What is Due Diligence?
Due diligence—in the context of work health and safety—means taking reasonable steps to protect the health, safety and welfare of all workers and others who could be put at risk from work carried out as part of the business or undertaking.
Reasonable steps include:
- Maintaining up-to-date knowledge of work health and safety matters as they apply to your specific operation
- Understand the nature of the business, its hazards and risks
- Ensuring the business has, and uses, appropriate resources and processes to eliminate or minimise risks to health and safety associated with the operations of the business or undertaking
- Ensuring the business or undertaking has appropriate processes to receive information about incidents, hazards and risks, and can respond to that information in a timely manner
- Ensuring the business has processes – and implements those processes – to comply with any WHS obligation
- Verifying that these steps have been carried out
Each workplace is different. To comply with your due diligence obligations, you need to carry out a specific and detailed risk assessment of the health and safety implications of the range of work carried out by your business or undertaking.
The following information provides more detail about your responsibilities and includes practical examples of ways responsibilities can be implemented.
”“Do not think because an accident hasn’t happened to you that it can’t happen.”- Safetec Safety Solutions
