The first three actions laid out in the strategy are related to Information and Awareness, National Cooperation, and Data and Intelligence Gathering, highlighting the importance of collaboration and knowledge in promoting better work health and safety outcomes. The next action is about the importance of leadership in improving WHS outcomes across the entirety of the business.

Action Four: Health and Safety Leadership

The commitment to health and safety within the workplace needs to come from the top down for it to be taken seriously. It takes leadership throughout every level of management across your business to ensure WHS messages are taken seriously. It cannot and should not be viewed as only in response to government bodies or as a reactive approach, it should be embedded in your workplace culture.

Within the strategy, Safe Work Australia calls out the importance of governments, industry, organisations, and individuals (including persons conducting business undertakings (PCBUs) and workers) having a leadership role in building a positive health and safety culture and embracing the management of WHS risks. 

WHS Leadership can begin at a government level and filter down through industry, with regulatory partnerships supporting the development of greater capacity and capability across the system. 

So, what does Safe Work Australia suggest?

Various jurisdictions will be expected to develop and refine their own detailed strategies and action plans related to identified WHS challenges within their workforce. A tailored approach is necessary for improvement. 

In building a culture of safety, efforts should be made to liaise with vocational training partners to influence future health and safety training requirements for workers, as well as promoting the need for WHS workers across businesses. 

An easy win comes from making sure your Work Health and Safety officers, worker representatives, managers, and supervisors have the appropriate training. Every time there is a legislative update or change, it needs to be communicated to this group of people so the messages trickle down. 

Building A Strong Safety Culture

It’s never been more important to build a strong culture of safety. This especially rings true for industries like manufacturing, construction, and telecommunications that rely on a contractor-heavy workforce.

When your contractors serve as delivery partners and representatives of your company, it is paramount to make sure they are operating safely, both from an image standpoint, and for contractor protection. This is where you want to have a worker-level visibility over your entire workforce, including your contractors and subcontractors.  

With a focus on safety, the first step is ensuring contractors are trained and qualified to perform critical job functions, and that everyone on your sites undergoes the appropriate training and induction. This has to come from the top, but it needs to be taken seriously throughout every level of contractor management across your sites, down to the individual. Clear expectations and communication will be your best friend. When everyone knows what is expected of them, and understand the way they need to undertake their work, there’s a greater likelihood in meeting WHS outcomes.  

Action Five: Compliance and Enforcement

The culmination of the action points laid out in the Australian Work Health and Safety Strategy is compliance and enforcement. How do you police compliance? When you have your checks and balances in place of what is required to perform a role, you have the parameters for enforcement. When everyone knows the expectation and it’s clearly communicated, compliance is more likely to follow. 

There needs to be a continued strong focus on compliance and enforcement in ensuring PCBUs are meeting WHS duties–and one of the ways you can do this is by ensuring the compliance of your workforce. An element of this is hand in hand with data and intelligence gathering.

How do you enforce compliance?

This comes with clarity around roles and responsibilities within the workplace. When you are clear with your employees, contractors, and supply chain about the necessary qualifications to carry out specific types of work, along with safe work practices, risk management procedures, and appropriate onboarding materials, you have a more informed workforce, which should result in a safer workforce.

With clarity around expectations, when workers, contractors, or links within your supply chain violate your WHS policies, regardless of whether or not it results in injury or illness, your business is better placed to hand out consequences. 

So, what does Safe Work Australia suggest?

It’s important for collaboration to occur across jurisdictions to improve overall compliance in relation to WHS across supply chains of goods and labour. 

It relates directly back to Action Two: National Coordination, with a focus on targeting national compliance and enforcement campaigns, particularly in poor performing sectors, including agriculture, construction, road transport, manufacturing, health care and social assistance, and public administration and safety.

It also highlights the importance of supply chain management and the necessity of having complete visibility over every link in the chain. 

Efforts will be made to develop insights from data on prosecutions, notifications and breaches, and increase knowledge sharing across the Work Health and Safety system. This is where having all of your data in one platform as a single source of truth will help to increase productivity and work to eliminate risks. 

There will also be a focus on strengthening compliance on consultation, representation and supervision to improve worker health and safety. With regulation changes that occurred in 2024, companies need to ensure they’re doing everything possible to eliminate workplace risks, especially those in high-risk industries. 

Industrial Manslaughter and Increasing Penalty Provisions

While worker fatalities have fallen from their peak in the early 2000s, progress has plateaued. In a workplace safety role, it’s important to remain across legislation updates which have occurred and how you might need to consider them in your workplace, especially in relation to compliance. 

In June 2024, the NSW Government passed the Work Health and Safety Amendment (Industrial Manslaughter) Act 2024, which now creates an offence of industrial manslaughter and provides for matters relating to gross negligence. Within the Act were relevant amendments to the Industrial Relations Amendment Act 2023.

What has the Amendment Act introduced? 

Within NSW, industrial manslaughter offences now carry maximum penalties of $20 million for a body corporate and 25 years imprisonment for an individual. 

What constitutes industrial manslaughter? 

When persons conducting a business or undertaking (PCBUs) and officers of PCBUs engage in grossly negligent conduct that breaches the work health and safety duties owed to individuals within their work and on their sites, that results in the death of an individual.

It’s important to note this Amendment Act doesn’t impose additional work health and safety duties–it means the penalty for not doing so has increased. With increased penalties, the hopeful outcome is a reduction in unsafe workplace behaviour by holding those liable who are guilty of the most serious of WHS breaches. It is not the time for turning a blind eye. 

The new offence of ‘industrial manslaughter’ began on 16 September 20204 following extensive consultation, with an 18-month review period scheduled. 

Without proper visibility over who is on your sites and if they’re qualified to perform they’re role, companies are leaving themselves liable to industrial action if the worst happens. There is no leeway under the law. Accidents happen every day, but many can be avoided entirely with the right checks and balances in place.

Ratifying the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Fundamental Convention

On 29 October 2024, Australia ratified the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Fundamental Convention – Promotional Framework for Occupational Safety and Health Convention 187 at a tripartite ceremony of unions, employers and governments in Geneva, Switzerland. The ceremony included representatives from Safe Work Australia Members, the Australian Council of Trade Unions and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. 

The ratification of this Convention affirms Australia’s role as a world leader in work health and safety, as one of the first in the world to ratify all 10 ILO Fundamental Conventions which together recognise workplace health and safety as a fundamental principle and right. 

The ILO’s Conventions, and Australia’s ratification of them, aligns with recent work to ensure the heath and safety of all workers, including initiatives under the Australian Work Health and Safety Strategy 2023-2033, new guidance and regulations for psychosocial hazards, including sexual and gender-based harassment, and the ban on engineered stone benchtops, panels and slabs. 

Questions you should be asking:

• How seriously is safety embedded in your workforce?

• Have leadership across your workforce received the appropriate training in relation to workplace safety on your sites?

• Are there clear expectations across your workforce when it comes to attitudes of safety?

• When someone in your workforce violates your WHS practices, how do you enforce compliance?

• Do you have all of your workforce data in one single source of truth?  

• What legislation updates have happened over the past year which you now need to consider?

Summary

We have now walked through The Australian Work Health and Safety Strategy developed by Safe Work Australia, in conjunction with the Australian Government and every state and territory government, covering 2023 to 2033 which sets an ambitious vision for what Work Health and Safety outcomes in Australia could look like in the next decade. 

Australian companies need to keep their eyes set on the national goal of the Australian Work Health and Safety (WHS) Strategy over the next ten years: reduce worker fatalities, injuries, and illness.

There are five actions underpinning the strategy:

• Information and awareness

• National coordination

• Data and intelligence gathering

• Health and safety leadership

• Compliance and enforcement

While these goals and actions are set at a national and regulatory level, when you’re aware of the focus areas, you can begin to act now. Workforce safety through visibility over your contractors and supply chain has never been more important. Having the right workforce management software collecting the data and ensuring the compliance of your workforce is the easiest way for 2025 to be the safest year on your sites.  

Interested in learning more? You can view this entire series of blogs below, as well as other relevant resources:

• The Future of Australian Health & Safety - Understanding a Shifting Landscape (Part One)
• The Future of Australian Health & Safety - Understanding a Shifting Landscape (Part Two)
• The Future of Australian Health & Safety - Understanding a Shifting Landscape (Part Three)
• Moving Towards the Future: Holistic Supply Chain Risk Mitigation​