Keeping Up with WHS Legislative Changes Shouldn't Be a Full-Time Job

If you work in WHS, risk, HR or management, you probably know the feeling. You hear that something has changed, someone mentions a new Code of Practice, there is an amendment to legislation or a court decision starts doing the rounds on LinkedIn and suddenly you're wondering whether you've missed something important.

Then comes the searching. You check the regulator website, legislation updates, Safe Work Australia, Standards Australia, industry newsletters and whatever else you have bookmarked. Multiply that across every jurisdiction your organisation operates in and keeping up with WHS changes can become a job in itself.

For smaller businesses and safety teams, it can be even harder. There often isn't someone whose job is specifically to monitor regulatory change, so it gets added to an already very long list of responsibilities.

The problem is that "we didn't know it changed" isn't a particularly good compliance strategy.

Monitoring change is part of managing WHS

Good WHS management isn't just about knowing what the legislation says today. Organisations also need a way of identifying changes that may affect their operations and deciding whether those changes require action.

That might include changes to:

• WHS or OHS legislation and regulations

• Codes of Practice

• regulator guidance

• Australian Standards

• prosecution outcomes and court decisions

• emerging regulatory priorities

• consultation papers and proposed reforms

Not every update will affect your organisation and not every change requires you to rewrite your safety management system. The important part is knowing the change has occurred so you can make that decision. That's where I think a lot of organisations struggle.

The problem isn't access to information

There is certainly no shortage of WHS information available. In fact, I think we have the opposite problem. There is so much information spread across so many different sources that finding the information that actually matters can be difficult.

If your business operates across multiple states or territories, the problem becomes even more complicated. Australia may have largely harmonised WHS laws, but we certainly don't have one single WHS regulatory environment.

Add New Zealand operations into the mix and there is another regulatory system to monitor. For consultants and WHS professionals supporting multiple clients, keeping track of all of it can consume a significant amount of time.

A resource worth knowing about: WHS Brief

I recently came across WHS Brief, which is designed to make this process much easier. WHS Brief monitors WHS and OHS developments across Australian jurisdictions and New Zealand and brings relevant changes together into a practical weekly update.

It covers areas including legislative developments, Standards, court decisions and other WHS changes that may be worth having on your radar. Rather than spending time checking multiple sources to work out whether something has changed, you have one place to start.

Importantly, it doesn't replace the legislation, regulator or original source material. If an update is relevant to your organisation, you can still go back to the source and determine exactly what it means for you. That's how I think tools like this should be used.

They shouldn't make compliance decisions for you. They should help make sure you know when there is a decision to be made.

From "interesting update" to compliance action

Finding out about a change is only the first step. Once something relevant is identified, organisations should consider questions such as:

Does this apply to us?

Which sites, workers, activities or operations could be affected?

What do we currently do?

Do our existing systems, procedures and controls already meet the requirement?

Is there a gap?

Do policies, risk assessments, training, consultation arrangements, procedures or other controls need to change?

Who needs to know?

Does the change need to be communicated to workers, managers, officers, HSRs, contractors or other stakeholders?

How will we demonstrate that we responded?

If someone asks six months from now what the organisation did when the requirement changed, can you show them?

That last question is particularly important. Monitoring regulatory change shouldn't just be about receiving an email and reading it. There should be some way of demonstrating that relevant changes were identified, reviewed and actioned where necessary.

Make regulatory monitoring part of your WHS system

Whether you use WHS Brief, regulator subscriptions, your own legal register or another process, regulatory monitoring should be an intentional part of your WHS management system. Decide who is responsible for monitoring changes, how often information will be reviewed, how potentially relevant changes will be assessed and how actions will be recorded.

For larger organisations, this may form part of a formal legal and other requirements register.

For a small business, the process might be considerably simpler. The important thing is that there is a process.

Because waiting until an auditor, regulator, client or incident investigation points out that something changed isn't really monitoring compliance.

Less searching. More time working out what actually matters.

WHS professionals don't need another hundred emails to read every week. We need better ways of identifying the information that matters so we can spend our time working out what it means in practice. That's why I think WHS Brief is worth having a look at.

If you're responsible for keeping up with WHS changes across Australia or New Zealand, particularly if you're monitoring multiple jurisdictions, it may save you a considerable amount of searching.

You can see more at whsbrief.com

Keeping Up with WHS Legislative Changes Shouldn't Be a Full-Time Job