Health, safety and wellbeing at work

We want your views on how we can increase the focus on 'health' in work health and safety. If you work in NSW, help us understand your experience so we can create a safer workplace future.

In NSW, employers must follow work health and safety laws to protect workers from injury and illness. As how and where we work changes over time, it’s important we continually improve our approach to workplace health and safety.

SafeWork NSW wants to understand how businesses could adopt an integrated Healthy Work approach, where:

  • work is designed and managed in a way that does not cause harm
  • work has benefits to the physical and psychological health, safety and wellbeing of workers.

Safer and more productive

SafeWork NSW proposes seven principles to guide discussion and inform our future Healthy Work Plan for NSW.

  1. Healthy Work is good for business
  2. Leadership is fundamental to creating Healthy Work
  3. Creation of Healthy Work relies on worker participation
  4. Design work to be healthy
  5. Healthy Work can positively influence lives
  6. A strategic coordinated approach is required to achieve Healthy Work
  7. Healthy Work is built on a foundation of safety.

Share your feedback on the Healthy Work Principles and how we can support you to design Healthy Work.

Tell us what you think

We want to hear from business owners, managers, work health and safety professionals, human resources professionals or anyone interested in improving how we think about health and safety.

You can have your say by completing the survey, sharing an idea, joining a discussion forum, or any combination of these.

Your feedback will help us understand how your industry or organisation could adopt Healthy Work, so our Healthy Work Plan includes a range of people's views.

Thank you for your feedback

This engagement is now closed. We are reviewing all submitted feedback and comments, alongside any other consultation that has taken place as part of this review.

For updates on this engagement please check back here, or sign up to the SafeWork Wrap newsletter for updates.


We want your views on how we can increase the focus on 'health' in work health and safety. If you work in NSW, help us understand your experience so we can create a safer workplace future.

In NSW, employers must follow work health and safety laws to protect workers from injury and illness. As how and where we work changes over time, it’s important we continually improve our approach to workplace health and safety.

SafeWork NSW wants to understand how businesses could adopt an integrated Healthy Work approach, where:

  • work is designed and managed in a way that does not cause harm
  • work has benefits to the physical and psychological health, safety and wellbeing of workers.

Safer and more productive

SafeWork NSW proposes seven principles to guide discussion and inform our future Healthy Work Plan for NSW.

  1. Healthy Work is good for business
  2. Leadership is fundamental to creating Healthy Work
  3. Creation of Healthy Work relies on worker participation
  4. Design work to be healthy
  5. Healthy Work can positively influence lives
  6. A strategic coordinated approach is required to achieve Healthy Work
  7. Healthy Work is built on a foundation of safety.

Share your feedback on the Healthy Work Principles and how we can support you to design Healthy Work.

Tell us what you think

We want to hear from business owners, managers, work health and safety professionals, human resources professionals or anyone interested in improving how we think about health and safety.

You can have your say by completing the survey, sharing an idea, joining a discussion forum, or any combination of these.

Your feedback will help us understand how your industry or organisation could adopt Healthy Work, so our Healthy Work Plan includes a range of people's views.

Thank you for your feedback

This engagement is now closed. We are reviewing all submitted feedback and comments, alongside any other consultation that has taken place as part of this review.

For updates on this engagement please check back here, or sign up to the SafeWork Wrap newsletter for updates.


Share your story: Have you experienced Healthy Work?

Example story: Jack is a plant operator for a medium sized earthmoving business. He has a young family (two pre-school aged children) and was struggling with the regular six-day working week. His wife works part time shiftwork as a nurse and they were finding it hard to get childcare for their children. It was causing stress and financial hardship for the family. 

After raising his concerns with his boss, the business ran a survey and held a couple of focus groups to explore how they could manage the work demands and shifts. Jack’s boss decided to introduce some choice in the work rosters, including different shift times to better suit the team.

Jack changed his work hours to four days of nine-hour shifts, which meant he was able to reduce the days he needed his children to attend pre-school. This saved money and increased quality time with family. It also supported his wife to work on his non-roster days without additional stress or expense. 

Do you have your own story to share about how Healthy Work has positively impacted your physical or psychological health?


Thank you for sharing your story with us.
Consultation has concluded

  • Consulting the workers

    by Karen WB, 4 months ago
    A large warehouse and logistics company reported a very high level of musculoskeletal injury amongst its staff. Supported by their Union, the staff themselves indicated what the problem was: everybody was allocated an individual workload of items to be collected from the warehouse and moved to the delivery bays but once any individual had completed their load, they could go and sit in the rest area, watch TV etc until the end of their shift. In consequence, the younger, stronger, fitter staff could complete their work and have as much as two hours resting whilst some of the older or... Continue reading