WHS Compliance

Work health and safety legislation places stringent requirements upon employers, controllers and self-employed persons to ensure the health, safety and welfare of people (i.e. employees, visitors, contractors and others) in the workplace. The legislation also requires designers, manufacturers and suppliers of both product and equipment to ensure that the end product is safe when properly used.

Breaches of the legislation can expose your organisation, and individual directors or managers, to significant financial penalties; as well as disrupting productivity and impacting workers’ compensation premiums.

Whilst the intent of the legislation and the penalties imposed for breaching the Act are very clear, in reality how can you be sure that your company is fully compliant? Do you adequately manage operations to prevent a breach of the legislation?

Coleman Greig’s work health and safety team can help you to minimise your exposure to incidents in the workplace by providing:

• Advice as to how the WHS legislation, codes and standards apply to your business
• Proactive risk management and compliance solutions
• Assisting in incident investigations and dealing with regulatory authorities
• Product safety issues
• Advice in relation to WHS aspects of commercial transactions including due diligence enquiries
• Advice in relation to workers compensation premium minimisation and audits
• Provision of up to date information, seminars and workshops covering relevant WHS developments
• Access to experts, both legal and non-legal to assist in your compliance activities.

To fully comply with the requirements of the WHS legislation, all duty holders within a corporation must take proactive steps to ensure safety; which include risk assessments, consultation, training, induction and supervision. The duty holders must establish safe systems of work and be able to demonstrate that safety has been a consideration in the conduct of their undertaking. Failure to meet the requirements can result in fines, legal costs and investigation costs. Your safety processes need to extend to all facets of your business, and must be systematic yet practical to ensure compliance.

At Coleman Greig, our approach to WHS is to understand the totality of your business and the various factors that can affect it. In this context we can advise and implement practical solutions to safety issues which fit within the overall goals of your organisation.