Work Health and Safety: The Basics Every Employer Must Know

Work health and safety law in Australia rests on one core idea: as an employer you owe a duty to do what is reasonably practicable to keep people safe. That duty doesn't require perfection, but it does require genuine, ongoing effort — and it can't be delegated away. Here's what that means in practice for a small or medium business.

Who the law actually covers

Most states and territories operate under the harmonised WHS Act, with the model laws administered locally by regulators such as SafeWork NSW or WorkSafe. Victoria runs its own OHS regime, which is broadly similar in intent but differs in detail — so the first thing to know is which regulator applies to you. The law uses the concept of a PCBU (a person conducting a business or undertaking), and your duty extends beyond employees to contractors, labour hire, visitors and anyone else affected by your work. If you engage subcontractors, you don't escape responsibility by pointing at their own obligations; overlapping duties are meant to be shared, not shifted.

Identify hazards and manage risk

The heart of WHS is a simple, repeatable process: find the hazards, assess the risk, control it, and review. Controls follow a hierarchy — eliminating a hazard entirely is always preferable to relying on people to be careful around it. Where you can't eliminate, you substitute, isolate or engineer it out; personal protective equipment sits at the bottom because it depends on human behaviour every single time. Walk your own workplace as if you'd never seen it: trip hazards, manual handling, electrical leads, machinery guarding, chemical storage, fatigue from long shifts. The point isn't a one-off audit but a habit of noticing.

Consult your workers

Consultation is a legal obligation, not a courtesy. Before you change something that affects safety — new equipment, a new process, a new site — you're required to talk to the people who do the work, because they see risks you won't. This can be as structured as a health and safety committee or as simple as a documented toolbox talk, depending on your size. Keep a record of what was raised and what you did about it; that record is often what demonstrates you took the duty seriously.

Train, induct and supervise

People can't work safely around risks they've never been shown. Every worker needs an induction into your specific hazards, not a generic video, and anyone operating plant or handling hazardous substances needs task-specific training. New and young workers deserve closer supervision until competence is proven. Keep your training records — who was trained, on what, when — because the absence of records is often read as the absence of training.

Know your incident and notification duties

You must record workplace injuries, and serious incidents — a death, a serious injury or illness, or a dangerous incident of the kind listed in the legislation — must be notified to your regulator, usually immediately. Critically, the site of a notifiable incident generally must be preserved until the regulator says otherwise. Alongside this, most employers must hold workers' compensation insurance through their state scheme; the schemes differ by jurisdiction, so confirm your obligations with the relevant authority. Have a plan for first aid, emergency evacuation and reporting before you need it, not during the event.

Build it into how you operate

WHS works best when it's part of normal operations rather than a binder on a shelf. A short pre-start check, a near-miss reporting habit, an annual review of your risk register — these keep the system alive. Treating safety as a core part of your operations also protects the business itself: officers of a company have their own due-diligence duty to ensure the business complies, and that duty is personal.

This is general information, not legal advice. WHS obligations vary by state and territory and by the nature of your work, so check the specifics with your regulator (Safe Work Australia links to each one) or a WHS professional before relying on any of it.