Overlapping health & safety duties in agriculture
Know your legal responsibilities when sending workers and contractors to shared sites.
When your business sends employees or contractors to work on someone else’s property, whether to pick up stock, repair equipment, harvest, or process, you’re stepping into a shared health and safety area.
Under New Zealand’s Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 (HSWA) and Australia's Work Health and Safety (WHS) laws, your business is considered a PCBU (Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking). This carries non-transferable legal duties to protect the health and safety of your workers and anyone affected by your work, even if you don’t own or control the site where work is being done.
The legal principle: “So far as is reasonably practicable”
You must do what is reasonably able to be done to ensure risks are eliminated or minimised. This means actively:
- Identifying hazards in the environment, tasks, equipment, or conditions.
- Assessing risks - the likelihood and severity of harm if exposed to each hazard.
- Implementing controls - choosing the highest level of protection that is practical to implement.
- Reviewing controls - checking that measures are working and updated when conditions change.
Overlapping duties: your responsibilities don’t stop at the gate
When two or more PCBUs share influence over the same work area, task, plant, or people, you have overlapping duties.
By law, you must Consult, Cooperate, and Coordinate with the other PCBU(s).
Even if a landowner takes the lead on-site, your business remains legally responsible to the extent you have influence and control. You cannot “sign away” these obligations.
Worksafe's 3 Cs: Consult, Cooperate, and Coordinate explained
When duties overlap, PCBUs must Consult, Cooperate, and Coordinate (the 3Cs). Poor coordination creates gaps at the interfaces - the places where incidents happen and where enforcement lands. A recent public case at Ports of Auckland showed how failures in leadership and due diligence can result in officer-level liability. For agriculture: shared work demands shared responsibility - and clear, consistent ways to demonstrate it at scale.
Without these three pillars working in harmony, shared PCBU responsibilities become fragmented, leaving people exposed and businesses vulnerable.
What you must do as a PCBU
When sending workers or contractors to another business’s site, you are legally responsible for ensuring that:
Before work starts
- You exchange safety information with the site, including hazards, controls, restricted areas, and emergency procedures.
- Your workers are trained and inducted for the specific site (not just your own workplace).
- Hazards and risk controls are agreed with the host and recorded, especially shared or high-risk areas.
While work is underway
- Workers know who is in charge for safety decisions in the shared area.
- Controls remain effective, if conditions change (weather, equipment), you coordinate updates with the site immediately.
- Workers can report incidents or near-misses, and you take action, even for incidents on someone else’s site.
After an incident
- You jointly investigate with the other PCBU(s) and share findings.
- You update your safety procedures and communicate changes to your workers for future visits.
- You fulfil regulator notification duties if you are responsible under the jurisdiction’s law.
Real agriculture examples
The bottom line
When you send workers or contractors to any work site, whether you control the site or not, you carry your safety duties with you.
The law expects you to actively work with the host PCBU to close gaps, document agreements, and keep your workers safe, so far as is reasonably practicable.
Failure to do so can result in enforcement action, fines, or officer-level liability.
Find out how Onside can reduce your risk and keep people safe.
Disclaimer: This is general information only and does not constitute legal advice. Always seek guidance before implementing safety procedures.
