Should You Keep Records of WHS Consultation?

Weekly WHS Article 15th June 2021

PCBUs must consult

The WHS Act states that a PCBU (business or organisation) must consult with any and all staff who individually may be exposed to an unmanaged WHS risk in the workplace. As part of the risk management process, the business must talk to and obtain feedback from those staff before making any final decisions about the matter. The PCBU need not act on the information obtained but must be able to prove that it consulted in the first place.

Company directors and business owners must have measures in place to facilitate consultation whenever required. Their leadership team may talk to people directly or they may talk to someone who represents those people. The latter would be the case if the workplace has been formally divided into "work groups" for the purpose of WHS consultation.

How does senior management prove they have these processes, and that consultation took place?

It does not say in the WHS Act or WHS Regulation anything directly about recording these efforts, but it does say something in the Code of Practice: Work Health & Safety Consultation, Cooperation and Coordination adopted by SafeWork NSW.

“Consultation with workers and with other duty holders does not have to be documented unless specifically required under the WHS Regulation, for example clause 552 of the WHS Regulation requires a major hazard facility’s safety case outline to include a description of the consultation with workers undertaken in the preparation of the safety case. However, it is good practice to keep records to demonstrate compliance with consultation requirements.

Records of consultation may also assist the risk management process and make disputes less likely.” (ref. Page 15.)

In companies that also have a Health & Safety Committee it would be expected that the committee keep records of the agenda and minutes of each committee meeting and any documents that are relevant to the WHS situations that are brought to their attention.

Records of Discussions

“Records should include outcomes of discussions. Records can be brief and simple, and cover:

• what the safety matter is

• who was identified as affected, or likely to be affected

• who was involved in consultations

• key issues consultation identified

• what decision has been made and why

• who is to take action and by when, and

• when the action was completed.”

(Ref. page 15)

Record keeping not only acts as proof of compliance but could be seen as a significant "best practice" measure in demonstrating commitment to workplace health and safety.

Note

Quotations in this article from the SafeWork NSW Code of Practice – Work Health & Safety Consultation, Co-operation and Co-ordination are used under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 3.0 Australia License. To view a copy of this licence, visit www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/au. You are free to copy, communicate and adapt the work for non-commercial purposes, as long as you attribute the work to SafeWork NSW and abide by the other licence terms.

15th June 2021 (revised 23 July 2024)