Welcome, and how this works
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This course takes about 45 minutes. You can stop at any point and pick up where you left off.
It is for managers, supervisors, business owners and executives. Anyone who might one day have a health and safety representative walk up and exercise a power, and need to know what has just happened.
Why this course exists
Health and safety representatives are trained. They complete an approved course, and they come back knowing exactly what the Act entitles them to do.
Their managers usually get no training at all. So a lawful request is met with “you can’t do that”, a provisional improvement notice is treated as an insult, a cease-work direction is treated as a strike and a working relationship that should have been useful becomes a dispute. In some businesses the leadership team has never read the WHS Act.
The single most useful thing in this course: an HSR has functions and powers. They do not have the duty. The duty to ensure health and safety stays with the business and its officers, and nothing an HSR does moves it.
What it covers
- The WHS Act in five minutes, if you have never read it
- What an HSR is, how they get there and what they are not
- What an HSR is actually entitled to do, and the limits on each power
- What you are legally required to provide, including training and information
- The two powers that cause the most alarm: directing unsafe work to cease and provisional improvement notices
- What to do when you disagree
- The discrimination trap, which catches well-meaning managers
- How to make the relationship work
What it is not
General information about how the scheme is structured, not legal advice, and not a substitute for the Act, the Regulations or advice on a specific dispute. It is based on the model WHS laws; see the Victoria note in unit 2.
Section numbers in this course link to the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW), which is the model Act as enacted in New South Wales. The numbering is the same in every model-law jurisdiction. Links open in a new tab.