How does the way you do safety fit within the legal framework?

How do you know or prove that you are doing to manage safety ‘works’?

Safety is complex and so is proving safety as there is no one size fits all and numerous factors that come in to play.

This is why having a tailored fit for purpose safety system is vital to ensure your business is not only compliant with WHS legal requirements but genuinely effectively in protecting your people.

Starting from the position that workers safety is more important than being legally ‘right’, and a strong belief that understanding and demonstrating legal compliance provides a framework to improve workers safety, the Proving Safety Masterclass helps participants understand legal risk management and demonstrate the primary duty obligations under WHS legislation, being: Reasonably practicable, Due diligence, and Reasonable care.

Course Elements

Legal Framework
Reviewing the WHS legal framework and how safety systems fit within the framework including the relationship between the safety management and legal compliance, and how safety management failures are perceived from a legal perspective (e.g. the courts).
Legal Duties
Detailing the primary duty obligations using case studies and demonstrating that the way a business manages safety can impact their legal risk.
WHS System Failures
Look critically at why safety systems do not provide evidence that organisations are meeting their legal obligations under WHS legislation and review historical failures including factors such as: safety documentation, safety reporting, incident investigations, audits, and safety metrics.
Moving Forward
Exploring methodologies to improve safety systems, better understand and manage legal duties; better understand and demonstrate legal compliance; and improve safety outcomes.

About the Presenter

Greg is an international award-winning author and qualified lawyer who has spent more than three decades specialising in safety and health management. Greg works with clients helping them to understand their responsibility for safety and health and develop processes to discharge those responsibilities.

In addition to being a lawyer, Greg has worked as the Principal Safety Advisor for a major oil and gas company and General Manager Health and Safety in a transport and mining services company. Greg holds various board positions and taught the Accident Prevention unit at Curtin University in Western Australia.

Greg is the author of, Management Obligations for Safety and Health, Paper Safe: The triumph of bureaucracy and safety management, and Proving Safety: wicked problems, legal risk management and the churning of metrics, co-author of, Risky Conversations: The Law, Social Psychology and Risk and the editor of Contractor Safety Management, which won the 2014 World Safety Organisation’s Educational Award.