WHS Responsibilities: What Business Owners Can’t Delegate
Engaging a principal contractor, bringing in a specialist subcontractor or appointing a WHS consultant can make managing workplace safety a lot easier.
But there’s a common misunderstanding about who is responsible when you engage someone else to do the work.
Just because you’ve handed over the work doesn’t mean you’ve handed over your WHS duties.
Under Australian WHS laws, more than one business can have responsibilities for the same work. This is particularly relevant in construction, civil works and other industries where several contractors may be working alongside each other.
Knowing where your responsibilities are, and where they overlap with others, is an important part of managing safety properly.
Who Is Responsible for Workplace Health and Safety?
Under Australia’s Work Health and Safety (WHS) laws, the primary duty of care generally sits with the Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking (PCBU). A PCBU might be a company, sole trader, partnership, or another type of organisation.
The law requires PCBUs to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety of workers and others who may be affected by their work. That covers things such as safe equipment and work practices, appropriate training and supervision, suitable workplace facilities, consultation with workers and managing workplace risks.
A PCBU can engage other people to help meet these obligations, but it cannot transfer its legal duties to someone else. When several businesses are involved in the same project, those duties can overlap.
More Than One Business Can Be Responsible
We sometimes see businesses assume that once they’ve appointed a principal contractor, workplace safety becomes that contractor’s responsibility. The same assumption can happen when specialist work is subcontracted. For example, if a crane company has been engaged to undertake a lift, it’s easy to assume that everything associated with the crane operation is now their responsibility.
But that’s not necessarily the case. The crane contractor has duties relating to its equipment and the work it’s carrying out. The principal contractor and other businesses involved may also have responsibilities for site access, ground conditions, coordinating activities and managing risks associated with the lift.
The fact that one contractor is responsible for an activity doesn’t automatically mean everyone else’s responsibilities disappear.
On a construction project, there may be several PCBUs involved, including:
- The client or developer: Depending on their role and involvement, a business commissioning the work may also have WHS duties.
- The principal contractor: The PCBU appointed or otherwise identified as principal contractor has additional WHS responsibilities for the construction project.
- Contractors: Businesses carrying out particular activities have duties relating to their work and the risks they manage.
- Subcontractors: Specialist businesses have their own WHS obligations, even when working under another contractor.
It’s worth understanding the difference between a principal contractor (PC) and a PCBU. A principal contractor has specific responsibilities under WHS legislation for a construction project. A PCBU is a broader legal term that can apply to several businesses working on that same project.
Where businesses share WHS duties, the law requires them to consult, cooperate and coordinate their activities, so far as is reasonably practicable. In practice, that means communicating about risks, agreeing on how work will be managed and making sure important safety arrangements aren’t being overlooked because everyone assumes someone else is dealing with them.
What Does This Mean for Directors and Business Owners?
There’s another layer of responsibility that business owners and directors need to understand. Under the model WHS laws, officers of a PCBU have a separate, personal duty to exercise due diligence to ensure the business meets its WHS obligations.
An officer isn’t necessarily just the business owner or a company director. Depending on their role and decision-making authority, other senior people within a business may also be considered officers under WHS legislation. This could include a project manager with significant influence over decisions affecting the business as a whole. However, the job title alone doesn’t determine whether someone is an officer.
There can also be multiple officers across the different businesses involved in a project, each with their own due diligence obligations. Due diligence isn’t about knowing every detail of every task or personally carrying out every safety inspection. It’s about understanding the risks associated with the business and taking reasonable steps to make sure those risks are being managed.
That includes:
- Keeping up to date with WHS matters relevant to the business.
- Understanding the work being carried out and the risks involved.
- Making sure appropriate resources, training and supervision are available and used.
- Having processes for reporting and responding to hazards and incidents.
- Ensuring the business has processes for meeting its WHS obligations.
- Checking that safety systems and processes are actually working.
A director might have a WHS manager, site supervisors and external consultants supporting the business. That’s often a sensible approach. But they still need to know what’s happening, ask questions and satisfy themselves that appropriate arrangements are in place.
Five Areas Every Business Should Be Actively Managing
Regardless of who is helping with WHS, there are some areas every business should be paying attention to.
1. Know Your Risks
Every workplace is different. A plumbing business might deal with excavation, confined spaces and hazardous substances. A manufacturing business may have machinery, manual handling and noise risks. You don’t need to be an expert in every hazard, but you should understand the significant risks associated with your operations and what is being done to manage them.
Question to consider: Do you know your highest-risk activities, and when was the last time you checked whether the controls are working?
2. Make Sure Workers Have What They Need
Having a procedure in place is one thing. Making sure workers have the equipment, training, time and supervision to follow it is another. We’ve all seen situations where the paperwork says one thing, but what’s happening on site tells a different story. Officers need to take reasonable steps to ensure the business has appropriate resources and processes, and that they are being used.
Question to consider: Are workers properly equipped and supported to carry out their work safely, or are you relying on what’s written in a procedure?
3. Talk to Workers and Other Contractors
Workers often know where the problems are long before they show up in an audit. Regular toolbox talks, pre-start meetings and conversations on site give people opportunities to raise concerns and contribute to safer ways of working. Where multiple contractors are involved, communication between businesses is just as important. Everyone needs to understand the risks associated with their work, how those risks might affect others and what arrangements are in place to manage them.
Question to consider: Are you regularly communicating with other contractors to make sure everyone understands their WHS responsibilities and how shared risks are being managed?
4. Follow Through on Incidents and Hazards
Reporting an incident or identifying a hazard is only the beginning. Businesses need to make sure appropriate action is taken, including meeting any applicable incident notification and site preservation requirements. Investigations can be supported by internal staff or external specialists, but corrective actions still need to be implemented and checked. There’s little to no value in identifying the same problem repeatedly if nothing changes.
Question to consider: When something goes wrong, are you fixing the underlying problem or just dealing with the immediate issue?
5. Check That Your WHS System Works in Practice
A WHS management system can look excellent on paper and still fall short on site. Procedures become outdated, work practices change and training records don’t always reflect what workers actually understand. Regular inspections, audits, management reviews and conversations with workers help identify where improvements are needed.
Question to consider: Are your procedures being followed in practice, and do workers have what they need to follow them?
Getting the Right WHS Support
There’s plenty of value in bringing in experienced WHS professionals, particularly when your business doesn’t have the internal resources or specialist knowledge to manage everything itself.
External consultants can help with:
- Developing and reviewing WHS management systems.
- Independent audits and gap assessments.
- Risk assessments and workshops.
- Incident investigations and corrective actions.
- Policies, procedures and safe work documentation.
- Ongoing advice, coaching and technical support.
Good WHS support should make it easier to understand your obligations and manage risks, not simply add another folder of documents to your system.
But there’s an important distinction between having a WHS management system and having the ongoing support to make it work. Developing the system is one part of the process. Implementing it, training workers, reviewing procedures and keeping everything up to date takes ongoing time and resources.
A WHS management system provides the framework, but businesses still need to invest in putting it into practice. The aim is to have the right people and processes in place, with enough oversight to know they’re doing what they’re supposed to.
Can You Demonstrate That Safety Is Being Managed?
One of the most useful things a business owner or director can do is ask a few straightforward questions.
- Do we know where our biggest risks are?
- Are we clear about which responsibilities we share with other contractors?
- Are workers getting the training, equipment and supervision they need?
- When someone raises a safety concern, do we follow it through?
- And importantly, how do we know our WHS systems are working?
You shouldn’t have to wait until an incident occurs or an external audit is scheduled to find out where the gaps are. Understanding your responsibilities and regularly checking how safety is managed gives you a much better chance of identifying problems before someone gets hurt.
Practical WHS Support From Red Insight
A WHS management system is only as effective as the people putting it into practice.
At Red Insight, we know that developing a system is just the starting point. The real work is making sure responsibilities are understood, risks are managed and safety becomes part of how a business operates every day.
That’s why we take the time to understand our clients’ operations, their people and the challenges they face. We help businesses across the Hunter and NSW develop practical systems, strengthen their processes and build the knowledge and confidence to manage WHS effectively.
We also recognise that implementation takes commitment. A management system provides the framework, but training, ongoing support, regular reviews and continual improvement are what help keep it working.
If it’s not used on site, it’s not working.
For us, success isn’t measured by how many documents we’ve developed. It’s seeing our clients improve, their businesses succeed and their people go home safely at the end of every day.
Not Sure Where Your WHS Responsibilities Stand?
Understanding where your WHS responsibilities begin and end can be challenging, particularly when several contractors are involved.
Book a complimentary 15-minute consultation with Red Insight. We’ll talk through your current arrangements, any concerns you have and where additional support may be useful. You can also send an enquiry here.
Further WHS Guidance: