News & Updates

If you run a company in Australia, there are two safety duties in play, not one. The business holds the primary duty to provide a safe workplace. Separately, the company's officers hold a personal duty to exercise due diligence to make sure the business actually meets it. Two duties, enforced separately.

Discover how to implement office ergonomics in plain English for small businesses. Learn why proper setup matters and prevent injuries today.

Do I Need an Alcohol and Drugs Policy for My Business? You have a legal duty to protect your workers from risks to their health and safety, so far as is reasonably practicable, and impairment is one of those risks. Without something written down, you have no practical way to meet that duty, and no way to show you tried.

An inspection and an audit are two different jobs. An audit looks at the system behind the workplace. Do we have a written procedure for this task, is anyone actually following it, and could we prove it if someone asked.

A Safe Work Method Statement is one of the few WHS documents that Australian law names specifically and requires in specific circumstances. Not recommended. Required, in writing, before the work starts. And the circumstances catch far more businesses than the phrase "high risk construction work" suggests.

Electrical safety is one of those WHS topics where the risk is real, the obligations are clear, and the confusion about what those obligations actually are runs deep. Here's the plain-English version.

Fatigue is one of the most under-documented hazards in Australian workplaces. Not because it's obscure or difficult to understand, but because it doesn't look like a hazard. It looks like hard work. It looks like dedication. And in a lot of small businesses, it's treated as a badge of honour. That framing is a problem. Not just for the workers carrying it, but for the business under WHS law.

Every state and territory in Australia places active obligations on employers to support an injured worker's return to work. Those obligations go well beyond paperwork. They involve providing suitable duties, consulting with the worker and their treating doctor, developing a documented return-to-work plan, and in some cases appointing a return-to-work coordinator. Getting this right matters for the worker's recovery and for your business.

This post covers what the hierarchy actually requires, where PPE fits within it, what your obligations are when you do use PPE, and how to manage it properly without drowning in paperwork.

A workplace inspection should be scheduled, structured, documented, and be followed up. It produces a record. And for small Australian businesses, it's one of the most straightforward, and most commonly skipped, ways to meet your WHS obligations.

A WHS policy is a short, signed statement from whoever runs the business that says two things: we take the health and safety of our workers seriously, and here's how we go about it. That's the whole idea. It doesn't need to be long, and it definitely doesn't need to be written in legal jargon.

Under Australian WHS law, training isn't the part most businesses get wrong. Proving it is. The training often happens. The record of it doesn't. And the day a worker is hurt, an inspector visits, or an insurer reviews a claim, "we definitely covered that" carries no weight at all. Here's what you actually need to know.

When you bring a contractor or subbie onto a job, it's easy to assume their safety is their problem. They're licensed, they're insured, they sort themselves out. It's one of the most common beliefs in small business, and it's one of the most expensive ones to get wrong.

Under the WHS Regulations, "hazardous manual handling" is defined much more broadly than most people expect. And the obligations that come with it apply to every Australian business, regardless of industry.

Under section 47 of the WHS Act, every PCBU has to consult with workers on health and safety matters, so far as is reasonably practicable.

This guide walks through what an Australian workplace emergency plan actually needs to include, the most common gaps we see in small business plans, and a step-by-step process to build one (or update yours) in an afternoon.

Under Australian WHS law, every business has a duty to provide workers with the information, training, instruction, and supervision they need to do their job safely. A workplace induction is where that duty starts - and for a lot of small businesses, it's the first obligation they get wrong.