To do your due diligence and do the things you are required to do, you must first understand what your role is. 

I see people doing lots of safety related things but none of it covers their responsibility and may land them into trouble although they did a lot. 

Depending on your role, the things you need to do under the law are different. 

The three main roles

The most important 3 roles are as follows: 

1. Employer

2. Principal

3. Occupier 

In this post, I will only let you know how to identify your role. 

To know the exact things you need to do for each role, you can refer to WSH Act: responsibilities of stakeholders and Workplace Safety and Health Act 2006 – Singapore Statutes Online. 

I will use one scenario to explain the 3 different roles (A company can have more than 1 role at the same time). 

Scenario:

Company ABC (client) set up a manufacturing site in Singapore and employs technicians to operate their machines to manufacture chemical X. They engage a contractor company called XYZ to service their machines. 

Employer 

ABC is an employer because they have technicians directly under them. The technicians are employed by ABC. So when you ask the technicians what is your company (A Singapore lingo to ask what company you work for), they will say I work for ABC. 

So, ABC is required to ensure technicians are safe by giving them training, doing risk assessment, making sure the work environment is safe for them. 

Principal 

ABC at the same time is also a principal because they hire contractor company XYZ to service their machines. So, when you ask XYZ employees, what is your company, they will say I work for XYZ (Although they are working inside ABC’s compound). 

XYZ is the employer of these machine service technicians. Similar to ABC, XYZ is required to train and do risk assessment for these people (XYZ own employee). 

Since they are not employed directly under ABC, ABC does not need to do risk assessment for the contractor XYZ to service their machines. 

ABC needs to ensure that the contractors XYZ are competent in doing the machine servicing and ensure that XYZ has done their risk assessment (This is why clients always ask contractors to provide documents such as risk assessment and training certs). 

*Key thing to note here is, if ABC has a set of instructions that XYZ needs to follow step by step to service the machines, ABC takes on the liability and role of an employer. ABC has to do the risk assessment for XYZ as well as training them. (Usually, clients do not do this to keep their role as a principal because being an employer has a lot more responsibilities compared to just being a principal.)

Occupier 

Since ABC has the factory license when they set up a manufacturing site, they are also an occupier.

An occupier’s role is to ensure that the facilities in the common area are safe. 

Such as people present in the company don’t trip over potholes, lights don’t suddenly drop down hitting someone. 

If not, ABC will be liable for these injuries due to improper maintenance of the facilities as an occupier.  

(Important)You have different responsibilities for each role

As you can see, different roles have different responsibilities under the act and they may assume multiple roles all at once. 

So, to discharge due diligence, you have to understand what role you fall into and really discharge it properly. You will still get into trouble even if you do a lot of things not related to your role.