Introduction to Health and Safety at Work

particular. There is no equality of responsibility under law 
between those who provide direction and create policy 
and those who are employed to follow. Principals, or 
employers in terms of the HSW Act, have substantially 
more responsibility than employees.
Some policies are written so that most of the wording 
concerns strict requirements laid on employees and only 
a few vague words cover managers’ responsibilities. 
Generally, such policies do not meet the HSW Act or the 
Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 
1999, which require an effective policy with a robust 
organization and arrangements to be set up.
3.2 
Control
Like all management functions, establishing control and 
maintaining it day in day out is crucial to effective health 
and safety management. Managers, particularly at senior 
levels, must take proactive responsibility for control-
ling issues that could lead to ill-health, injury or loss. 
A nominated senior manager at the top of the organiza-
tion needs to oversee policy implementation and moni-
toring. The nominated person will need to report regu-
larly to the most senior management team and will be a 
director or principal of the organization.
31
3
Organizing for health 
and safety
PLC Director
Divisional Director
Site Manager
Deputy Manager
Senior Supervisor
Figure 3.1
Everyone from senior managers down has 
health and safety responsibilities.

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Introduction to Health and Safety at Work
32
Health and safety responsibilities will need to 
be assigned to line managers and expertise must be 
available, either inside or outside the enterprise, to help 
them achieve the requirements of the HSW Act and the 
regulations made under the Act. The purpose of the 
health and safety organization is to harness the collect-
ive enthusiasm, skills and effort of the entire workforce 
with managers taking key responsibility and providing 
clear direction. The prevention of accidents and ill-health 
through management systems of control becomes the 
focus rather than looking for individuals to blame after the 
incident occurs.
The control arrangements should be part of the 
written health and safety policy. Performance standards 
will need to be agreed and objectives set which link 
the outputs required to specifi c tasks and activities for 
which individuals are responsible. For example, the 
objective could be to carry out a workplace inspection 
once a week to an agreed checklist and rectify faults 
within three working days. The periodic, say annual, 
audit would check to see if this was being achieved and 
if not the reasons for non-compliance with the objective.
People should be held accountable for achieving the 
agreed objectives through existing or normal procedures 
such as:
➤
job descriptions, which include health and safety 
responsibilities
➤
performance appraisal systems, which look at indi-
vidual contributions
➤
arrangements for dealing with poor performance
➤
where 
justifi ed, the use of disciplinary procedures.
Such arrangements are only effective if health and safety 
issues achieve the same degree of importance as other 
key management concerns and a good performance is 
considered to be an essential part of the career and per-
sonal development.