Health and safety committees provide a forum for consulting on health and safety management across the workplace. They allow businesses to work together with workers on health and safety matters.
Why the need for a committee?
A health and safety committee (HSC) is a formal committee comprising of a person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) and its workers that meets regularly to discuss, develop and implement measures for improving health and safety in the workplace, including standards, rules and procedures.
An HSC can be an effective tool to communicate with your workers, particularly when consultation is required across different work groups or workplaces or when there are several PCBUs with shared responsibilities for health and safe matters.
Who can form a committee?
A PCBU can establish a health and safety committee:
- as part of their own initiative
- by a workplace health and safety representative (HSR), or
- by 5 or more workers at the workplace.
If a request is made for a committee to be established, it must be facilitated within 2 months of the request. A PCBU and its workers must agree on how the HSC will be formed and who its members will be, and the consultation process and agreement should be documented.
The PCBU and its workers should also agree upon:
- what should happen if there is a vacancy
- functions of the HSC
- the procedures of the HSC.
An HSC must meet at least once every 3 months or at any time when requested by at least half of the committee members, and the PCBU should allow each committee member to spend as much time as necessary to attend meetings or carry out functions as required. The HSC members should also be paid their normal rate of pay when undertaking tasks for the committee.
PCBUs can use these templates when forming health and safety committees (HSCs). These templates include examples of: HSC constitution; HSC agenda; and HSC minutes.
Members of the committee
At least half of the members of the committee must be workers. They must be nominated by workers and Health and Safety Representatives (HSRs), and not by the PCBU.
The committee must include one member who is a representative of the PCBU who has sufficient authority to make decisions on health and safety. If the PCBU is an individual, then that individual must also be a member of the HSC.
An HSR for the workplace can join the committee if they wish. If the workplace has more than one HSR, those representatives can choose one or more HSRs to join the committee.
If an agreement cannot be reached on how the HSC should be constituted, any party can ask the regulator to appoint a WorkSafe inspector to make a decision. The inspector has the authority to decide the constitution of the HSC or that the HSC should not be established.
If an HSC is not established, the PCBU must ensure there are other consultation arrangements in place.