Warning – monitoring = surveillance!
NSW employers are already familiar with the concept of managing risks to health and safety and the need to follow a risk management process under WHS laws.
Those laws include an express obligation to “ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable . . . that the health of workers and the conditions at the workplace are monitored for the purpose of preventing illness or injury of workers arising from the conduct of the business or undertaking…”¹ under the employer’s primary duty of care.
What is perhaps not as well known by NSW employers is that ‘monitoring’ is an activity that falls within the definition of surveillance under NSW’s workplace surveillance laws and that those workplace surveillance laws must be followed by all NSW employers, regardless of what the WHS laws say.
When it comes to managing psychosocial risks, the WHS laws list ‘workplace interactions or behaviours’ as a psychosocial hazard².
Also, when it comes to determining which control measures to implement, a PCBU (person conducting a business or undertaking) is required to take certain matters into account, such as:
the duration, frequency and severity of the exposure of workers and other persons to the psychosocial hazards,
how the psychosocial hazards may interact or combine,
the design of work, including job demands and tasks,
the systems of work, including how work is managed, organised and supported, and
the design and layout, and environmental conditions, of the workplace.
So, when it comes to properly managing psychosocial risks in the workplace, a PCBU has to be particularly vigilant about monitoring the health of workers and conditions at the workplace.
Given that ‘monitoring’ is a form of workplace surveillance, it is important for NSW employers to both understand and know how to comply with workplace surveillance laws.
We have created the following articles to help you do that:
¹Section 19(3)(g), WHS Act 2011.
²Clause 55A, WHS Regulation 2016.