Australian Work Health and Safety Principles
Employer and worker duties, the Hazardous Manual Tasks Code of Practice, consultation and reporting — including how the duties reach people who work from home.
Last reviewed September 2026 · Part of Manual Handling Training for Office and General Workplace Staff
Key learning points
- Describe the general duties of employers (PCBUs) and workers
- Understand that WHS duties extend to home-based work
- Explain what the Hazardous Manual Tasks Code of Practice is and how ergonomics fits in
- Understand consultation, health and safety representatives and reporting
- Recognise that requirements can differ between jurisdictions and workplaces
The framework
Most Australian states and territories have adopted the model Work Health and Safety Act and Regulations developed by Safe Work Australia. Victoria operates under its own Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004, which uses different terminology — employer rather than PCBU, for example — but imposes very similar duties. Each jurisdiction has a regulator: SafeWork NSW, WorkSafe Victoria, Workplace Health and Safety Queensland, WorkSafe WA, SafeWork SA, WorkSafe Tasmania, WorkSafe ACT and NT WorkSafe. Commonwealth government agencies fall under Comcare.
Under the model laws the organisation running the business — the person conducting a business or undertaking, or PCBU — holds the primary duty of care. Officers such as directors and executives must exercise due diligence. Workers hold duties too. Nobody in the building is exempt because they sit at a desk.
What an employer or PCBU is generally expected to do
- Provide and maintain a working environment that is safe, so far as is reasonably practicable
- Identify hazardous manual tasks — including sustained workstation postures — and control the risk
- Provide suitable equipment such as adjustable chairs, monitor arms, trolleys and platform steps, and keep it maintained
- Provide information, training, instruction and supervision
- Consult workers about health and safety matters that affect them
- Have systems for reporting hazards, incidents, discomfort and equipment faults
- Extend all of the above to workers who work from home or other remote locations
What a worker is generally expected to do
- Take reasonable care for their own health and safety
- Take reasonable care that their actions do not harm others, including colleagues, visitors and contractors
- Comply with reasonable instructions given by the employer
- Co-operate with reasonable workplace policies and procedures
- Use equipment provided — trolleys, steps, adjustable furniture — rather than working around it
- Report hazards, incidents, near misses, early discomfort and faulty equipment
Working from home
A worker's home becomes a workplace when work is done there, and the employer's duty applies so far as is reasonably practicable. In practice this usually means a workstation self-assessment checklist, guidance on set-up, provision or reimbursement of some equipment, and a way to report problems. The worker's duty applies too: follow the guidance you are given, use the equipment provided and tell your employer when your set-up is causing discomfort rather than putting up with it.
Follow your workplace
Workers should always follow their employer's workplace-specific policies, procedures and instructions. Where this course and your workplace procedure differ, follow your workplace procedure and raise the difference with your manager or health and safety representative.
The Code of Practice and ergonomics
Safe Work Australia publishes the model Code of Practice: Hazardous Manual Tasks, and most jurisdictions have adopted a version of it. It is not law in itself, but it describes a way of meeting the law, and a court or regulator may use it as evidence of what was reasonably practicable. It covers identifying hazardous manual tasks, assessing risk factors, controlling risk through the hierarchy of controls and reviewing controls — the process this course follows.
Ergonomics — fitting the work, the workstation and the equipment to the person — is not a separate discipline from manual task risk management. It is the part of manual task risk management that deals with posture, repetition and workstation design. A workstation assessment is a manual task risk assessment for the task of working at a desk.
Consultation, HSRs and reporting
Consultation means workers get a genuine say in decisions that affect their safety: a new office fit-out, a hot-desking policy, the choice of chairs, where the archive room goes. The people doing the work notice the problems first — the trolley with the seized castor, the storeroom shelf nobody can reach, the meeting room that takes forty minutes to set up alone. Health and safety representatives (HSRs), elected by workers, can raise issues formally, and health and safety committees exist in many larger organisations. Raising a concern is part of the system, not a complaint about a colleague.
Requirements differ
Work health and safety requirements, regulators and codes of practice differ between Australian states and territories, and between employers and individual workplaces. This course provides general education only and is not legal advice about your circumstances.
Practical scenario
Scenario: the kitchen table
A policy analyst has worked from home three days a week for two years, using a laptop at the kitchen table on a dining chair. They have developed neck and shoulder pain. Their employer has a working-from-home checklist, but they never filled it in because they assumed it was only for people with a proper home office.
Whose responsibility is this, and what should happen now?
Reveal the explanation
Both parties hold duties. The employer must manage the risk of home-based work so far as is reasonably practicable, which the checklist is part of — but a checklist only works if it is completed and followed up. The worker should report the discomfort now, complete the assessment and ask what equipment the organisation provides, which is often a laptop stand, external keyboard and mouse, and sometimes a chair or monitor. Two years of unreported pain is exactly what early reporting is meant to prevent.
Practical scenario
Scenario: the office move nobody was asked about
A team is told on Thursday that they are moving floors on Monday and should pack their desks into crates by Friday evening. The crates will be moved by a removalist, but the archive boxes under each desk 'can just be carried down by the team'.
What is missing here?
Reveal the explanation
Consultation and planning. Workers were not consulted about a change that creates manual tasks, and the archive boxes — the heaviest items — were left out of the removalist's scope. The right response is to raise it with the manager or HSR immediately: the boxes should go in the removalist's scope or on trolleys with the lift booked, not be carried down by staff who were never asked.
Knowledge check
These questions are for your own learning. They are not part of the final assessment.
1. Which of the following is a worker's duty under Australian WHS principles?
Workers must take reasonable care for themselves and others and co-operate with reasonable policies and instructions. Providing equipment and procedures is the employer's duty.
2. An employee works from home three days a week. Which statement is correct?
A home becomes a workplace when work is done there. Both the employer's and the worker's duties continue to apply.
3. What is the model Code of Practice: Hazardous Manual Tasks?
The Code is guidance on meeting the law rather than law itself, and it contains no weight limit. Victoria has its own Act but similar guidance.
4. How does ergonomics relate to manual task risk management in an office?
A workstation assessment is a manual task risk assessment for the task of working at a desk. The two are not separate disciplines.
Sources and further reading
The framework this module summarises, from the regulators themselves. Your workplace procedures always take precedence.
- Safe Work Australia — Model Code of Practice: Hazardous manual tasks — The national code the state and territory regulators adopt or mirror.
- Safe Work Australia — Lifting, pushing and pulling (manual tasks)
- Safe Work Australia — Model WHS laws