WHS Officers and PCBUs

The latest offering from the Safety Nerd:

Are you an “Officer” – of the LAW?

Posted on September 22, 2011 by The Safety Nerd

Pre harmonisation there was a liability on people who own or manage an organisation or business – attributed liability which could be CEOs, Senior Managers or even Line Managers. If prosecuted defences could be that you were either not in a position of influence in relation to the breach, or you used all due diligence to prevent the breach. You had to prove one of these and you were guilty until proven otherwise.

We will get to the definition of an officer in a minute. What is interesting here is that under these new laws an Officer of a PCBU may be convicted or found guilty of an offence regardless of if the PCBU has been convicted. This is big news ladies and gentlemen! Officers will need to show leadership in health and safety and in particular in the organisations health and safety performance and Officers will need to prove that they have taken steps to ensure the organisation has complied with and continues to comply with its legal obligations.

Safety Nerd

Owner and Principal Consultant at Riskology

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I’ve been in safety my whole career. Well nearly my whole career, I started off as a secretary for a recruitment company, then dabbled in HR whilst stumbling onto safety, which I fell head over heels ….literally in love (I know safety nerd alert) with safety after reading the book Lessons from Longford by Anthony Hopkins at the age of 19 and haven’t looked back since. I had a few friends that had been permanently injured in their early 20s and my Dad nearly lost his foot in a workplace accident when I was a twinkle in his eye and the Lessons from Longford book made so much sense to me. I started my life in safety knee high to a grasshopper working for Aristocrat in the 90’s, a gaming machine company in Sydney where I introduced national safety handbooks, alerts, industry focus groups and decided this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life; during this time I also headed off to Uni and completed an MBA specialising in industrial relations, the closest qualification at the time related to safety, since then there’s been an explosion of courses so I then got my teeth into a masters of safety. I then went onto a safety role at Coca Cola Amatil and tackled the logistics of ensuring multiple sites were compliant from call centres to sales to manufacturing workers. This was an interesting time when new manufacturing plants were opening and becoming fully automated, never a dull moment in the world of safety. I’m a bit of a car buff so then moved into a safety role at Inchcape, you know the guys that own Subaru. I was looking after the safety for 45 sites and came up with some great strategies to get them all confident and running with safety. After saving my employers in total over $1.5million in workers comp and setting up some great strategies I decided to jump ship and moved away from the big smoke for love. That was a couple of years ago now and that’s when Riskology was born. I love helping other businesses create safer workplaces helping them through the minefield of legislation with simple easy solutions with the end goal of making workplaces safer. The safety industry has changed significantly in recent years, with new legislation and tougher penalties. Small businesses are expected to comply just as much as large businesses, that’s where I come in, helping to bridge the gap and cut through the jargon. Safety doesn’t have to be the elephant in the room, good safety practices is good for business. Qualifications Master’s degree in Occupational Health and Safety Master’s degree in Business Industrial Relations Accredited Lead Auditor Graduate Certificate Health and Safety Management Systems Cert IV – Workplace Training, OHS, HR(and Dip), Secretarial