Workplace rights and responsibilities

Duty of Care

Everyone has a duty of care to make sure their workplaces are safe.

Everyone has a duty of care, a responsibility, to make sure that they and other people are safe in the workplace. If you are an employer, or PCBU, you have the main responsibility for the health and safety of everyone in your workplace, including visitors. This is your 'primary duty of care'. If you’re self-employed, you’re responsible for your own safety and the safety of others.

Duty of care when, as a PCBU

  • Direct or influence work carried out by a worker
  • Engage or cause to engage a worker to carry out work (including through sub-contracting)
  • Have management or control of a workplace.

You must ensure that:

  • The work environment, systems of work, machinery and equipment are safe and properly maintained
  • Chemicals are used, handled and stored safely
  • Adequate workplace facilities are available
  • Information, training, instruction and supervision are provided
  • Workers’ health and workplace conditions are monitored
  • Any accommodation you provide to your workers is safe.

As a PCBU, you always need to try to eliminate, so far as is reasonably and practicable, any health and safety risks in the workplace.

Health & Safety Duties

Duties of officers

Due diligence involves taking reasonable steps:

  • To acquire and keep up-to-date knowledge on WHS matters
  • To gain an understanding of the nature of the operations of the business or undertaking of the PCBU and generally of the hazards and risks associated with those operations
  • To ensure that the PCBU has available for use, and uses, appropriate resources and processes to eliminate or minimise risks to health and safety from work carried out as part of the conduct of the business or undertaking
  • To ensure that the PCBU has appropriate processes for receiving and considering information regarding incidents, hazards and risks and responding in a timely way to that information;
  • To ensure that the PCBU has, and implements, processes for complying with any duty or obligation the PCBU has under the WHS Act
  1. An officer’s duty is to exercise ‘due diligence’ to ensure their PCBU meets its duties to protect workers and other persons against harm to health and safety.
  2. Officer must ensure that the PCBU has in place appropriate systems of work and must actively monitor and evaluate WHS management.
  3. The officer duty recognises that officers have corporate governance responsibilities and, through their decisions and behaviour, strongly influence the culture and accountability of the business or undertaking
  4. They can influence important decisions on the resources that will be made available for the purposes of WHS, and the policies that will be developed to support compliance by the PCBU with the model WHS laws.
  5. Allocation of resources, support accountability and implementation of appropriate policies for a healthy safe work culture
  6. An officer can only comply with their duty by taking an active and inquisitive role in WHS.

Duties of Workers

While at work, a worker must:

  • Take reasonable care for his or her own 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 the business or undertaking to allow the person to comply with this Act
  • 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

Duties of other persons at workplace

A person at a workplace 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 person is reasonably able, with any reasonable instruction that is given by the PCBU to allow the person conducting the business or undertaking to comply with this Act.

Worker

A ‘worker’ is a person who performs work in any capacity whether paid or unpaid for an employer, business or organisation.

Examples of a worker are:

  • an employee
  • a trainee, apprentice or work experience student
  • a volunteer
  • an outworker
  • a contractor or sub contractor
  • an employee of a contractor or sub contractor
  • an employee of a labour hire company.

Workplace

A ‘workplace’ is a place where a worker goes or is likely to be to carry out work for a business or an undertaking, while at work.

The place of work includes:

  1. a vehicle, vessel, aircraft or other mobile structure; and
  2. any waters and any installation on land, on the bed of any waters or floating on any waters.

Person in control of a business or undertaking

A person in control of a business or undertaking (PCBU) is a person that conducts all forms of working arrangements as a business or an undertaking, and the work can be alone or with others and is not dependent on profit or gain.

A person engaged solely as a worker in, or as an officer of the business or undertaking does not conduct a business or undertaking.

Types of PCBUs can include:

  • public and private companies
  • partners in a partnership
  • sole traders and self employed people
  • government departments and authorities
  • associations if they have one or more employees
  • local government councils
  • independent schools
  • cooperatives
  • universities.

For the purposes of the Health and Safety Act (2011), a volunteer association does not conduct a business or undertaking. However, a PCBU must meet their obligations, so far as is reasonably practicable, to ensure the health and safety of workers and other people like visitors and volunteers.

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