For your employees, you must provide and maintain a working environment that is safe and free of risks to health, so far as is reasonably practicable. As part of this you must, so far as is reasonably practicable:
- Provide and maintain safe plant (machinery and equipment).
- Provide and maintain safe systems of work - for example, controlling entry to high-risk areas and providing systems to prevent falls from heights.
- Ensure the safe use, handling, storage or transport of plant or substances.
- Keep workplaces that you manage and control in a safe condition, free of risks to health (for example, ensure fire exits aren’t blocked, and the worksite is generally tidy).
- Provide suitable facilities for welfare at any workplace you manage and control.
- Give your employees the necessary information, instruction, training or supervision to enable them to do their work in a way that is safe and without risks to health.
How do you know what's reasonably practicable?
The law requires employers to eliminate risks so far as is reasonably practicable. To decide what is reasonably practicable, you must consider:
- the likelihood of the hazard or risk occurring
- the harm that would result from the hazard or risk
- what a person knows (or should know) about the hazard or risk, and ways to eliminate or reduce it
- availability and suitability of ways to eliminate or reduce the hazard or risk
- cost of eliminating or reducing the hazard or risk
Report to WorkSafe all notifiable incidents that happen in a workplace under your management and control.
- Monitor your employees’ health (for example, provide hearing tests if they are exposed to high noise levels).
- Monitor conditions at the workplace under your management and control.
- Give your employees information about workplace health and safety in appropriate languages.
- Keep information and records relating to health and safety of your employees.
- Employ or engage people suitably qualified in OHS to advise you on employees’ health and safety.
- Consult employees on matters that may directly affect their health, safety and welfare.
- Ensure that the conduct of your business does not endanger other people (including visitors, the public and other workers).
You have additional specific obligations if your business involves:
- manufacture, importation, transportation, supply, storage, handling or use of dangerous goods
- design, manufacture, importation, supply, erection or installation of plant
- manufacture, importation or supply of substances
You also may have obligations to meet particular licensing, registration and certification requirements.
Who's an employer?
If you have one or more employees, you are an employer. An employer can be a:
- person
- company
- partnership, unincorporated association, franchising operation, or not-for-profit organisation
- Take reasonable care for your health and safety in the workplace. You must also take reasonable care for the health and safety of others who may be affected by what you do or don’t do.
- Cooperate with your employer about any action they take to comply with the OHS Act or Regulations. For example, use equipment properly, follow safe work policies and procedures and attend training.
- Don’t intentionally or recklessly interfere with or misuse anything at the workplace to support health, safety and welfare.
You are an employee if you have a contract of employment or contract of training. Volunteers are not employees. Independent contractors may be employees.
For: Employers and managers Information seekers
We publish this regulatory guide to assist the organisations and entities we regulate.
The ‘health and safety duties’ in part 2 of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (WHS Act) include reciprocal duties imposed on workers.
While the WHS Act aims to protect workers against harm to their health, safety and welfare, workers must also contribute to this aim.
1. Duties of a worker
Section 28 of the WHS Act imposes four specific duties on a worker. While at work, the worker must:
- take reasonable care for his or her own health and safety
- take reasonable care that his or her acts or omissions do not adversely affect the health and safety of other persons
- comply, so far as the worker is reasonably able, with any reasonable instruction that is given by the 'person conducting a business or undertaking' (PCBU) to allow the PCBU to comply with the WHS Act and the Work Health and Safety Regulations 2011 (WHS Regulations)
- co-operate with any reasonable policy or procedure of the PCBU relating to health or safety at the workplace that has been notified to workers.
For some specific types of worker who have certain statutory duties or functions, section 7 provides that the worker is ‘at work’ throughout the time when the worker is on duty or lawfully performing the relevant functions, but not otherwise.[1]
However, there is no general definition of ‘at work’ in the WHS Act. While a ‘workplace’ is defined to include a place where a worker goes, or is likely to be, while at work,[2] a worker could be at a workplace without being ‘at work’.
While it is not possible to state definitively when a worker is ‘at work’, a reasonable approach, derived from words in section 7, is to say that a worker is ‘at work’ in relation to a PCBU when he or she is performing the duties or functions for which the worker was engaged or caused to be engaged by the PCBU or is carrying out work under the PCBU’s influence or direction.
In broad terms, a worker’s duties under section 28 reciprocate the protections they receive under duties like the primary duty of care in section 19(1).
2. Compliance
A worker who does not comply with a duty imposed on him/her under section 28 commits an offence.[3]
More specifically, in relation to a section 28 duty owed by a worker:
- The worker commits a Category 1 offence if the worker, without reasonable excuse, engages in conduct that exposes an individual to whom the duty is owed to a risk of death or serious injury or illness and the worker is reckless as to the risk to an individual of death or serious injury or illness.[4]
- The worker commits a Category 2 offence if the worker fails to comply with the duty and the failure exposes an individual to a risk of death or serious injury or illness.[5]
- The worker commits a Category 3 offence if the worker fails to comply with the duty.[6]
Category 1 and 2 offences both involve the exposure of an individual to a risk of death or serious injury or illness. It is not a component of these offences that any harm to the individual (whether death, serious injury or illness or otherwise) has actually occurred.
Category 1 offences involve the additional element of recklessness.
[1] WHS Act, section 7(2)(b), (2A)(b), (2B)(b), (2C)(b), (2D)(b) and (2E)(b).
[2] WHS Act, section 8(1) provides that a ‘workplace’ is a place where work is carried out for a business or undertaking and includes any place where a worker goes, or is likely to be, while at work.
[3] The offence applies even if the worker is a volunteer or a member of an unincorporated association. See WHS Act, section 34. Under WHS Act, section 4, a ‘volunteer’ is defined as a person who is acting on a voluntary basis (irrespective of whether the person receives out-of-pocket expenses).
[4] WHS Act, section 31. The penalty is $300,000 or 5 years imprisonment or both.
[5] WHS Act, section 32. The penalty is $150,000.
[6] WHS Act, section 33. The penalty is $50,000.
For more information about the training we offer, see Training and learning.
Page last reviewed: 22 March 2021