Hi Renata – My workplace has announced that a business restructure has resulted in the need for redundancies. Should management consult with HSRs about this process?
Yes – to the extent that the restructure may affect the health and safety of employees it is reasonable to expect safety consultation prior to an organisational restructure or redundancy process.
The psychosocial hazards created by poorly managed restructure or redundancy process are many (e.g. poor organisational change management, poor support, poor workplace relationships) and the process can also increase the likelihood and severity of other hazards.
It’s not just about the process, when restructuring work or reducing headcount the employer has a duty to ensure that the expectations and workloads for the new roles are so far as is reasonably practicable safe and without risks to health (e.g. high workloads are another recognised psychosocial hazard). If you have concerns that the proposal is unsafe you should be able to raise them before a final decision has been made.
Your employer has a duty to provide a safe workplace under s.21 of the OHS Act 2004. The new Occupational Health and Safety (Psychological Health) Regulations 2025 also require your employer to proactively identify, eliminate or mitigate psychosocial hazards, and to control identified hazards using a modified Hierarchy of Controls.
In managing the safety of the workplace your employer has a duty at s.35 of the OHS Act to consult with employees when proposing changes, that may affect the health or safety of employees, to the workplace or the conduct of the work performed at such a workplace. It is likely that there is also a clause in your Enterprise Agreement or Award requiring consultation prior to change, relevant to the Fair Work Act.
Speak with your DWG members and the other HSRs at your workplace to develop a plan to address this situation. Request that your employer consult as early as possible prior to decisions being made – you can formalise your request using our Consultation Email template. WorkSafe’s publication Guide to Part 7 - Employee representation handbook for workplaces includes important information for your employer about what consultation with HSRs should look and sound like.
As part of your consultation, we recommend that you ask your employer to conduct a risk assessment of both the impact that proposed redundancies will have on workers in the remaining roles and the process they are using to implement redundancies to identify potential hazards – WorkSafe has Psychosocial risk assessment tools and the Compliance Code: Psychological Health to guide employers. You and your HSR colleagues can also conduct your own risk assessment based on consultation with your DWG members. Also, use our Prevention Plan for Psychosocial Hazards - OHS Reps to develop a plan to mitigate potential harm – this form has been designed to ensure that consultation is non-negotiable and at the heart of every step of the risk management process.
Should your employer refuse to consult, you have the power to issue a PIN for a breach of s.35 – we recommend that you seek the support of your union organiser through this process.
If you have any questions about OHS we encourage to fill out an Ask Renata query and one of our officials will get back to you shortly. Alternatively give Ask Renatabot a try!