Work health and safety policy template
Most small business safety policies stop at wet floors and knives. The duty covers psychological harm too, and the hazards behind it are things a roster creates: long hours, low control, no support, isolated work.
| Section | What the policy says |
|---|---|
| Purpose | To set out how this business keeps people safe at work, and what each of us has to do about it. |
| Who it applies to | Everybody who works here and everybody affected by the work, including employees, casuals, apprentices, contractors, volunteers, delivery drivers and customers on the premises. |
| What the business commits to | To provide and maintain a workplace and equipment that are safe, so far as is reasonably practicable. To give the information, training, instruction and supervision people need. To consult on things that affect health and safety, and to act on what is raised. |
| What everybody here has to do | Take reasonable care of your own health and safety and of anybody affected by what you do. Follow the instructions and training you have been given. Report hazards, injuries and near misses. |
| Physical hazards in this workplace | Wet and slippery floors, hot surfaces and liquids, knives and slicers, the coffee machine and its steam, lifting deliveries and milk crates, chemicals used for cleaning, and the walk to the car after a late close. |
| Psychosocial hazards | Anything that could cause psychological harm, which the law treats as a hazard like any other. Here that means: high job demands at peak times, low control over hours, poor support on a shift, unclear roles, working alone, and harmful behaviour including bullying, harassment and aggression from customers. |
| Reporting a hazard | Tell the manager on duty as soon as you see it, and write it in the hazard book behind the office door. You do not need to know the fix to report it. |
| Reporting an injury or incident | Tell the manager on duty straight away, however small it looks. The manager records it the same day. Anything serious is also reported to the work health and safety regulator as the law requires. |
| First aid | A kit is kept behind the coffee machine and is checked monthly. The trained first aiders are listed on the noticeboard. |
| Emergencies | The evacuation plan is on the noticeboard by the back door. The meeting point is the car park opposite. We walk through it twice a year. |
| Consultation | Health and safety is a standing item at the monthly team meeting. Anybody can raise something at any time and does not have to wait for the meeting. |
| Training | Safety is part of the first shift for every new person, and is repeated whenever equipment or a process changes. |
| Contractors and visitors | Contractors are told the hazards here before they start and follow this policy while on site. We ask for their own safe work procedures for anything we do not do ourselves. |
| Review date | Reviewed each year in March, and after any notifiable incident. |
What is in the file
- Template, blank, with each section down the side and room for the answer.
- Example, the same sheet filled in for Harbourside Coffee.
- How to use, with the steps and the mistakes below.
How to fill it in
- Replace the hazard list with a walk around your own workplace, not a generic list. The specific ones are what make a policy usable.
- Keep the psychosocial section. Work health and safety law requires those risks to be eliminated or minimised so far as is reasonably practicable, and a policy without them is half a policy.
- Name where the hazard book, the first aid kit and the evacuation plan actually are.
- Find your state or territory regulator, since it enforces the law and sets what has to be notified.
Common mistakes
- A policy about slips and knives only, in a workplace where the real harm is coming from how the roster runs
- A hazard book nobody has written in for a year, treated as evidence that nothing has gone wrong
- Waiting for an injury to report an incident, when near misses are the cheap warning
What changes by trade
The law behind this document is the same wherever you trade, so the wording above is written once. What changes is what the trade puts in front of it.
| Cafes and restaurants | Burns, knives and wet floors are the obvious ones. Peak demand with nobody to hand over to is the one that gets left out, and it is a hazard the roster creates. rostering a cafe |
| Pubs and clubs | Aggression from intoxicated patrons and late finishes are both named hazards. Add how staff get home after a 1am close, because that is part of the work. rostering late trade |
| Cleaning | Chemicals, lone work and unfamiliar premises. Add the safety data sheets for what your staff actually use and say where they are kept on each site. rostering a cleaning run |
| Disability and home care | Transfers, manual handling and working alone in a home you do not control. Add what a worker does when the home itself is unsafe, including leaving. rostering disability support |
| Security | Remote or isolated work is a hazard in its own right. Add a check in schedule with the operations centre and say what happens when a guard misses one. rostering a security business |
| Trades | Sites you do not control, heights and plant. Add how a job is checked before work starts and who can stop it. rostering a trades crew |
Sources
The official pages this wording was read against, on 22 September 2026.
When a spreadsheet stops being enough
Several psychosocial hazards are built by a roster: long stretches without a break, a late close done alone, a week published too late to plan around. Roster Flow makes those visible while the week is still being built, which is the only point at which they are cheap to fix.
Questions
What is on the work health and safety policy template?
14 sections down the side, running from purpose to review date. The example beside them is filled in for Harbourside Coffee: the primary duty, hazards, incidents and the psychosocial risks that get left out.
Does the work health and safety policy template work anything out for you?
No. It is a document with 14 sections to answer in your own words, not a calculator. Nothing on it is a formula.
Can I use the work health and safety policy template in Google Sheets?
Yes. Open work-health-and-safety-policy.xlsx from Google Drive, or use File, then Import, then Upload with work-health-and-safety-policy.csv. The document and its example come across either way.
Is the wording in the work health and safety policy template ready to use as it is?
The work health and safety policy template is a starting point for Harbourside Coffee or any business like it, to adapt rather than sign. The wording was checked against the official sources on 22 September 2026, it is not legal advice, and it has not been through a workplace relations professional.