Work health and safety

Work health and safety (WHS) refers to the laws and systems that help prevent harm and injury in the workplace. Another name for WHS is occupational health and safety (OHS).

Under WHS 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 duties helps you:

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

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

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.

You must put health and safety practices in place as soon as you start your business. 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.

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

• take care of their own health and safety
• not do anything that could hurt others
• follow WHS instructions
• follow the workplace’s WHS policies and procedures.

Each state or territory has its own WHS laws and a regulator to enforce them. The WHS framework for each state or territory includes:

• an Act that outlines your broad responsibilities
• regulations that set out specific duties for managing hazards and risks, such as noise, machinery and manual handling
• codes of practice that give practical guidance on how you can meet your obligations in the Act and Regulations.
• a regulating agency (regulator) that administers WHS laws, inspects workplaces, gives advice and enforces the laws. Some states have a different regulator for workers compensation.

Your business’s WHS obligations depend on the risks in your workplace. Check our industry information pages to find the WHS duties specific to your industry.

You should also consider getting independent advice on the WHS obligations for your business.

Part of WHS is being ready to respond if an accident or emergency happens. To help minimise workplace risks and be better prepared for emergencies:

• have an emergency plan
• do a first aid assessment of your business
• have enough trained first aiders to cover unplanned staff absences
• make sure the first aid equipment in your workplace is easy to find and access
• run emergency drills in your workplace
• evaluate your business activities to identify areas with higher risk.

Extreme weather (such as extreme heat, cold, hail or strong winds) may affect your business. Under WHS laws you must provide a safe working environment and keep your workers safe in extreme weather.

Extreme heat is an issue in many parts of Australia. Working in the heat in both outdoor and indoor workplaces can cause harm to workers. Make sure you’re aware of the signs of heat-related illness and how to manage the risks.

Some employers must give their employees leave if they can’t work because of extreme weather. Check if your employees have these entitlements under their award or agreement. If you’re not clear on your rights and responsibilities as an employer, you can either:

• visit the Fair Work Ombudsman website
• call the Fair Work Infoline on 13 13 94.

Parties and functions are a great way to celebrate and thank your staff for their hard work. But you're still responsible for your staff's health and safety at the event, even if you're not paying them. 

Before the event, make sure your internal policies and procedures are up to date. These include your policies for acceptable behaviour and bullying and harassment.

You can send a friendly email to staff reminding them that:

• while the party is a time to relax, it's still a work function
• the usual rules still apply, including those around sexual harassment
• they should be careful if consuming alcohol.

At the event:

• if you serve alcohol, make sure you're serving it legally and responsibly
• ensure enough food and non-alcoholic drinks are available
• make plans for staff to get home safely afterwards. For example, organising a bus, pre-ordering taxis or arranging designated drivers.

Your WHS obligations still apply when staff are working remotely or from home.

If you employ remote staff, make sure your policies and procedures include them. You may need to update your policies to account for your employees' remote work environments.

When considering WHS for remote workers, think about:

• how staff can report incidents or injuries while working at home
• giving guidance on safe home office environments
• letting workers borrow equipment from the office if available
• how you can support their mental health and wellbeing.