There's no real answer to this, as the size of a Designated Work Group (DWG) depends on a number of work-related and worksite specific factors. The most important things to remember are that the Act says that the manner of grouping employees should be in a way that:
- best and most conveniently enables the interests of those employees relating to occupational health and safety to be represented and safeguarded; and
- best takes account of the need for a health and safety representative for the designated work group or groups to be accessible to each member of the group.
An HSR recently wrote in to 'Ask Renata' saying that inspecting his DWG, which has over 200 people in it, took over four hours to do – the response: 'That's probably too big!'
Last updated August 2025