Our role and purpose
Our purpose is to promote harmonious, productive, cooperative and compliant workplace relations in Australia.
On this page:
Our functions
Our functions outline the responsibilities we have as set by the Fair Work Act 2009 to achieve our purpose:
- provide education, assistance, advice and guidance to employers, employees, regulated workers, regulated businesses, persons in a road transport contractual chain, outworkers, outworker entities and organisations
- promote and monitor compliance with workplace laws
- inquire into and investigate breaches of the Fair Work Act
- take appropriate enforcement action
- perform our statutory functions efficiently, effectively, economically and ethically.
Download a copy of the FWO Purpose.
Supporting documents
We have a number of policies, guides and plans which support how we work towards achieving our purpose and functions:
- Our priorities outline the key industries and issues we will focus on in the next financial year
- Our Compliance and Enforcement Policy summarises the services we offer to support compliance with workplace laws
- Our Corporate Plan maps our strategic direction.
- Ministerial Statement of Expectations August 2025 Ministerial Statement of Expectations August 2025
- Regulator Statement of Intent September 2025 Regulator Statement of Intent September 2025
Additional supporting policies that inform the work we do are available on Our policies page.
Source reference for page: Fair Work Act 2009 section 682
