Everybody at work has a part to play in ensuring that work is done in a healthy and safe way. While employers have duties to ensure a safe working environment for employees, employees also have a role in ensuring their own health and safety, and that of people around them.

The Act places a duty on employees to take those steps that are reasonably practicable to:

• ensure their own health and safety; and
• ensure that nothing they do harms any other person.

Flowing from this general responsibility, employees have specific responsibilities to:

• take all practicable steps to use protective equipment and to wear protective clothing provided by the employer or by the employee him or herself
• not undertake work which is unsafe or which involves unsafe practices
• make unsafe work situations safe or, if they cannot, inform their supervisor or manager
• know about and follow their workplace's health and safety practices and procedures, including reporting of work-related accidents, illnesses and injuries, and hazards
• co-operate with the monitoring of workplace hazards and employees' health
• comply with any improvement and prohibition notices issued for their workplace.

Go to

• Definition of all practicable steps
• Definition of employee
• Hazard identification and management
• Protective clothing and equipment
• Right to refuse dangerous work
• What employees can expect of employers
• Fact sheet: The Right to Refuse Dangerous Work pdf file [size: 30KB]