Officer Duties and Due Diligence: The Safety Manager Is Not Your Legal Airbag

If your officer due diligence system can be summarised as “we have a safety manager”, you do not have a due diligence system. You have a safety manager.In this episode of The Real Risk Podcast, I look at what officer duties actually require, who may be considered an officer, and why WHS responsibilities cannot simply be pushed down the organisational chart.We work through the practical elements of due diligence under the model WHS framework, including keeping current WHS knowledge, understanding operations and material risks, providing appropriate resources and processes, receiving and responding to safety information, maintaining compliance processes and, critically, verifying that those systems actually work.I also look at the different position in Victoria, where officer liability operates through the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 rather than the standalone section 27 duty used under the model WHS laws.The episode draws on regulator experience, real prosecutions and practical examples involving plant guarding, fatigue, defective equipment, resourcing decisions and officer accountability. We also examine what useful WHS information should reach officers, what an inspector or prosecutor may look for after a serious incident, and why a green dashboard is not evidence that critical controls are functioning.The central point is simple. Officers can rely on competent WHS professionals, managers and specialists for advice, but reliance is not abdication. The safety manager can advise, investigate, audit and escalate. They cannot exercise an officer’s personal duty for them.Due diligence needs to be visible in decisions, resources, questioning, verification and evidence before something goes wrong, not reconstructed afterwards because a regulator has started asking uncomfortable questions.Safety Jon: The Real Risk PodcastReal safety. No theatre.