Due Diligence Under WHS Law: What Every Officer Actually Needs to Do
If you're a director, business owner or senior leader in Australia, you've probably heard the term "due diligence" used in the context of workplace health and safety. Most people know it's important. Fewer people can tell you what it actually requires of them, day to day.
That gap is where the risk sits. Under the Work Health and Safety Act, officers have a personal duty to exercise due diligence. It's not something you can delegate away, and it's not satisfied by having a policy folder on a shelf. It's about what you can demonstrate you actually did.
SafeWork NSW has set out six areas that make up "reasonable steps" for due diligence. Here's what they mean in practice, and why they matter for your business.
1. Keep your WHS knowledge current
You need to take reasonable steps to stay across WHS law, risk management principles and current safety issues relevant to your operations. This doesn't mean becoming a lawyer. It means officers are attending training, getting briefed on legislative changes, and staying alert to emerging risks such as psychosocial hazards.
What this looks like: annual WHS governance training for officers, regular briefings to leadership on emerging risks, and a record of who attended what.
2. Understand your operations, hazards and risks
You need to genuinely understand what your business does and what hazards that work creates. Not in theory. In your actual sites, your actual processes, your actual people.
What this looks like: officers visiting high-risk areas of the business, structured conversations about hazards on the ground, and periodic reviews of your critical risks, not just an annual tick-and-flick.
3. Make sure the right resources and processes are in place, and used
It's not enough to have a safety system on paper. You need to ensure the business has, and actually uses, the people, equipment, systems and controls needed to eliminate or minimise risk.
What this looks like: budget allocated for engineering controls and competent supervision, a designated safety lead with real authority, and WHS issues genuinely discussed at leadership level, not just mentioned in passing.
4. Have a process to catch and respond to incidents and hazards
You need systems that surface information about incidents, hazards and risks, and get a response, in good time. A system that only reports up the chain after something has gone wrong isn't due diligence.
What this looks like: notifiable incidents and serious hazards escalating automatically to leadership, a clear workflow for who investigates and who decides, and workers (including contractors) knowing how to report in the first place.
5. Have processes for meeting your WHS duties, and use them
This is about the practical machinery of compliance: reporting notifiable incidents, consulting with workers, complying with notices, providing training, and supporting Health and Safety Representatives. In NSW, this also extends to licensing, entry permits, and applying the hierarchy of controls properly.
What this looks like: a working procedure suite, training matrices that are kept up to date, consultation records, and clear lines of WHS responsibility across the business.
6. Verify it's actually happening
This is the step businesses miss most often. Verification means actively checking, through audits, inspections and follow-up, not just receiving a report and assuming all is well.
What this looks like: internal audits of critical controls, contractor evaluations before work begins, and a record of decisions made at leadership level, including who was involved and what information was considered.
Why this matters more than a compliance checklist
None of this is about paperwork for its own sake. Due diligence is about being able to show, with real evidence, that safety leadership is active in your business, not assumed. If something goes wrong and an officer hasn't met these obligations, they can be found personally liable, even where the failure sits with the organisation as a whole.
This is exactly the confusion we see most often at Anzen Safety and Training. Business owners know safety matters. They know there are legal obligations attached to it. What they often don't have is a clear, workable system for meeting those obligations without drowning in process.
That's the gap we close. We help leaders understand what due diligence actually looks like in their business, build the systems and records that demonstrate it, and make sure safety leadership is something that happens in practice, not just in a policy document.
Where to start
If you're not sure how your business would hold up against these six areas, that's a normal place to be. Most leaders haven't had it laid out this clearly before.
A good first step is a straightforward conversation about where you stand right now. Book a free 30 minute safety health check with our team, and we'll help you see exactly where the gaps are and what to do about them or drop us an email: info@anzen.com.au
This article provides general information based on guidance published by SafeWork NSW and is not a substitute for legal advice. If you need advice on how the law applies to your specific circumstances, seek independent legal advice.
