A ‘person conducting a business or undertaking’ (PCBU – the new term that includes employers) may be an individual person or an organisation conducting a business or undertaking.

An officer is a person who makes decisions, or participates in making decisions, that affect the whole, or a substantial part, of a business or undertaking and has the capacity to significantly affect the financial standing of the business or undertaking.

If a person is responsible only for implementing those decisions, they are not considered an officer.

Partners of a partnership are not officers but are PCBUs.

An officer of a PCBU must exercise due diligence to ensure that the PCBU complies with their duties under the WHS legislation.

Examples of PCBUs who are individuals include:

• partners in partnerships
• sole traders and self-employed people
• individual trustees of trusts (as with some family businesses)
• committee members of unincorporated associations if they employ someone.

A health and safety duty is owed by a PCBU if it:

• arranges, directs or influences work to be done
• contributes something towards the work being done.

This duty also applies to:

• principals, contractors and sub-contractors within the supply chain such as in the construction and transport industries
• franchisors and the franchisees that use the franchisors’ business systems such as fast food outlets.

A PCBU is not the individual worker or officer and does not apply to purely social, domestic or recreational activities.