The Missing Link – Regulating Occupational Health and Safety Support

Abstract

This paper examines the need for Australian workplaces to have, or to have access to, sufficient occupational health and safety (OHS) knowledge, capability and specialised services to be able to fulfil their legal responsibilities and to effectively protect the health, safety and welfare of people at work. The paper is about the role, in all its diversity, of the providers of OHS ‘know-how’ and expertise, who go by an equally diverse range of names. As generalist OHS practitioners they are OHS ‘advisers’, ‘officers’, ‘coordinators’, ‘managers’ or ‘consultants’; as integrated services they are ‘occupational health (and safety) services’ or ‘units’, ‘preventive services’ or ‘OHS support’; and as specialist OHS professionals they are ergonomists, occupational hygienists, safety scientists or engineers, occupational physicians, occupational health nurses, occupational psychologists, occupational physiotherapists and occupational therapists. By whatever title, and the names are not mutually exclusive, this paper is concerned with providing access to OHS support, as well as the role and functions, organisation and funding, professional competence, quality and effectiveness of this support.1