Safety is one of the few areas where a business can be doing plenty of work and still be exposed. Documents get written, inspections get done, and the folder looks healthy, yet nobody in the business is confident it would stand up if WorkSafe walked in tomorrow.
Outsourced safety is one way to close that gap. It brings in someone who does this work full time, without the business carrying a safety adviser on the payroll. What it does not do is move the legal duty off the business, and that distinction is where most misunderstandings start.
What does outsourced safety involve?
Arrangements vary, but the work usually covers some combination of the following.
- Reviewing the current safety management system against the Work Health and Safety Act 2020 and the WHS regulations in Western Australia.
- Building or rewriting policies, procedures, safe work method statements and risk assessments so they reflect the work actually being done.
- Running a hazard and risk identification process, and setting up a risk register that gets used rather than filed.
- Site inspections and audits, with corrective actions tracked to completion.
- Incident investigation and reporting, including notifiable incidents.
- Inductions, toolbox talks and training records.
- Consultation arrangements, health and safety representatives, and safety committee support.
- Being available when something happens and a decision needs making that day.
Some businesses want the whole lot. Others have a capable operations manager and want someone to review the system annually and be on the end of the phone in between.
What can you not outsource?
The primary duty of care sits with the person conducting a business or undertaking. That duty cannot be transferred, contracted out of, or handed to a consultant. Any agreement that purported to do so would have no effect.
Officers carry a separate duty. Under the WHS Act, officers must exercise due diligence to ensure the business complies with its obligations, which includes acquiring and keeping up to date knowledge of work health and safety matters, understanding the operations and their hazards, and ensuring resources and processes are available and used.
Engaging a safety provider can help you meet that duty. It does not discharge it. An officer who signs an agreement and stops asking questions has not exercised due diligence, they have delegated and disengaged.
The practical version of this is straightforward. You still need to read the reports, fund the corrective actions, and make the decisions.
Where outsourced safety works well
It suits businesses that are too large to run safety informally and too small to justify a full time safety role. In our experience that is roughly the ten to eighty employee range, though industry matters more than headcount.
It also suits businesses that have won work requiring a demonstrable safety system, such as a tender, a prequalification, or a principal contractor requiring evidence before you can go on site.
And it suits businesses that have had an incident, a WorkSafe visit or an improvement notice, and need to lift the system quickly with someone who has done it before.
What does good look like?
The clearest test is whether the system changes how work is planned and supervised. If procedures sit in a folder and nothing on the floor is different, the system is documentation rather than safety.
Beyond that, look for corrective actions that are closed out rather than logged, risk assessments that are reviewed when the work changes, workers who can describe the hazards in their own job, and records you can produce quickly when asked.
A good provider will also tell you what you do not need. Oversized systems built for much larger businesses are common, and they fail because nobody has the time to run them.
Outsourced, onsite, or both?
Some work is better done in person. Inspections, inductions, incident investigations and training all benefit from someone being on the ground, which is why onsite safety support exists alongside remote arrangements.
Many businesses end up with a mix. The system work, reviews and advice happen off site, and someone attends periodically or when something specific comes up. Our outsourced safety service is built around that combination, and Safety Shield covers businesses wanting ongoing support rather than a project.
How ProcessWorx Can Support You
The above is general information rather than advice for your workplace. If you would like your safety system reviewed, or you are weighing up whether outsourcing suits your business, our team can talk it through with you.
Contact us on (08) 9316 9896 or get in touch.
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