Experienced safety professionals with 5 years’ experience in a WHS role who have ideally built a Safety Management System, or maintained one. Ideally, you have also taken a site through to ISO 45001 certification. You’re rigorous and driven: you write the procedure properly and you’re out on the floor making sure it’s real. You’ve worked in an operational or high-risk environment - manufacturing, logistics, construction or similar - you back your own judgement, and you know great safety is equal parts good systems and good relationships with the people doing the work.

Who shouldn’t apply

People who need to be told what the risks are and wait for direction. If your approach to safety has been keeping the paperwork current and staying out of trouble rather than genuinely improving how a business thinks about and lives safety, this isn't the right fit. We're not looking for a protected pair of hands. We're looking for someone who cares deeply, pushes hard, and leaves things better than they found them.

Employment type:

Full-time, permanent

Reports to:

Chief Operations Officer

Why join Barbell Foods

We make no bullsh#t meat snacks for people who care about their health, and we’re one of the fastest-growing salty snack brands in Australia. As we grow, we’re investing in WHS the same way we have in food safety - lifting it to the next level, and backing it properly from the top. We’ve seen what SQF accreditation did for our food safety culture, and we want that same rigour and accountability for the safety of our people. You’d own that step change.

The Role

As our WHS Manager, you completely own the safety function at Barbell.



You’ll introduce a safety management system and create a culture that drives safety incidents toward zero. The big goal is that you take us to ISO 45001 certification within the first 12 months.

You’ll report directly to our Chief Operations Officer, with the backing of the wider director group. And you’ll have real authority: when something’s unsafe, you can stop it.

Key Responsibilities

- Own all things WHS at Barbell: Be the single point of authority, accountability, and expertise for safety across the entire operation.
- Build out the Safety Management System and drive it to ISO 45001 certification: Gap analysis, documentation, internal audits, management reviews, corrective actions
- Own all safety administration: Registers, incident and hazard reporting, SDS/chemical records, training matrices, contractor management
- Establish worker consultation: Health and safety representatives and/or a WHS committee
- Run risk assessments, safe work procedures, inductions and toolbox talks
- Investigate incidents, find the real root cause, and close it out so it doesn’t repeat
- Keep us compliant with the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (ACT) and audit-ready
- Coach and influence the whole site (leaders and floor) to put safety first

Skills

- Systems thinking:



You build a framework that holds up to an external auditor, and lives beyond you
- Investigation: You find the real cause, not the convenient one, and you fix it
- Communication and influencing people: You get buy-in from the floor and leadership, and you make safety make sense to people
- Execution: You run a program to a plan and see it through
- Rigorous and hands-on: Equally at home writing the procedure and walking the floor to check it’s working
- Self-directed: You see what needs doing and get on with it
- Principled: You hold the line on safety, even under production pressure, and communicate appropriately when there is pushback
- Straight-talking: You call risk clearly and constructively
- People-first: You’d rather bring people with you than police them

The opportunity

This is a rare chance to build a safety function from the ground up, with full ownership and leadership that genuinely backs it. Get us certified, change the culture, and set the standard Barbell runs on for years. As the business grows, so can the role - and the person in it.

As part of your application, please answer three questions:

- Tell us about a Safety Management System you’ve built or maintained, or taken through certification. Where did it start, what did you do, and where did it land?
- Tell us about a time you changed how a team thought about safety - not just the rules, but their attitude. How did you win over the people who didn't want it?
- What do most safety people get wrong, and how do you approach it differently?

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📌 WHS Manager (Canberra)
🏢 Barbell Foods
📍 Canberra