The Health and Safety at Work Amendment Act 2026 received Royal Assent in July 2026 and comes into force on 1 April 2027. This article examines the HSWA reforms small businesses impact.
The Government says the reforms will allow small businesses to focus on critical risks while reducing unnecessary compliance. A second major reform is the expanded use of Approved Codes of Practice (ACOPs) to provide greater certainty about what compliance looks like.
The practical question for small businesses is simple:
What will we actually need to do differently?
For many well-managed businesses, the answer may be: very little. the HSWA reforms small businesses impact.
Businesses exposed to serious hazards—such as machinery, vehicles, electricity, hazardous substances, working at height or construction—already manage these risks because they present the greatest potential for death or serious injury. The amendments do not reduce the expectation that these risks be eliminated or minimised so far as is reasonably practicable.
Importantly, the amendments do not create a new legal concept of “critical risks”. The duty remains to manage risks capable of causing serious harm. Businesses that fail to identify those risks are unlikely to demonstrate they have met their legal obligations. Thus the HSWA reforms small businesses impact is minimal.
Prioritising Risk Is Not New
The reforms encourage small businesses to focus on significant risks rather than spending disproportionate time on minor hazards.
That is a sensible objective—but it is also how the Health and Safety at Work Act has always operated.
The concept of what is reasonably practicable already requires businesses to prioritise controls according to both the likelihood and consequences of harm. Higher-consequence risks justify greater investment than low-level hazards.
Where many businesses have struggled is not excessive attention to genuine hazards, but excessive investment in paperwork, systems and compliance activities that add little to actual risk reduction.
Whether these legislative changes solve that problem is less clear.
Was Reform Actually Needed?
The Regulatory Impact Statement identifies legal uncertainty and compliance burden as the main issues facing small businesses.
What it does not provide is strong evidence that businesses were systematically focusing on trivial risks while neglecting serious ones.
Nor does it demonstrate that smaller businesses experience significantly poorer critical-risk outcomes than larger organisations.
Official injury statistics also do not suggest a safety system in obvious decline. Fatal injury rates had generally improved over the past decade, with accepted workplace fatal claims reaching historically low levels by 2021 despite increasing numbers of accepted injury claims.
This does not prove the 2015 legislation caused those improvements, but neither does it demonstrate a clear need to narrow the practical scope of health and safety duties.
The evidence appears more consistent with reducing compliance costs and improving legal certainty than correcting widespread failures in critical risk management.
Will Approved Codes of Practice Help?
The expanded use of Approved Codes of Practice is potentially the most useful part of the reforms.
Businesses following an approved code gain a degree of legal certainty that their approach is likely to satisfy their statutory duties.
The difficulty is availability.
At present, only two Approved Codes of Practice have formal status. For most industries, no approved code currently exists.
Although the amendments make it easier for industry groups and others to develop new codes, their publication will still depend on WorkSafe having sufficient resources to review, consult on and approve them.
The pathway has improved, but the practical benefits may take years to materialise.
If Not the Legislation, Then What?
Perhaps the most significant change following the original 2015 Act was behavioural rather than procedural.
Health and safety became a boardroom issue because officers acquired explicit due diligence obligations backed by personal liability. Boards and senior executives became far more engaged in health and safety governance.
Interestingly, WorkSafe has prosecuted relatively few officers compared with PCBUs, and successful officer prosecutions have been uncommon.
That suggests the value of officer liability may lie less in frequent prosecutions than in the incentive created by the possibility of personal accountability.
Conclusion
For many well-managed small businesses, the 2026 amendments are unlikely to require major operational changes.
Businesses already focused on preventing death and serious injury will largely continue doing what they have always done.
The more important policy question is whether the reforms address the problem they were intended to solve.
The experience of the past decade suggests that legislation establishes duties, but behaviour is shaped by incentives. The original Health and Safety at Work Act changed governance by making directors and senior leaders personally responsible for exercising due diligence.
Ultimately, reducing workplace harm depends less on changing legislative wording than on influencing the decisions of those who allocate resources, set priorities and shape organisational culture.
Contact us