Work health and safety

No. AI may assist with three tasks only: identifying candidate hazards, synthesising de-identified survey data into themes, and drafting the written assessment with rating fields left blank. Under Australian WHS law a competent person must determine the risk rating, select the controls, and sign off. The model never rates or signs. From AI-Assisted Psychosocial Risk Assessment: A WHS Governance Workflow That Keeps the Sign-Off Human

Yes, as a drafting tool using verified sources. AI can structure objectives, scenarios, questions, facilitator notes and plain-language explanations. A competent person must check the content against the current work, risks, controls, equipment, jurisdiction and workforce before delivery. From AI Can Draft WHS Training. It Cannot Verify Competence.

No. The incident may reveal a control, supervision, equipment or system-of-work failure rather than a knowledge gap. A competent person investigates, consults workers, reviews controls and decides what training, instruction, supervision or other action is required. From AI Can Draft WHS Training. It Cannot Verify Competence.

No. AI must never auto-classify whether an event is notifiable under sections 35 to 39 of the model WHS Act. The notification duty is immediate and strict, so an automated recommendation can reliably produce a breach. The safe pattern is the inverse: AI prepares the facts so a named competent person decides faster, leaving the decision field blank. From AI for Incident Analysis and Leading Indicators: A Human-in-the-Loop WHS Playbook

No. AI can compare supplied text and flag gaps for review, but it lacks the full workplace context and cannot make a legal or professional determination. A competent person must assess the plan against the current law, the hazards, the workforce, the location and regulator guidance. From AI Can Stress-Test an Emergency Plan. It Cannot Run the Drill.

AI can draft the consultation plan, structure the risk assessment, and turn workshop notes into a tidy first draft. It cannot consult, because consultation is a two-way exchange with the people who do the work. It cannot set the risk rating or decide which controls are reasonably practicable, and it cannot sign off or carry the accountability. Those stay with a competent person. From Rolling Out AI Is a Workplace Change: Consult and Risk-Assess First

No. AI can produce a formatted first draft, but a SWMS for high-risk construction work must take account of the actual workplace under regulation 299(3) and be built in consultation with the workers who will do the work. A model has never seen your site and cannot hold the toolbox talk, so the draft is not yet lawful until a competent person makes it true. From AI Can Draft a SWMS in Seconds. The Site Walk and the Consultation Cannot Be Automated.

Yes. A camera trained on a person, a cab-facing fatigue camera, or a body-tracking wearable is a form of monitoring, and Comcare lists intrusive surveillance among the psychosocial hazards a PCBU must manage under regulations 55A to 55D. Because health in the WHS Act means physical and psychological health, the same primary duty covers it, supported by consultation. From An AI Safety Control Is Still Just a Control. The Duty to Verify It Stays With You.

Yes, where the tool changes how people are allocated work, measured, or monitored. The consultation is not a launch email. It is a genuine opportunity for affected workers and their health and safety representatives to influence the decision before it is made, as required by the model framework consultation provisions in sections 47 to 49. From Rolling Out AI Is a Workplace Change: Consult and Risk-Assess First

Yes, so far as is reasonably practicable. Sections 47 to 49 of the WHS Act require consultation with directly affected workers when identifying hazards, deciding on controls, and proposing changes affecting health or safety. Consultation must occur before the decision is finalised, not after deployment, so worker views can shape the design. From AI Work Allocation and Psychosocial Risk: The WHS Duty NSW Teams Already Hold

A tabletop can test decision logic and expose assumptions, but it may not test physical evacuation, alarm audibility, equipment, access or worker behaviour. The appropriate testing program depends on the workplace and is set by a competent person using current jurisdictional guidance, and regulation 43 requires the plan to state the frequency of testing. From AI Can Stress-Test an Emergency Plan. It Cannot Run the Drill.

No. An AI safety system is a control measure, not a transfer of duty. Safe Work Australia is explicit that a PCBU cannot contract out of their responsibility and a duty cannot be transferred to another person. The vendor has its own upstream duty over the product, but that sits alongside yours. Verifying the system works on your site is you discharging your duty. From An AI Safety Control Is Still Just a Control. The Duty to Verify It Stays With You.

No. A quiz can provide evidence of knowledge or recall. Competence may require practical demonstration, observation, formal assessment, licence evidence or supervised performance appropriate to the task. A competent person selects the method and decides whether the evidence is sufficient. From AI Can Draft WHS Training. It Cannot Verify Competence.

Yes. Section 19 of the WHS Act 2011 (NSW) defines health to include psychological health and requires safe systems of work. An AI tool that allocates, paces or monitors work is a system of work, so the duty applies to the psychosocial risks it creates, the same as any other aspect of work design. From AI Work Allocation and Psychosocial Risk: The WHS Duty NSW Teams Already Hold

No. NSW Parliament passed an amendment introducing an express digital work systems duty, but its operative provisions commence on a day to be appointed by proclamation, which has not yet occurred. Until then, manage AI-related psychosocial risk under the existing duties in the WHS Act and the WHS Regulation, which already apply. From AI Work Allocation and Psychosocial Risk: The WHS Duty NSW Teams Already Hold

AI reads across many de-identified incident records and proposes patterns a human would take hours to assemble. Three supported uses hold up: de-identified trend and leading-indicator analysis, ICAM-style causal support for a single incident, and drafting investigation summaries with blanks. The output is a hypothesis, never a finding, and a competent person tests and decides. From AI for Incident Analysis and Leading Indicators: A Human-in-the-Loop WHS Playbook

Set the boundary in writing in your project instructions and prompts so every rating field returns blank, marked competent person to determine. If the drafting tool ever returns a populated risk-level column, treat that as a prompt defect, delete it, and put the rating back in human hands. The competent person rates and signs. From AI-Assisted Psychosocial Risk Assessment: A WHS Governance Workflow That Keeps the Sign-Off Human

Test it against your own site conditions, not the vendor demo footage, and probe two failures in opposite directions. The false negative is the dangerous miss, the worker in the zone the system did not flag. The false positive is the nuisance alert that trains everyone to ignore it. Vendor accuracy figures do not close this out. Your own test on your own site does. From An AI Safety Control Is Still Just a Control. The Duty to Verify It Stays With You.

AI proposes candidate contributing factors at the four ICAM levels for a single de-identified incident: absent or failed defences, individual or team actions, task or environmental conditions, and organisational factors. The investigator then tests each factor against the evidence, discards weak ones, and adds what the model missed. The model widens the search; the competent investigator decides what is true. From AI for Incident Analysis and Leading Indicators: A Human-in-the-Loop WHS Playbook

Measure the quality of the exercise and action closure, not the number of scenarios generated. Useful measures include new dependencies identified, participation across shifts, actions supported by evidence, time to close actions and successful verification at the next test. From AI Can Stress-Test an Emergency Plan. It Cannot Run the Drill.

Never paste real personal, claim, health or incident data into a model that is not an approved enterprise instance, and public consumer chatbots do not qualify. Before any export leaves your safety system, strip names, employee IDs, claim numbers, exact dates, and re-identifying free text, replacing them with placeholder tokens such as [EMPLOYEE_NAME], [CLAIM_NUMBER] and [SITE]. From AI for Incident Analysis and Leading Indicators: A Human-in-the-Loop WHS Playbook

Yes. Introducing a system that changes how work is allocated, paced, measured, monitored, or decided is a change to the work. The primary duty of care and the duty to consult workers, which include psychological health, already cover it. NSW has now made the AI case express in statute, and the model WHS jurisdictions, Victoria, and the Comcare scheme reach it through existing duties. From Rolling Out AI Is a Workplace Change: Consult and Risk-Assess First

An approved code under section 274 of the WHS Act is not a standalone offence, but it is admissible in court as evidence of known hazards and reasonably practicable controls. Following the Code is the most defensible position. Departing from it shifts the burden to you to prove your alternative approach was at least as effective. From AI Work Allocation and Psychosocial Risk: The WHS Duty NSW Teams Already Hold

Strip all personal, claim, health, and incident data to placeholder tokens such as EMPLOYEE_NAME, CLAIM_NUMBER, INCIDENT_ID, TEAM, ROLE, SITE, and DATE before anything reaches the model. Aggregate into themes and counts where possible. De-identification is a control you apply at source, not a step the model performs for you. From AI-Assisted Psychosocial Risk Assessment: A WHS Governance Workflow That Keeps the Sign-Off Human

Exclude real employee, incident, client, medical and witness information unless the tool and data pathway are specifically approved. Use placeholders such as [EMPLOYEE_NAME], [TEAM], [SITE], [TASK], [HAZARD], [CONTROL] and [INCIDENT_ID], and de-identify before upload, not after. From AI Can Draft WHS Training. It Cannot Verify Competence.

Do not paste anything that identifies people, the client, or commercially sensitive site detail into a public AI tool while drafting. A SWMS is about the work and the controls, and it does not need names to do its job. Strip identifiers to placeholder tokens before anything reaches the model. From AI Can Draft a SWMS in Seconds. The Site Walk and the Consultation Cannot Be Automated.

For the Commonwealth jurisdiction, regulation 39 of the Work Health and Safety Regulations 2011 requires information, training and instruction provided to a worker to be suitable and adequate having regard to the nature of the work, the risks associated with the work at the time, and the control measures implemented. So far as is reasonably practicable, it must also be provided in a way that is readily understandable. Check the equivalent provision in your own jurisdiction. From AI Can Draft WHS Training. It Cannot Verify Competence.

The Work Health and Safety Amendment (Digital Work Systems) Act 2026, assented on 18 February 2026, defines a digital work system as an algorithm, artificial intelligence, automation, or online platform. It extends the primary duty and adds a new section 21A requiring a PCBU to consider whether work allocation creates excessive workloads, unreasonable performance metrics, excessive monitoring or surveillance, or discriminatory decisions. From Rolling Out AI Is a Workplace Change: Consult and Risk-Assess First

It saves time and adds consistency on the mechanical work: synthesising free-text, mapping to categories, and producing a structured first draft. The auditable trail from de-identified data to a drafted assessment with blank ratings is a governance asset. It does not shortcut the duty, which still rests on the organisation and competent people. From AI-Assisted Psychosocial Risk Assessment: A WHS Governance Workflow That Keeps the Sign-Off Human

Keep out names, contact details, health or disability information, security credentials, detailed access data and sensitive floor plans unless an approved environment and clear authority exist. Use role and site placeholders such as [SITE] and [WARDEN_ROLE] wherever possible, and de-identify before anything enters the model. From AI Can Stress-Test an Emergency Plan. It Cannot Run the Drill.

A leading indicator is a signal that predicts harm before it happens, such as a rising rate of near-misses of a particular type, rather than a lagging indicator like a lost-time injury that records harm after the fact. AI can surface candidate leading indicators across de-identified data for a human analyst to confirm against further evidence. From AI for Incident Analysis and Leading Indicators: A Human-in-the-Loop WHS Playbook

The model can watch, detect and flag tirelessly. It cannot decide what to control, choose where the control sits in the hierarchy, verify it works in your conditions, weigh the surveillance it creates against the harm it prevents, respond to what it flags, or carry the duty when it misses. Those are judgements the law puts on a person and an organisation, not on a sensor. From An AI Safety Control Is Still Just a Control. The Duty to Verify It Stays With You.

AI is genuinely useful for the blank page: laying out the required format, listing standard hazards for a task type so you are less likely to miss one, surfacing candidate controls, and rewriting dense safety language into plain English, which is what regulation 299(3)(b) asks for. Used as a drafting assistant against your own template and site knowledge, it removes the slow part and leaves the judgement to you. From AI Can Draft a SWMS in Seconds. The Site Walk and the Consultation Cannot Be Automated.

The site walk, the consultation, the judgement that a control is adequate, the decision to proceed or stop work under regulation 300, and the signature of the person who carries the duty. AI cannot hold the primary duty of care. That responsibility rests with the person conducting a business or undertaking and its officers, and it does not move to a tool because the tool produced the first draft. From AI Can Draft a SWMS in Seconds. The Site Walk and the Consultation Cannot Be Automated.

Almost every detect-and-alert AI safety product is an administrative control. It does not remove, isolate or engineer out the hazard, it watches and relies on a human noticing the alert and acting in time. Safe Work Australia ranks administrative controls and PPE as the least effective because they rely on human behaviour and supervision, so the tool sits near the bottom where reliability is lowest. From An AI Safety Control Is Still Just a Control. The Duty to Verify It Stays With You.

The Safe Work Australia model Code of Practice (July 2022) is the practical method, sitting over model WHS Regulations 55A to 55D and the section 19 primary duty in the model WHS Act. Adoption varies: NSW took effect 28 May 2021, Comcare covers Commonwealth employers, and Victoria and Western Australia run distinct arrangements. From AI-Assisted Psychosocial Risk Assessment: A WHS Governance Workflow That Keeps the Sign-Off Human

Clauses 55A to 55D of the WHS Regulation 2025 (NSW) define psychosocial hazards and risks and require PCBUs to manage them using the hierarchy of controls in clause 36. Clause 55D lists the matters to weigh, including exposure duration and severity, how hazards combine, and the design and systems of work. From AI Work Allocation and Psychosocial Risk: The WHS Duty NSW Teams Already Hold

The review group should include the competent WHS lead and the people who understand the work, including workers, health and safety representatives, wardens, facilities, shared-site duty holders and emergency services where appropriate. Consultation with workers and HSRs when making and reviewing emergency plans is part of the duty. From AI Can Stress-Test an Emergency Plan. It Cannot Run the Drill.

Regulation 299(3) requires a SWMS to be prepared taking into account circumstances at the workplace and to be readily understandable to the people who use it. A document built from a task description and a training corpus has taken account of no workplace at all. SafeWork NSW states a SWMS must be site-specific, so a generic AI draft is non-compliant by construction until reviewed and amended for the actual site. From AI Can Draft a SWMS in Seconds. The Site Walk and the Consultation Cannot Be Automated.

Because the harms from a badly introduced AI system are mostly psychological, and psychological health is inside the duty. The four risks NSW names map onto recognised psychosocial hazards: workload onto job demands, metrics onto job control, surveillance onto intrusive surveillance, and discriminatory decisions onto organisational justice. Poor change management is itself a recognised hazard. From Rolling Out AI Is a Workplace Change: Consult and Risk-Assess First