Consultation when managing WHS risks

Workers must be consulted when you are identifying hazards and assessing WHS risks, and when you are making decisions about risk controls. All consultation must include any HSRs representing your workers. Note references to consultation with workers in this Code includes consultation with any HSRs. They must also be consulted on changes that could affect WHS, including: 

• new policies, procedures and systems of work
• organisational restructures, changes to staffing levels, new reporting arrangements and work locations  
• changes to tasks, workloads, duties and working arrangements, including rosters
• new technology, tools, plant, equipment, substances, structures and production processes
• the redesign of existing workplaces, and
• changes to the way information, training, instruction and supervision are provided.⁶ 

If you and your workers have agreed procedures for consultation, the consultation must be done in accordance with those procedures. 

Different workers may be exposed to different risks and you should consult with a range of different workers to ensure you do not miss something. For example, you should consult with workers on different shifts, clinical and non-clinical staff, and staff who may be more exposed to particular hazards (e.g. women are more likely to experience sexual harassment).

You should ensure the way you consult is accessible, including by providing information in multiple languages where required. 
For more information, see the Code of Practice: Work health and safety consultation, cooperation and coordination. 

WHS responsibilities can be shared between you and other employers, contractors or organisations, and more than one organisation can have the same legal WHS responsibilities at the same time. This could be because they are involved in: 

• the same activities
• share the same workplace, or
• owe a duty towards the same set of people (e.g. a security guard working for a private security company but contracted to work in a hospital may be owed a duty by both the security company and the hospital).

Where more than one person shares a duty with someone else, each person retains responsibility to meet their duty. They must do so to the extent to which they can influence and control the matter.  

You must consult, cooperate and coordinate with each other on WHS risk management when you share a duty, as much as you reasonably can.⁷ This will help each employer or contractor more easily and effectively control risks, and assist them to meet their duties.

It is best to sort out how risks will be managed between different employers and contractors before work begins. You can build WHS risks management arrangements into contractual agreements (although each organisation still retains its primary duty to ensure health and safety).  

Further guidance is available at Principles that apply to work health and safety duties and in the Code of Practice: Work health and safety consultation, cooperation and coordination.
 

Case study – Consulting, cooperating and coordinating activities in aged care

An aged care facility engages a catering company to provide resident meals. The facility has some influence over the type of food prepared for residents and owns and maintains the equipment in the kitchen. However, the facility does not control the everyday work activities of the catering company. 

The facility consults with the catering company to satisfy themselves that the catering company has adequate systems in place to ensure the health and safety of workers. The catering company cooperates by verifying that its workers have been trained in food preparation, that food is kept at a safe eating temperature, workers are not exposed to manual handling risks when loading/unloading food trolleys or doing washing up, and that workers are provided with personal protective equipment (PPE).

Workers of the catering company will deliver food to the aged care facility at various times, including in the early morning and late at night. The catering company cooperates with the facility to make sure its workers are aware of and follow security processes. For example, the facility ensures that catering workers have access to the facility’s carpark after hours, which is secured with good lighting and easy access to the goods lift. They also coordinate to ensure catering workers are provided with security passes, appropriately vaccinated to reduce risks to residents, and trained in security protocols and emergency procedures.

Case study – Consulting, cooperating and coordinating activities in disability support

A disability services provider offers support by allied health and support workers to clients in their homes. Workers are allocated a case load and expected to deliver services at a frequency set out in each client’s care plan. Workers attending client’s homes often feel pressured to deliver additional services requested by the clients, who they have developed relationships with. Clients with more complex needs, who require additional attention, are not allocated additional time. 

The service provider’s management team consult with staff to understand their workload and other factors impacting their health and safety. They develop clear service standards and provide these to all clients. These state that services cannot be provided that are out of scope, and clients with more complex needs must be given more time for visits. Caseloads are regularly reviewed to ensure that clients with complex needs are allocated fairly among workers, so that workers do not have more complex clients than they can safely support.