An employee has told Work Therapy that an occupational health and safety representative at their workplace has been repeatedly scolding staff for "non-compliance", interrupting tasks, talking over colleagues and at times insulting people.
Those behaviours have prompted a worry that safety work will be treated as a chore or actively ignored by staff who resent the rep’s manner, rather than taken seriously on its merits.
The correspondent said human resources are not involved. They reckon HR could deal with the problem, but for reasons they did not explain the team has been absent and colleagues feel they are on their own.
Dr Jonathan Sale, a senior lecturer in human resources management at Adelaide University, warned that Australian safety law is based on the Robens model, which emphasises self-regulation and shared responsibility for health and safety in the workplace.
Workers and others must be "provided the highest level of protection as reasonably practicable".
Sale explained that what is "reasonably practicable" is judged objectively and contains two steps: first, identify what can be done to ensure health and safety in the circumstances; second, decide whether it is reasonable in those circumstances to do everything that is possible.
Applied to the workplace described by the correspondent, Sale said it seemed possible the rep was trying to do "all that is possible", but at times failing to meet the requirement to act reasonably in the situation. He also cautioned that the OH&S coordinator’s role is to make policy and rules work, and does not confer control or supervision over everyone.
Sale used plain language: OH&S officers do not have a "roving commission" to act as they please. He suggested one explanation for abrasive behaviour is that the representative feels overburdened and unsupported, especially when HR provides no backup.
As a practical test, Sale recommended broadening responsibility for OH&S rather than seeking to remove the rep. Authority can be officially spread wider, more voices can be included, and the rep may keep the role if they want to, he said.
For employees considering this route, the advice is to take the idea to the organisation’s leadership team framed as a way to distribute the load of a demanding job, not as a punishment for a difficult person. That approach aims to protect workplace morale while keeping safety standards in place.
The exchange highlights two recurring workplace risks: the potential for health and safety duties to create interpersonal friction when roles and support are unclear, and the gap that appears when HR is absent from conflict resolution. Clear role definitions and shared responsibility offer a way for managers to address both problems without undermining safety work, according to Sale.
