Having conversations with your workers lets you gain first-hand knowledge and experience that will help build a healthy and safe workplace. Workers are much more engaged in the workplace if they understand the organisation’s objectives and their role in achieving these. This can also foster trust in management and lead to improved productivity.
Consulting with workers and their representatives on health and safety matters is also a legal requirement under work health and safety laws.
Consultation can occur in different ways depending on what suits your workplace and your workers. The best way to consult with your workers will depend on:
- the size of the business and how it is structured
- the way work is arranged and where your workers are located
- what suits your workers (i.e. ask your workers how they would like to be consulted and consider their needs)
- the complexity, frequency and urgency of the issues that require consultation.
Consultation is a collaborative process between a person conducting a business and undertaking (PCBU) and its workers. It involves sharing information about work health and safety and ensuring that views of workers are considered when making decisions about health and safety at the workplace. Given the importance of consultation in contributing to work health and safety, the Work Health and Safety Act 2020 (WHS Act) prescribes a general duty on PCBUs to consult.
Learn more about consultation and worker representation.
Your responsibilities as a PCBU
A PCBU has a duty to consult with their workers on health and safety matters, so far as is reasonably practicable. This means engaging with your workers who are likely to be directly affected by health and safety issues.
There are many ways consultation might occur, including through:
- health and safety representatives
- health and safety committees
- regular team meetings
- pre-start briefings
- ‘toolbox talks’
- as part of your regular interactions with workers (e.g. when you walk the floor)
- regular updates with workers, emails, and feedback.
When more than one PCBU operates at a workplace, you share the responsibility for work health and safety with any additional duty holders. This means you are required to consult, cooperate and coordinate on health and safety matters. Examples include:
- shopping centres
- construction projects
- labour hire
- multi-tenanted office buildings.
Additional duty holders can also include designers, manufacturers, importers, officers, WHS service providers and suppliers and installers of plant, substances or structures.
Workers are entitled to be part of a consultation directly with their PCBU or via their elected health and safety representative. A PCBU and other duty holders must consult with workers when:
- assessing risks and identifying hazards
- making decisions about ways to eliminate risks
- making decisions about providing facilities for the welfare of workers (e.g. toilets, drinking water, eating facilities)
- making changes that affect work health and safety (e.g. purchasing new or old equipment, restructuring the business and changing work systems).
A safe workplace is more easily achieved when everyone involved in the workplace works together to identify hazards and physical and psychosocial risks. Having a conversation with your workers on health and safety concerns can help to find solutions.
Learn more about your main responsibilities and duties under WHS.