What is officer due diligence and how do I evidence it?
Short answer
Officer due diligence is a personal duty on company officers (directors, CEO, senior executives) under WHS Act s.27 (AU) or HSWA s.44 (NZ) to take reasonable steps to ensure their PCBU complies with its safety duties. It is evidenced by contemporaneous documentation of the six limbs: knowledge, hazard understanding, resources, incident response, compliance and verification.
Officer due diligence is a personal legal duty — not the PCBU's duty, but the officer's. It exists in:
- Australia: WHS Act s.27 (model law; in force in QLD, NSW, SA, Tas, ACT, NT, WA) and the Victorian OHS Act 2004 equivalents.
- New Zealand: HSWA 2015 s.44.
Both regimes use the same six-limb structure (from s.27(5) / s.44(4)):
- Acquire and keep current knowledge of WHS / HSWA matters.
- Gain an understanding of the nature and risks of the operations.
- Ensure appropriate resources and processes to eliminate or minimise risks.
- Ensure appropriate processes for receiving and responding to information about incidents, hazards and risks.
- Ensure processes for compliance with WHS / HSWA duties.
- Verify the provision and use of the above resources and processes.
The key evidentiary discipline is that due diligence is judged on what the officer actually did — not what they intended, not what their reports told them, not retrospective claims. So the practical evidence trail is:
- A personal due-diligence file per officer, with contemporaneous entries (knowledge updates attended, briefings received, hazard walks done, incident reviews participated in).
- Quarterly attestations by the officer that the six limbs have been exercised over the quarter.
- Linkages from each attestation back to specific evidence — board papers attended, training certificates, incident discussions, audit reports.
RAE IQ's Officer Due Diligence module (feature #34) and Officer Verification Report (#73) produce exactly this evidence — by design, the board-grade PDF an officer would want in their hand if they were charged.
Industrial Manslaughter laws in Vic, QLD, ACT, SA, WA and NT (and HSWA s.47 reckless conduct in NZ) explicitly capture officers, so this is no longer an academic duty.