Insights
From your first safety hire to a full HSE function, here’s how to shape a team that works, and design roles people stay in.
At a glance
Most organisations build their HSE team one hire at a time, starting with a coordinator or advisor and adding capability as the business and its risks change. The law doesn’t set how many safety people you need, but it does expect leaders to make sure safety is properly resourced.
Resourcing safety is a leadership duty. Hiring a safety professional helps leaders meet that duty, but it doesn’t hand it over.
It’s worth hiring for the work rather than the title. A mismatch between the level you hire and the work you expect is one of the most common reasons a first hire struggles.
Most functions grow in stages, from one person, to a small team with specialist support, to a full function with a line to the board.
The best measures track what the team changes. Leading indicators tell a board far more than injury rates alone.
In this article
Why resourcing safety is a leadership decision
Making your first safety hire
How the HSE team grows from there
Who does what
Qualifications worth asking for
What the market looks like right now
Designing a role people stay in
Who to look for, and how to assess them
Measuring whether your HSE team is working
When a specialist recruiter or contractor makes sense
Common questions
Let’s have a conversation
Why resourcing safety is a leadership decision
The stakes are real. According to Safe Work Australia’s Key Work Health and Safety Statistics Australia 2026, 222 workers died from traumatic injuries at work in 2025, the highest number since 2012, and there were about 147,200 serious workers compensation claims in 2024-25, more than 400 a day.
What the law expects of officers
Under the model Work Health and Safety Act, the business has the primary duty to keep workers and others safe, so far as is reasonably practicable. Directors and senior executives, who the Act calls officers, carry a separate duty of due diligence. One of its six elements is taking reasonable steps to make sure the business ‘has available for use, and uses, appropriate resources and processes to eliminate or minimise risks’, and checking that those resources are in place. Victoria’s Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 reaches a similar place, with officers personally liable where a breach is attributable to their failure to take reasonable care.
Hiring helps, but the duty stays with leadership
The Queensland Government’s guidance on engaging trained safety advisors, written for its own agencies, lists ‘recruiting personnel with appropriate skills, including safety personnel’ and ‘ensuring staffing levels are adequate for safety in operations’ among the ways officers can meet that duty. It’s equally clear that the duty ‘will always remain with the officer and cannot be outsourced or delegated’. The best safety hires are set up to build capability in leaders and line managers rather than to own safety on their behalf. SafeWork NSW’s due diligence self-assessment is a useful way for a leadership team to test where it stands before deciding what to hire.
Whoever you appoint will also support consultation with workers and their health and safety representatives, which Safe Work Australia’s worker representation and participation guide sets out, so it’s worth building that into the role from the start.
Making your first safety hire
For most growing businesses, an advisor is the right first safety hire, although it depends on your risk profile and how mature your systems are. The person you appoint often shapes the system, the culture, and every safety role that follows.
Coordinator, advisor, or manager?
A safety coordinator suits a business that needs strong day-to-day support, such as inductions, inspections, training records, and incident follow-up, with someone more senior setting the direction.
A safety advisor suits a growing business that needs someone to advise managers, run risk assessments, investigate incidents, and keep the system working.
A safety manager makes sense when the system needs building or rebuilding, or the risks are high, as they often are in construction, mining, and heavy industry.
The most common mistake we see early on is appointing at one level while expecting the work of another, such as asking a coordinator to set strategy, or a manager to spend most of the day on paperwork.
Where the role should report
Reporting lines are one of the first decisions in any HSE team structure. Reporting into HR brings safety closer to people issues, which helps with psychosocial risk, while reporting into operations keeps it close to the work. Either can work, as long as the role has a direct line to the leadership team and the authority to influence decisions.
How the HSE team grows from there
The HSE team structure usually changes in a fairly predictable order as a business grows, although the timing depends more on risk than headcount. We look at the numbers in how many safety people your organisation needs, and at common shapes in our guide to HSE team structures.
One person
What it usually looks like: A coordinator or advisor, reporting into HR or operations
What often prompts the next step: New sites, more contractors, or improvement work that keeps slipping
A small team
What it usually looks like: A manager leading advisors, often with an injury management or return to work specialist
What often prompts the next step: Growth across states, a rising claims load, or new obligations
A full function
What it usually looks like: A head of safety, business partners embedded in operations, and specialists alongside
What often prompts the next step: Board-level reporting, complex risk, or a major change program
When one person is carrying it all
A standalone safety role can work well for a while, but most organisations outgrow it.
The signs to watch for
The improvement work you hired them for has quietly stopped
New sites, contracts, or obligations have been added without anyone to share the load
Managers have started routing every safety question to one inbox
Our article on outgrowing a standalone safety role looks at what to consider next.
Adding specialist capability
The second and third hires are often specialists. Injury management is a common one, partly because larger employers must appoint a return to work coordinator, and psychosocial risk is another, now that it’s specifically regulated across Australia. Larger functions then tend to blend a small central team that owns the system with business partners who work alongside operational leaders.
Who does what
Titles vary across industries, so it’s worth describing the work rather than relying on the title. The Australian Institute of Health and Safety’s certification levels offer a helpful lens, describing roles at an operational, a senior, and an executive level.
Coordinator or officer
What the work usually involves: Inductions, inspections, records, and incident follow-up
AIHS level it tends to align with: Certified OHS Practitioner
Advisor
What the work usually involves: Advising managers, risk assessments, and investigations
AIHS level it tends to align with: Certified OHS Practitioner
Business partner
What the work usually involves: Embedded with a business unit, influencing its leaders
AIHS level it tends to align with: Practitioner or Professional
HSE manager
What the work usually involves: Owning the system and strategy, and leading a team
AIHS level it tends to align with: Certified OHS Professional
Head of safety
What the work usually involves: Enterprise-wide governance and board reporting
AIHS level it tends to align with: Chartered OHS Professional
Specialist
What the work usually involves: Injury management, psychosocial risk, hygiene, environment, or audit
AIHS level it tends to align with: Varies
The INSHPO capability framework behind much of this describes practitioners as implementers of strategy and professionals as its designers, which helps when deciding the level a role really needs.
Qualifications worth asking for
Certificate IV in Work Health and Safety is where most people start, and it suits coordinator and many advisor roles.
Diploma of Work Health and Safety is often asked for in manager roles, as we explain in diploma vs Cert IV in WHS.
University qualifications are common at manager level and above, with programs accredited by the Australian OHS Education Accreditation Board.
AIHS certification recognises demonstrated capability. Chartered status, for example, calls for a master’s degree in OHS and more than ten years’ full-time experience, including three at senior OHS management level.
A rigid requirement can rule out people with strong practical experience and transferable skills, so it’s worth deciding which are genuinely essential.
What the market looks like right now
Health and safety is a relatively small profession. At the 2021 Census, Jobs and Skills Australia counted about 20,600 OHS advisers, with a median age of 45 and most working full time.
Role: Average advertised salary
Health and safety coordinator: About $105,000
Health and safety adviser: $120,000 to $140,000
Health and safety manager: $160,000 to $180,000
These SEEK figures, drawn from employers’ advertised salaries and refreshed in October 2026, are a starting point rather than a rule. Pay tends to be highest in remote and regional markets, such as the Northern Territory and regional Western Australia. Jobs and Skills Australia’s 2026 Occupation Shortage List rates work health and safety managers as not in national shortage, which fits what we see. In our experience, generalist advisors are usually easier to find than senior leaders who are comfortable at board level, or specialists in psychosocial risk and injury management. We’ll always give you an honest view of what’s realistic before you begin, and our salary guide will go into more detail.
Designing a role people stay in
Safety roles that keep turning over usually have something in common, and it’s rarely the people. More often the role itself is hard to succeed in, which is why role design deserves as much attention as the search.
A role too broad for one person, often covering safety, environment, quality, and wellbeing at once
Expectations that were never agreed by the people involved in the hire
Limited support or authority from leadership
A salary below the market for what’s being asked
Good role design starts with everyone involved agreeing what the role is for. As Pete McNamara, one of our directors, has put it, ‘When expectations are clear from the outset, we all win - clients, candidates, and recruiters alike.’ If the salary is fixed, our guide to hiring without blowing the budget has practical ideas for your recruitment strategy.
Who to look for, and how to assess them
Asking for experience in your exact industry can narrow an already small pool. Sound risk judgement and the ability to bring people with them are transferable skills, and they’re often harder to find than industry knowledge.
What employers value most is someone who can build trust and influence leaders and workers, rather than relying on enforcement. When interviewing safety professionals, ask for real examples, such as how a candidate brought a sceptical leader around. Our guide to behavioural interview questions shows what good answers look like, and what makes a great health and safety professional covers what to probe for, from influence to judgement.
Measuring whether your HSE team is working
Injury rates tell you what has already happened. Safe Work Australia’s research on measuring and reporting on work health and safety explains why leading indicators, which track whether controls are working, are more useful. SafeWork NSW has turned that into safety reporting guidance for boards, and the AICD has highlighted the risk of boards focusing on lagging rather than leading indicators.
Leading indicators
Critical controls verified in the field
Corrective actions closed on time
Leaders’ safety conversations and site visits
Lagging indicators
Lost time injury rates
Workers compensation claims and costs
Notifiable incidents
It’s also worth asking whether the team is building capability or carrying it, which we explore in how many safety people your organisation needs. A good HSE team makes leaders better at safety, rather than doing it for them.
When a specialist recruiter or contractor makes sense
Not every safety hire needs outside help, and if your own advertising is bringing you strong candidates, that may be all you need. A specialist recruiter tends to help when a role is senior, specialised, or hard to fill, when you need to reach people who aren’t actively looking, or when you’d rather share the work of sourcing and interviewing safety professionals. Sometimes the answer isn’t a permanent hire at all, and a contract safety professional can cover a project or a period of change. Whichever route you choose, a clear recruitment strategy agreed up front makes the brief more convincing to candidates.
Common questions
What does a safety advisor do?
They help managers and workers manage health and safety risks, through risk assessments, inspections, incident investigations, consultation, and keeping the safety management system working.
Who is responsible for WHS in a business?
The business has the primary duty to ensure the health and safety of workers and others, so far as is reasonably practicable. Officers must exercise due diligence, and workers must take reasonable care. In Victoria, the OHS Act places the main duty on employers.
What is a safety management system?
It’s the set of policies, procedures, and processes a business uses to manage health and safety risks. Building or improving one is often a big part of the role for the first person you appoint.
How much does a health and safety manager earn in Australia?
Advertised salaries on SEEK averaged between $160,000 and $180,000 in October 2026, varying with the industry, the location, and the size of the role.
Let’s have a conversation
If you’re planning the next step for your HSE team, a short conversation is often the quickest way to test your thinking. We recruit across health and safety, injury management, and psychosocial risk and wellbeing. You can submit a vacancy, see the candidates we’re working with, or read more about how we work with employers.
Thinking about a hire? We’d be happy to talk it through.
