Workplace health and safety
Every business has a duty to keep people safe at work - your workers, contractors, customers and visitors. For a small business, that mostly means noticing hazards, fixing them, involving your team, and knowing what to do if something goes wrong. Here's how to build those habits.
In short
- If you run a business, you have a duty to keep people safe at work as far as is reasonably practicable - including their mental health.
- Use a simple four-step cycle - spot hazards, assess the risk, control it, and check the controls work.
- Talk to your workers about safety; they usually know the hazards best.
- Serious incidents must be reported to your state or territory's WHS regulator straight away, and the rules were expanded in late 2025.
- Your state or territory regulator has free tools, templates and advice for small businesses.
Your duty in plain terms
Work health and safety (WHS) laws apply in every state and territory. Most follow a national model; Victoria has its own equivalent laws. If you run a business, which the laws call a “person conducting a business or undertaking”, you must make sure, as far as is reasonably practicable, that people aren’t put at risk by your work. That includes:
- your employees, contractors, labour-hire workers and volunteers,
- customers, visitors and the public,
- mental health as well as physical safety.
This applies whether you have one worker or fifty, and whether work happens in a shop, an office, a vehicle, a client’s home or your own home. Workers have duties too: to take reasonable care and follow reasonable safety instructions.
Exact requirements vary between states and territories, so check with your WHS regulator (for example SafeWork NSW, WorkSafe Victoria, WorkSafe Queensland or SafeWork SA). Each has free resources for small businesses.
Managing risks: a four-step cycle
1. Spot the hazards
Walk through your workplace and your work activities and ask what could cause harm. Common examples:
- Physical: manual handling, slips and trips, ladders and heights, machinery, vehicles, electricity, chemicals, heat.
- Psychosocial: excessive workload, unrealistic deadlines, aggression from customers, bullying or harassment, working alone, poor support, unclear roles.
Ask your workers. They see hazards you don’t.
2. Assess the risk
For each hazard, consider how likely harm is and how serious it could be. Deal with the most serious first.
3. Control the risk
Aim for the most effective control you reasonably can, in this order:
- Remove the hazard (for example, stop storing heavy stock up high).
- Substitute something safer (a less harmful chemical).
- Engineer it out (guards, trolleys, better lighting, a duress alarm).
- Change how the work is done (procedures, training, rosters, job rotation).
- Personal protective equipment (gloves, glasses, hi-vis) as the last line of defence.
4. Check it works
Review your controls regularly, and whenever something changes: new equipment, a new task, a new worker, or after an incident or near miss.
Mental health at work
Psychosocial hazards are part of your safety duty, not an optional extra. Practical steps:
- Keep workloads and deadlines realistic, and plan for busy periods.
- Make roles and expectations clear.
- Have a clear policy on bullying, harassment and aggression from customers, and act on reports.
- Support people working alone or remotely: regular check-ins and a way to call for help.
- Make it easy to raise concerns early.
Safe Work Australia’s model Code of Practice on managing psychosocial hazards explains this in detail. See also Productivity, stress and avoiding burnout.
Talk to your team
You must consult workers about health and safety matters that affect them, such as when you identify hazards, decide on controls or change the way work is done. In a small business this can be simple: a regular safety item in team meetings, a quick chat before a new task, and an open door for concerns.
Training and induction
Every new worker, including casuals and contractors, should get a safety induction on day one: hazards specific to the job, how to do tasks safely, emergency procedures, first aid, and who to talk to about concerns. Refresh training when tasks or equipment change.
First aid and emergencies
- Provide first aid equipment suited to your workplace, and access to trained first aiders.
- Have a simple emergency plan: evacuation, fire, medical emergency, threatening behaviour. Practise it.
- Keep emergency contacts visible.
When something goes wrong
- Look after the injured person first and get medical help if needed.
- Make the area safe.
- Notify the regulator if it’s a notifiable incident. Serious incidents, such as a death, serious injury or illness, or a dangerous incident, must be reported to your WHS regulator immediately, by the fastest possible means. For notifiable incidents, the site generally has to be left undisturbed until an inspector arrives or says otherwise.
- Record it and keep the records. Notification records must generally be kept for at least five years.
- Investigate and fix the cause, involving the people affected.
In December 2025, Safe Work Australia updated the national model rules to add more types of notifiable events, including some psychological harm, violent incidents and extended work-related absences. Not every state has adopted the changes yet, so check your regulator’s current requirements. If you’re unsure whether something is notifiable, call them.
Workers compensation insurance is generally compulsory for employers. Talk to your state’s scheme or an insurance broker.
Your simple safety system
- Hazards identified with your workers, and written down
- Controls in place for the most serious risks
- Safety induction for every new worker
- First aid kit, first aider and emergency plan
- Policy on bullying, harassment and customer aggression
- Incident reporting process, including when to call the regulator
- Regular safety check-ins with your team
- Annual review, plus a review whenever work changes