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SafeWork NSW has published a set of practical online tools to help officers understand and meet their due diligence obligations under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011. At Actevate we welcome the release, because it turns a duty that many officers find abstract into something they can actually check themselves against.

The feedback we hear from our own clients is consistent. Officers understand that due diligence is a legal obligation. What they are far less certain about is what it looks like in day to day decision making, and what a regulator would accept as proof that they were exercising it.

Info: The self-assessment tool is free and takes only a few minutes. It is a capability building exercise, not a compliance check, and completing it does not trigger any regulator action.

Who counts as an officer

This is the first thing organisations tend to get wrong. Due diligence does not sit with the WHS team. It sits personally with the people who make, or take part in making, decisions that affect a substantial part of the business.

In practice that usually means:

• Company directors
• Chief executives and executive leadership
• Senior managers with genuine decision making authority over resources and operations
• Certain partners, office holders and public sector equivalents

Note: The duty is personal and it cannot be delegated. An officer can appoint a safety manager and still be liable, because appointing someone is not the same as verifying that what they have built actually works.

The six reasonable steps

SafeWork NSW frames due diligence as taking reasonable steps across six areas. The genuinely useful part of this release is that the regulator has now spelled out, for each step, the records an officer should be able to produce.

1. Acquire and keep up to date WHS knowledge

Annual WHS governance training for officers, quarterly briefings to the board on emerging hazards such as psychosocial risk, and keeping current with code of practice updates.

Records: officer training records, board skills matrix, briefing packs on WHS law updates.

2. Understand the operations and their hazards

Structured officer site visits to high risk locations, and periodic deep dives on critical risks aligned to the approved codes.

Records: visit logs with observations, risk registers, critical risk heat maps discussed at board or executive level.

3. Ensure appropriate resources and processes are in place

Approving and tracking budget for controls, and making sure there is enough WHS capability and frontline staffing to run operations safely.

Records: capital requests tied to risk assessments, staffing plans, maintenance records for safety critical controls.

4. Ensure incidents, hazards and risks are received and responded to in time

Escalation of notifiable incidents and overdue actions to executives against response time targets, with a clear workflow covering who analyses, who decides, by when, and how closure is verified.

Records: incident trend dashboards, action closure reports, minutes evidencing decisions and timeframes met.

5. Ensure processes exist for complying with WHS duties

Incident notification, worker consultation, compliance with notices, training and instruction, and health and safety representative training entitlements.

Records: procedure suite, training matrices, consultation records, licence schedule, notices register.

6. Verify that steps 3 to 5 are actually working

This is the step most often missed. Verification means actively confirming through audits, inspections and follow through, rather than passively receiving reports.

Records: audit plans and reports, corrective action logs, a decision and participation register cross referenced to board minutes.

Tip: Read step six as the test the other five are marked against. Most officers we work with can evidence resourcing and process. Far fewer can evidence that they checked whether any of it worked.

What the self-assessment gives you

The tool is a short questionnaire covering how effectively you are exercising your responsibilities. On completion you receive:

• Insight into your current due diligence practices
• Your strengths and your opportunities for improvement
• Tailored, prioritised actions to strengthen your safety leadership

SafeWork NSW has also published a short quick reference guide covering the fundamentals: who may be an officer, what the specific duties are, and the practical steps available to strengthen compliance. It is worth reading before you start the assessment rather than after.

Why this matters now

Two changes make this release more consequential than it first appears.

Approved codes of practice became directly enforceable in NSW from 1 July 2026. Where your systems depart from a relevant code, you now need documentation showing your approach provides an equivalent or higher standard. And psychosocial risk remains a headline SafeWork NSW regulatory priority, with the Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work code the enforceable benchmark.

Officers should also be aware of the personal exposure. Where an organisation fails to comply with a WHS duty and that failure is attributed wholly or partly to an officer failing to meet their section 27 duty, the officer may be found guilty of an offence, separately from the business.

Note: A completed self-assessment is not itself evidence of due diligence. It shows you where the gaps are. Closing and documenting them is the part that counts.

Access the resources

• Officer Due Diligence Self-Assessment tool
• Officer due diligence quick reference guide (PDF)
• SafeWork NSW due diligence guidance

How Actevate can help

The self-assessment will tell you where your gaps are. It will not close them. That is the work we do with officers and executive teams.

• Psychosocial risk gap assessment. We assess your current systems against the enforceable code and give you a documented position on where you stand and what to fix first.
• Officer and leadership capability. Our mental health training builds the capability step one asks for, giving leaders the skills to recognise psychosocial hazards and respond early.
• Evidence you can point to. We help you build the consultation records, risk registers and review cycles that make step six defensible.

If you have completed the self-assessment and want to talk through the result, call 1300 663 155 or get in touch.

This article summarises SafeWork NSW guidance current as at August 2026. It is general information, not legal advice. Officer obligations depend on your role and circumstances. For advice on your specific position, speak to Actevate or a qualified legal practitioner.

SafeWork NSW recently released its Regulatory Statement for 2026-27, confirming the four areas that will drive its inspection and enforcement activity over the next 12 months.

The Statement sets out the work health and safety risks, industries and behaviours that will attract the regulator's attention this financial year. For any business operating in New South Wales, it is a clear indication of where inspector visits, audits and compliance action will be directed.

The priorities are largely consistent with the past two years. SafeWork NSW Commissioner, Janet Schorer, has indicated that this continuity is deliberate, and that businesses in the priority areas should be examining what is working well in their safety systems and what needs to improve.

"Since becoming a standalone regulator, we’ve not seen much of a change in our regulatory priorities between 2025/26 and 2026/27. This signals to me that, while we have work to do as a regulator, it’s also important for businesses in those key priority areas to think really seriously about their work health and safety in terms of what is working well and what needs to be improved."
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- Janet Schorer

Enforceable Codes of Practice

Amendments to the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW) came into effect on 1 July 2026, giving legal force to approved Codes of Practice. Until now, Codes have operated as guidance material that inspectors and courts could reference when assessing what was reasonably practicable. They are now directly enforceable.

If your safety management system does not align with a relevant approved Code, you will need to demonstrate that your approach provides an equivalent or higher standard of protection, and you will need documentation to support that position.

We suggest a documented gap analysis against each Code that applies to your operations, completed this quarter. Where your systems depart from a Code, businesses should record the rationale and the evidence that your alternative approach meets or exceeds the standard.

Psychosocial risk

Psychosocial risk remains a headline priority, and the supporting data explains why. SafeWork NSW received more than 2,200 requests for service and over 190 incident notifications relating to psychosocial hazards in the past 12 months.

The regulator's focus for 2026-27 falls in two areas.

Risk factors leading to harmful behaviours

This includes bullying and harassment, with attention on high-risk workplaces and occupations.

Preventing violence and aggression towards frontline and customer-facing workers

This has been flagged as a specific sub-priority. Organisations in health, education, retail, hospitality, community services and government should take particular note.

In our experience, the gap for most organisations is not intent but evidence. Policies, values statements and employee assistance programs are valuable, but they do not constitute a psychosocial risk management system, and they will not satisfy an inspector on their own.

Note: The Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work Code of Practice is now the enforceable benchmark in NSW.

A defensible system involves identifying hazards through consultation, surveys and incident data, assessing and prioritising those hazards, implementing controls at the source of the risk rather than relying on individual coping strategies, and reviewing controls as the organisation changes. It also requires leaders and managers who are trained to recognise psychosocial hazards and respond to reports early. Effective risk management requires capability and capacity, at all levels, across operational teams and support functions.

Falls from heights

Falls from heights remains the leading cause of traumatic injury in NSW workplaces, with over 600 incidents and five fatalities reported in the past 12 months. SafeWork NSW will maintain its focus on residential construction and will extend its attention across the construction supply chain, including officers, principal contractors and supervisors.

Businesses that engage contractors should note that their duties extend beyond induction. The regulator expects evidence of capability across the chain, which means verifying that contractors' safe work method statements reflect actual practice rather than sitting in a file.

Hazardous substances

The focus here is exposure to crystalline silica, particularly in tunnelling and infrastructure projects, and asbestos in construction. In the past 12 months, inspectors issued more than 145 silica-related notices and received over 45 reports of silicosis cases.

Businesses with workers engaged in high-risk crystalline silica processing work should confirm strict compliance with the notification requirements of the Silica Worker Register, which commenced on 1 October 2025. This is an area where the regulator is actively checking records, and gaps are straightforward for an inspector to identify.

Mobile plant, vehicles and fixed machinery

Preventing injury from mobile plant, vehicle rollover and access to moving parts of machinery remains a priority, with agriculture, construction and manufacturing named as focus industries. The regulator was notified of over 500 incidents and eight fatalities related to mobile plant in the past year. Traffic management, exclusion zones, guarding and operator competency should all be reviewed against current practice.

Across all four priorities, the Statement reinforces three expectations that apply to every duty holder.

The first is genuine consultation with workers about WHS risks and decisions that affect their health and safety. You must be able to show how that consultation happened. Effective consultation has a visible loop. 

The second is ensuring WHS initiatives are appropriate for groups at higher risk of harm, including apprentices, young workers, migrant workers and culturally and linguistically diverse workers. Training and guidance for these groups should be short, practical and delivered in plain language, with comprehension confirmed rather than assumed. For HR teams, this touches recruitment, induction, supervision and training design.

The third is compliance with the now enforceable Codes of Practice. As covered above, this is the structural change of 2026-27. It converts the other two expectations from good practice into measurable standards, because the relevant Codes describe what adequate consultation and risk management look like in concrete terms.

The common thread is evidence. Each of these expectations is easy to claim and easy for an inspector to disprove, which is precisely why they feature in the Statement.

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Tip: You can download the full 2026-27 Regulatory Statement from the SafeWork NSW website. Map each priority against your current risk register to see where your gaps are before an inspector does.

Key takeaways

Employers in construction, agriculture and manufacturing appear across multiple priority areas and should expect increased regulatory interest this financial year. For all other organisations, the psychosocial hazards Code represents the most immediate compliance exposure, particularly for those with frontline or customer-facing workforces.

The consistent theme of the Statement is documentation. Consultation records, risk registers, gap analyses and training records are the evidence base the regulator will test. Organisations that can produce them are well placed. Organisations that cannot should treat this Statement as the prompt to close the gap while it remains inexpensive to do so.

How Actevate can help

Actevate works with NSW employers to build practical psychosocial risk management systems that meet the enforceable Code of Practice. Our training gives leaders, HR teams and WHS professionals the capability to identify psychosocial hazards, consult effectively and respond to issues with confidence.

If the 2026-27 Statement has raised questions about where your organisation stands, contact us to discuss a psychosocial risk gap assessment or leadership training for your team.

Info: Actevate delivers psychosocial risk training for leaders, HR and WHS teams. See our mental health training programs.

What Is Resilience?

Search the word "resilience" online and you will find millions of explanations. But what does resilience actually mean, why is it important to you, and how can you benefit from resilience training?

We all respond differently to setbacks, failure and trauma. Some people seem to bounce back quickly, while others get caught in a downward spiral of negative thinking. We all know that person: the one who keeps going after every setback, the one who seems to have "Psychological Teflon". Research suggests this is the effect of resilience (1).

At its core, resilience is the ability to bounce back from adversity. It is the capacity to find perspective, and even opportunity, in a difficult or challenging situation. In the modern workplace, resilience helps us navigate constant change, hybrid work pressures, rapid technology shifts including AI, competing priorities and growing workloads.

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Why Is Resilience Important?

Beyond the buzz, evidence shows that people with high resilience have a more balanced outlook on life and believe they can learn from mistakes and challenges. Resilient individuals handle adversity better and rebuild more effectively after major life events such as job loss, financial pressure, relationship breakdown or the death of a loved one.

In everyday life, put simply, resilience builds happiness. It helps us make the most of the challenges we face. Resilience will not prevent difficulties, but it prepares us to deal with them more effectively. You may not realise it, but resilience shapes how we respond in almost every situation. There are probably people in your life or workplace who are juggling multiple stressors yet still show up each day with a smile.

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The Cost of Low Resilience in the Workplace

The effects of a non-resilient workplace can be far-reaching. Low levels of resilience have been associated with:

• Increased absenteeism
• Higher accident rates and workers compensation claims
• Reduced morale
• Poor workplace relationships
• Reduced output and performance
• Increased staff turnover

After years of disruption, from the pandemic to economic uncertainty and the rise of AI in the workplace, burnout and change fatigue are at record levels. Being able to identify stressors, and understand the effect they have on you and the people around you, has never been more important. With all of the above creating potentially toxic effects across an organisation, building a culture of resilience through resilience training should be a no-brainer for every employer.

Can Resilience Be Taught?

Some people are naturally more resilient than others, but the evidence is clear: resilience can be learned. Resilience training provides real-world strategies and techniques that help you build your "resilience bank". That way, when a challenge inevitably comes your way, you will have effective tools ready to support you.

Key Takeaways

Resilience is not an extraordinary quality. It is ordinary, attainable and demonstrated by everyday people all around us. But resilience is an active process. We need to keep working on it, for ourselves and for a happy, mentally healthy workforce.