place. This can be achieved
by conducting regular reviews of the records (audits), using checklists to ensure their
completeness, conducting staff surveys, and maintaining a document checklist.
For example, comparing Michelle’s competencies with the training requirements for the
organisation shows us the following:
Training Requirements Michelle’s Training Gap
Training on how to safely operate Michelle has been trained on how No gap
plant and equipment relevant to to safely operate specific pieces of
the role plant and equipment used in her
role.
Fire safety and emergency Michelle completed her fire safety Training need identified
evacuation training to be and emergency evacuation
completed annually training 14 months ago, however
as this training needs to be
completed annually Michelle must
undertake this training again.
First Aiders must hold a current Michelle holds a current first aid No gap, however, if Michelle
first aid certificate certificate from her training two wishes to continue as a first aider,
years ago. she will need to undertake this
training again when her certificate
expires
Further Reading
For more information about regulators and their functions, you can
visit their websites:
WorkSafe Tasmania
Through continuous monitoring and review, future decisions on how to improve the risk
management framework, policy, and plan will be well-informed, and, in turn, should lead to
further advancement of organisation’s risk management culture.
Guide to the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 Queensland. (n.d.). Retrieved from WorkCover
Queensland:
https://www.worksafe.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/82545/guide-to-
work-health-and-safety-act-2011.pdf
Summary of the model work health and safety bill. (n.d.). Retrieved from Safe Work
Australia:
https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/system/files/documents/1702/summary_mo
del_work_health_safety_bill_may10.pdf
Work Health and Safety (OHS) acts, regulations and codes of practice. (2019, June 19).
Retrieved from Business: https://www.business.gov.au/risk-management/health-
and-safety/whs-oh-and-s-acts-regulations-and-codes-of-practice
End of Document