What officers owe under work health and safety law

Work health and safety law in Australia and New Zealand places a duty on officers personally. It is not the organisation's duty in another form, it cannot be delegated to a safety manager, and it is discharged through evidence that looks nothing like a safety system.

The six limbs, in plain terms

• Keep up to date with health and safety matters.
• Understand the operation and its hazards.
• Make sure the organisation has appropriate resources and processes to eliminate or minimise risk.
• Make sure there are processes for receiving and considering information about incidents and hazards, and responding in good time.
• Make sure there are processes for complying with duties, and that they are used.
• Verify that all of the above is happening.

The last is the one that catches people. Verification is not being told things. It is checking that what you were told is so.

What the evidence looks like

Board and leadership minutes are the primary record, and most of them are inadequate for this purpose. "The safety report was noted" evidences nothing. What evidences due diligence is a minute that records what was reported, what was asked, what was decided, what resource was committed and by when — and then, at the next meeting, whether it happened.

Beyond minutes: the training record of the officers themselves; site visit notes; the incident reports that reached the board and how quickly; the resourcing decisions that were made and, just as importantly, the ones that were declined and why.

Where a management system helps and where it does not

ISO 45001 produces most of the underlying evidence: hazards identified and reviewed, incidents investigated including near misses, competence demonstrated, emergency arrangements tested rather than filed. A certificate is not a defence and no consultancy should offer it as one.

What the system cannot do is exercise the duty. That is personal, and the records that demonstrate it are made in meetings, not in the safety office.

The direction of travel

Both jurisdictions are sharpening the focus on the risks that can actually kill people, rather than treating every hazard alike. For an officer that is a simplification and a tightening at once: fewer things to be across, and far less excuse for not being across them.