Your first steps to a safe business

Our people can help you

WorkSafe is committed to helping small to medium-sized businesses understand their health and safety responsibilities, with our:

Helpline: as your first point of contact for WorkSafe Tasmania, our Helpline Inspectors can provide a quick response to your questions about safety, workers compensation, long service leave or dangerous goods
Advisory Service: our Advisors can visit your workplace for free, with a toolkit to get you started with safety management
Better Work Tasmania: this program provides free forums to improve work health and safety performance and better return to work outcomes
Workplace Issues magazine: delivering practical safety, workers compensation and workplace wellbeing guidance to your letterbox or inbox
monthly safety spotlight e-newsletters: highlighting a different hazard or safety management topic each month, with solutions and practical how-tos.

Our online resources can help you

WorkSafe has plenty of online information. We recommend you start with:

Getting your safety systems right: explains the whys and hows of safety policies and procedures, inducting and training your workers, and more
Managing people in your workplace: explains how to manage the safety of your workers, contractors, volunteers, new workers and more
Safety hazards and solutions A-Z: covers common hazards and workplace issues, with practical solutions for how to manage them.

We also have guides and sample tools that can help you with safety, wellbeing and complying with the laws. Find the full list in Resources below.

Your responsibilities

As a business owner, you’re legally responsible for implementing health and safety practices in your workplace as soon as you start your business. You must make sure your business doesn’t create health and safety problems for your workers, contractors, volunteers, visitors, customers or the public.

Creating a safe work environment is critical to the long-term success of your business. It can:

reduce injury and illness in the workplace
reduce the costs of injury and workers compensation
ensure you meet your legal obligations and responsibilities for your workers
help you retain staff
maximise the productivity of your workers.

Before you employ anyone, you must have a workers compensation insurance policy.

Go to Workers compensation

Other government business resources

If you’re new to business we recommend you visit these websites as a starting point:

Business Tasmania is aimed at Tasmanian small business. Its online resources can guide small business though the start-up phase and help you manage licences, tax, finances, staff, customers and suppliers, and more. It can even help if you’re an established business
the Australian Government’s Business website pulls together information from many government sites in one central site. Use its guided search to find targeted information for your business.

Your employer association or local chamber of commerce may also be able to provide safety information and support. A good starting point is the Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

For wages and conditions in the private sector you should contact the Fair Work Ombudsman on 13 13 94.

The Australian Taxation Office can help you with questions about tax and superannuation for your workers.