Quick answer
A health and safety manager's role is to advise, equip and check, not to own safety on behalf of everyone else. Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 the duties sit with the business, its officers and its workers. The line managers running the work stay accountable for it within the business. A good health and safety manager closes the gap between what the documents say and what happens on site, speaks the language of each audience from the board to the frontline and helps the business make progress without breaking it.
Plenty of chief executives hire a health and safety manager and quietly hope the problem is now handled. In my experience that's the wrong way round. Sarah Thomas has 20 years in health and safety, a background in coaching and HR and her own consultancy. When she came on Health & Safety Unplugged she said one of the first things she tells a client's operations team is that safety is still theirs.
This post covers who actually owns health and safety, the traps health and safety people fall into, how a good one works with a board compared with a crew on site and what leaders should expect from the person in the role. The episode was published in February 2026.
Who Owns Health and Safety in a Business?
The law puts the duties on the people who run and do the work. The business has the primary duty of care under section 36 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015. Its officers, meaning the directors, the chief executive and others with significant influence over management, must exercise due diligence under section 44. Workers have their own duties under section 45. The Act's definition of an officer in section 18 specifically excludes a person who merely advises or makes recommendations to the directors or chief executive. From 1 April 2027 the Health and Safety at Work Amendment Act 2026 restates the officer duty. The detail of due diligence is changing, however the principle that advice doesn't make you the duty holder stays.
| Who | What they're responsible for |
|---|---|
| The business (PCBU) | Ensuring the health and safety of workers and others affected by the work so far as is reasonably practicable |
| Officers (directors, chief executive, others with significant influence) | Due diligence to make sure the business meets its duties |
| Line managers and supervisors | Running the work safely day to day, accountable within the business (their legal duty is the worker duty or the officer duty if senior enough) |
| Health and safety manager | Advice, systems, capability, checking and challenge |
| Workers | Taking reasonable care for themselves and others and following reasonable instructions |
Sarah puts it more simply than the Act does. With a larger client she starts in operations and tells them safety is still theirs, she'll be their wingwoman and give technical advice whenever they ask, however at the end of the day it belongs to them. Then she goes to the HR team and asks what their work plan looks like for the year. Her point is that you can't break frontline supervisors by rolling out a new performance management system at the same time as accident investigations.
The Rescuer Trap
Sarah's view is that health and safety people tend to be rescuers. They want to ride in on a white horse and save the day, when they may not know what the real problem is and the people involved may not want rescuing. Her coaching background taught her to triage first: does this person need a hug or do they need help?
The rescuer habit also wears the health and safety person down. I see plenty of practitioners carrying the weight of every accident as if it were theirs alone. Sarah called that habit addictive. Her advice to the people she coaches is that you need to be able to sleep at night. That means knowing your span of control and your authority to practise, knowing you spoke up in the right way and then letting it go. For a leader, the warning sign is a health and safety manager who is doing the line's job for it.
You Can't Break a Business in the Name of Safety
This was the line that stuck with me from our conversation. Sarah has seen boards ask the operations team to just sort something out, when the board can see the whole road and the operations team is effectively driving at night, only able to see as far as the headlights. Hand them the whole journey at once and they'll be overwhelmed and push back.
Her approach is incremental, with 1 per cent goals and checking whether a change is actually sticking before moving to the next thing. She also warned against expecting a system to fix a business that doesn't have effective processes underneath it. If the processes aren't working, putting them into a new software platform won't save you and could make things worse. I see the same thing with proposals: a scope so long it frightens the reader is a scope that won't get signed off or delivered.
Mind the Gap Between Paper and Practice
Sarah believes the real value of a health and safety professional is minding the gap between what's written down and what happens in the real world, in language the team understands. She made the point that AI is already writing inductions and forms. While people argue over whether something belongs to HR or health and safety, the business moves on. The professionals who stay relevant will be the ones who can show whether the work on the ground matches the paper.
She also talked about congruence, an idea she took from a RoSPA women in safety leadership course: what you say should match what you do. That applies to the health and safety person personally and to the documents they produce. In my view a safe work method statement nobody follows and a procedure written for a different site are both gaps a good health and safety manager should be finding before an incident or an inspector does.
Speaking in the Right Gear
The most practical idea Sarah shared was about pace and language. The message can stay the same, however the gear changes with the audience.
| Audience | Gear | What that looks like (my summary) |
|---|---|---|
| Board of directors | Fifth | Long-term, strategic, the view from the helicopter |
| Senior leadership team | Fourth | Strategy plus what it means upstream and downstream |
| Site management | Third | How it lands in the work |
| Frontline crew | First or second | What matters today, plainly, often with some humour |
Her measure of success on site is when something from a toolbox talk is still being discussed in the smoko room. She also reads the room before she pushes anything. On a construction site she'll ask the project manager and foreman what the biggest win and the biggest challenge have been this month. Then she asks whether the challenge kept them up at night. If it did, she either works on getting them calm enough to have a real conversation or accepts it and sticks to the basics that day.
Slowing Down and Running Small Experiments
When a health and safety person feels out of their depth, the temptation is to jump to an answer. Sarah's advice is that the fast, automatic response isn't always right for the team. Slowing down, talking to the people doing the work and trying small changes is often the better path. She credited Moni Hogg's work on learning teams for the idea of micro experiments: asking what good would look like, then agreeing the next small step towards it. She also borrowed Todd Conklin's idea of rumble strips, agreed points where everyone stops and checks whether it's working.
That fits with what boards should want too. A health and safety manager who can say "I don't know, I'll find out" is far more useful than one who invents an answer to look confident.
The Business Skills a Health and Safety Manager Needs
Sarah's view is that technical knowledge isn't enough and I agree with her. One of the most valuable things she did early in her career was a finance course for non-financial managers, learning to read a balance sheet and the difference between operating and capital spend. You can be an exceptional technical practitioner, however if you can't get a business case across the line your recommendations won't happen.
What Leaders Should Expect From Their Health and Safety Manager
These are the things I'd look for, drawn from Sarah's experience and my own.
- Advice and challenge that leaves ownership with the line, not a person doing the safety work for everyone else.
- Regular evidence of the gap between paper and practice, from time spent on site with the people doing the work.
- Reports pitched at the board's level, focused on critical risks and whether controls are working.
- Changes made in steps the business can absorb, with a check that each one is sticking.
- The honesty to say when something is outside their expertise and the network to find someone who knows.
- Business cases written in the language of cost, risk and benefit.
- Clear boundaries that let them do the job well over the long run without burning out.
If you'd like a structured way to think about how your leadership team leads health and safety, the free S.A.F.E.T.Y. Leadership Worksheet is a good place to start. If you're weighing up who should fill the role, my post on in-house versus external health and safety consultants covers the trade-offs.
Watch the full conversation with Sarah Thomas on Health & Safety Unplugged below.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Role of a Health and Safety Manager
What does a health and safety manager do?
Advises the business on its health and safety duties, builds the systems and capability to manage risk, checks whether controls are working in practice and challenges leaders when they aren't.
Is the health and safety manager responsible for safety?
Not on their own. Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 the business holds the primary duty, officers must exercise due diligence and workers have their own duties. Line managers stay accountable within the business for running their work safely.
Is a health and safety manager an officer under HSWA?
Not for giving advice alone. Section 18 excludes a person who merely advises or makes recommendations to the directors or chief executive. A health and safety manager who also has significant influence over the management of the business, for example as part of the executive team, can be an officer.
What's the difference between a health and safety advisor and a health and safety manager?
The titles vary between businesses. Generally an advisor provides technical advice and support, while a manager also leads the health and safety programme, team and reporting.
What skills does a good health and safety manager need?
Technical knowledge plus the ability to communicate at board, leadership and frontline level, read the room on site, build a business case and make change in steps the business can absorb.
How should a health and safety manager report to the board?
Briefly and strategically, focused on critical risks, whether controls are working and what needs a decision, with the operational detail kept for management.
Sources: Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, sections 18, 36, 44 and 45; Health & Safety Unplugged, episode with Sarah Thomas. This post is general guidance, not legal advice.
About the Author
Matt Jones is the founder of Advanced Safety and a HASANZ-registered health and safety consultant. He's a Professional Member of NZISM and holds a Graduate Diploma in Occupational Safety and Health.
He advises boards, directors and executives on officer due diligence and critical risk under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015. His book Raise the Standard: Why Good Organisations Go Blind and How Leaders Restore Visibility sets out G.A.P.E.™, F.E.E.D.™ and S.A.F.E.T.Y.™, a leadership architecture framework for high-risk organisations.
He created the Compliance Compass audit and hosts the Health & Safety Unplugged podcast.
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Latest update: 13 November 2026
