As a business leader, you have an obligation to maintain a safe and healthy work environment. While that looks different for every organisation, what it will no doubt include is carrying out workplace health and safety (WHS) risk assessments.

While we all like to think that they’ll never happen to us, incidents are a certainty. What makes a difference, however, is how your business deals with them. By taking all incidents seriously and documenting them, you are demonstrating to your employees that you are trying to cultivate a safety culture.

Over the last couple of months, just in Sydney alone, there have been multiple news stories about workplace accidents. These have been extremely serious, with severe injuries and even deaths. We all like to think it will never happen to us or at our workplace, but surely the recent events show us that it easily could.

Many things compromise workplace health and safety, our level of training, our understanding of regulatory compliance and our overstretched budgets, to name but a few. But, one of the biggest enemies of workplace health and safety is, in fact, complacency.

We’ve all felt stressed and overwhelmed at work. We live in an always-on society, with constant emails, texts and push notifications alongside the pressure of meeting deadlines and delivering on expectations forcing us to work harder, faster and smarter.

Recently, I posted an image on LinkedIn that displayed the quote, “When it comes to safety, common sense is the friend of compliance”, and asked for people’s thoughts. Over the next few hours, I received a tirade of comments that were ‘passionate’ to say the least.

Workplace health and safety (WHS) audits are often dreaded, striking fear into managers and employees alike. But remember, audits aren’t trying to catch us out or expose our failings, their purpose is, ultimately, to help protect our workers.

Policies are essential in the workplace as they clarify the standards expected of workers and help employers manage staff more effectively. As such, WHS policies are very important for most organisations, as they help define what is acceptable from a health and safety perspective.

When we think about health and safety in the workplace, it’s easy to focus our efforts on processes, controls and compliance standards. The systems we put in place are logical and comprehensive that should work efficiently and according to design.

The definition of an officer is stated clearly in the WHS Act. You are someone who makes significant business decisions and can alter the business's financial position. Who does that make you, though? Are you a business owner, a director or perhaps a senior project manager? Are you certain of your duties under WHS law?

Being an officer under WHS law is a significant responsibility in Australia. You have a legal duty to comply with WHS obligations and to take reasonably practicable steps towards compliance. That means continually and comprehensively ensuring that your workers, volunteers and visitors are safe.