Insights
What psychosocial hazards are, what the regulations now require, and who in your organisation should manage them.
At a glance
Psychosocial hazards are the parts of work that can cause psychological harm, from high job demands and poor support to bullying and harassment. Every Australian jurisdiction now has specific rules for managing them, and for most organisations the harder question isn’t what the hazards are, but who has the time, skills, and authority to manage them.
Managing them is a legal duty rather than a wellbeing extra. These hazards must be identified, assessed, controlled, and reviewed like any other hazard, with workers consulted along the way.
Regulators are actively enforcing the rules. Victoria’s regulations started on 1 December 2025, NSW codes became minimum standards on 1 July 2026, and courts have fined employers who got it wrong.
The cost of getting it wrong is high. Mental health conditions make up 12.2% of serious workers compensation claims, and the typical claim involves almost five times as much time off work.
Work design matters more than wellbeing programs, and ownership needs to be clear. It works best when safety and HR share the work, with clear ownership of each control.
In this article
What are psychosocial hazards at work?
What the law requires in 2026
What it costs when it goes wrong
How to manage psychosocial risk well
Safety, HR, or both?
Who should run your psychosocial risk assessment?
Do you need a psychosocial specialist?
Common questions
Talk to us about psychosocial capability
What are psychosocial hazards at work?
They’re anything in the design or management of work, the work environment, or the way people interact at work that can cause a stress response and lead to psychological or physical harm. Safe Work Australia’s model code of practice, Managing psychosocial hazards at work, lists 14 common ones, while making clear the list isn’t exhaustive.
How work is designed
Job demands
Low job control
Lack of role clarity
Poor support
Poor organisational change management
Inadequate reward and recognition
Poor organisational justice
The work environment
Remote or isolated work
Poor physical environment
Traumatic events or material
How people interact
Bullying
Harassment, including sexual harassment
Violence and aggression
Conflict or poor workplace relationships
Other lists go further. Comcare’s Commonwealth code adds fatigue, job insecurity, and intrusive surveillance, and WorkSafe Victoria’s guidance specifically names gendered violence. Most workplaces will recognise several, and they tend to travel together. High demands, low control, and poor support often show up as a group, as do bullying and harassment.
Hazard, risk, or injury?
It helps to keep three ideas separate. The hazard is the thing that could cause harm, such as an unrealistic workload. The risk is how likely and how serious that harm is, which depends on how long, how often, and how intensely people are exposed. A psychological injury is the harm itself, such as anxiety or depression, once it has happened. The law asks you to manage the first two so the third doesn’t occur.
What the law requires in 2026
Specific regulations and codes now apply in every jurisdiction. As the AICD notes, Victoria’s regulations completed the national picture of psychosocial regulations in December 2025. South Australia’s code followed in February 2026.
Where each jurisdiction stands
Victoria
Key instrument: Occupational Health and Safety (Psychological Health) Regulations 2025 and compliance code
In force: 1 December 2025
New South Wales
Key instrument: Psychosocial regulations, with codes of practice now minimum performance standards
In force: Codes enforceable from 1 July 2026
Queensland
Key instrument: Managing the risk of psychosocial hazards at work code of practice
In force: 1 April 2023
Western Australia
Key instrument: Psychosocial hazards in the workplace code of practice
In force: Published 2022
South Australia
Key instrument: SafeWork SA’s psychosocial hazards code
In force: 19 February 2026
Commonwealth
Key instrument: Comcare’s Commonwealth code
In force: 2024
Tasmania, the ACT, and the Northern Territory apply the model WHS Regulations, which include the same psychosocial duties, as the AICD’s summary sets out.
Victoria’s psychological health regulations
Victoria was the last jurisdiction to introduce specific psychological health regulations, and they’re more prescriptive than most, setting out the order in which employers must control a risk.
Eliminate the risk, where that’s reasonably practicable
Otherwise, reduce it by changing how work is designed or managed, the systems of work, or the environment
Use information, instruction, and training on their own only when nothing else is reasonably practicable, and never as the predominant control in a combination
Controls must be reviewed in set circumstances, including after a notifiable incident, before changes to work that could affect the risk, and when a health and safety representative asks. Despite early drafts, the final rules don’t make written prevention plans mandatory, although WorkSafe encourages employers to use its template.
New South Wales
NSW has been particularly active on enforcement. Psychosocial matters made up 20.5% of requests for service to SafeWork NSW in 2025-26, up from 10% in 2021-22, according to the release launching its Psychosocial Advisory Service in September 2026. Earlier in the year, SafeWork NSW announced 51 additional inspectors, including 20 psychosocial inspectors, and since 1 March 2026 registered unions can bring WHS prosecutions after consulting the regulator, under the Workplace Protections Act.
Related duties outside WHS law
Two other regimes overlap with WHS law, so the same behaviour can lead to action on several fronts at once.
The positive duty to prevent sexual harassment
Employers have a positive duty under the Sex Discrimination Act to take steps to prevent sexual harassment, which the Australian Human Rights Commission has been able to enforce since December 2023, as its positive duty guidelines explain.
Orders to stop bullying
Workers can also apply to the Fair Work Commission for orders to stop bullying, a jurisdiction that has existed since 2014.
What it costs when it goes wrong
The human cost comes first, but the business case is just as clear.
Longer time off work. In Safe Work Australia’s Key Work Health and Safety Statistics Australia 2026, mental health conditions made up 12.2% of serious claims in 2024-25, up 169% since 2014-15. In 2023-24, the latest year with complete data, the median claim involved 34.8 weeks off work, almost five times the 7.0 weeks for all other serious claims, and median compensation of $68,600.
Higher claim costs. The NSW Government’s March 2025 workers compensation statement reported that psychological injuries were 12% of claims but 38% of the total cost, and that the average claim had risen to $288,542 in 2024-25.
Lost productivity. Research for Safe Work Australia estimated that low psychosocial safety climate costs Australian employers about $6 billion a year in absence and reduced performance, although that’s a modelled estimate from 2016.
Prosecution. Court Services Victoria was fined $379,157 in 2023 over the workplace culture at the Coroners Court, and in December 2025 the Department of Defence became the first Commonwealth employer convicted over psychosocial risks, with a fine of $188,000.
Why tighter compensation rules don’t reduce the risk
Both Victoria and NSW have narrowed access to compensation for psychological injury. Victoria’s changes from March 2024 only support mental injuries predominantly caused by work, and exclude stress or burnout caused by usual or typical events, such as workload pressures or additional hours. In NSW, claims notified from 1 July 2026 must arise from a defined event, such as bullying, sexual or racial harassment, or excessive work demands, and a higher impairment threshold of at least 25% applies to weekly payments beyond 130 weeks and to damages, as SIRA’s reform FAQs explain. Fewer compensable claims doesn’t mean less exposure, because the WHS duty to prevent harm hasn’t changed and regulators are better resourced to enforce it.
How to manage psychosocial risk well
Psychosocial risk management follows the same four steps as any other hazard, and workers and their health and safety representatives must be consulted at each one.
Identify
Start with the people doing the work, through conversations, consultation, and surveys. People at Work, funded by Australian WHS regulators, is a free, evidence-based survey designed for this. Data you already hold, such as leave, turnover, complaints, and claims, often shows where to look first.
Assess
A psychosocial risk assessment looks at how long, how often, and how severely people are exposed, and how hazards combine. A team with high demands and low support, for example, faces a greater risk than either hazard alone would suggest.
Control through work design
The most effective controls change the work itself, such as realistic workloads, clear roles, better rostering, and fair processes. Safe Work Australia’s Principles of Good Work Design and the international standard ISO 45003 are both useful guides to doing this well.
Review and improve
Check that controls are working, and revisit them when something changes, such as a restructure or a reported injury.
The most common mistake
Many organisations lean on employee assistance programs, resilience training, or wellbeing apps. These have a place in supporting people, but they don’t change the hazard. A large study of more than 46,000 UK workers, reported by Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre, found no evidence that individual-level interventions such as resilience training and wellbeing apps improved wellbeing, and while it can’t prove cause and effect, it points to the same conclusion as the regulators. Good management of these risks starts with the work.
Safety, HR, or both?
In most organisations, psychosocial risk works best when both functions share it, with safety leading the risk process and HR and line managers owning many of the controls.
Safety brings
Hazard identification and risk assessment
Consultation with workers and representatives
Controls, monitoring, and review
Reporting to leadership and regulators
HR brings
Workload, role, and job design
Complaints, investigations, and bullying and harassment processes
Performance management and change management
Data on leave, turnover, and engagement
The overlap matters because HR processes such as performance management and workplace investigations can themselves create risk when they’re handled poorly, which makes them controls in their own right. Where shared ownership struggles, each function assumes the other has it covered, or the work is treated as a wellbeing program rather than a risk to be managed.
Who should run your psychosocial risk assessment?
Usually your own safety team, an external consultant, or a specialist hire, and many organisations use a mix. Whoever runs it needs a plan for owning the controls afterwards.
Your existing HSE team
Works well when: A capable advisor or manager has the time and has done this work before
The risk to manage: Capacity, as the work takes real time alongside everything else
An external consultant
Works well when: You need a first assessment, a specialist tool, or an independent view
The risk to manage: The work stops when the engagement ends
A specialist hire
Works well when: The risks are high, or you want the capability in-house for the long term
The risk to manage: Finding someone with the right mix of skills
Do you need a psychosocial specialist?
Not every organisation needs a dedicated psychosocial specialist. If your risks are moderate and your HSE team has the capacity and skills, developing a generalist advisor may be the better step. A specialist tends to make sense when:
Psychological injury claims are rising, or already make up a large share of your costs
Your work carries higher inherent risk, such as exposure to trauma, aggression, or isolated work
Your safety team is stretched across physical risk and can’t give this work the time it needs
You need to show a regulator, a board, or a client a credible, well-resourced approach
A psychosocial specialist typically leads hazard identification and risk assessments, works with HR and operations to redesign work, supports managers to have better conversations about workload and conduct, and analyses data such as surveys, complaints, and claims. The best combine a solid grounding in psychosocial risk management with the ability to influence leaders and build trust with workers, and they come from safety, HR, and organisational psychology backgrounds alike. For the broader picture, our guide to building your HSE team and our article on how many safety people your organisation needs may help.
Common questions
What are psychosocial hazards?
They’re factors in the design or management of work, the work environment, or workplace interactions that can cause psychological or physical harm, such as high job demands, low job control, poor support, bullying, and harassment.
What are five examples of psychosocial hazards?
Five common examples are high job demands, low job control, poor support from managers or colleagues, bullying, and exposure to traumatic events or material.
How many psychosocial hazards are there?
Safe Work Australia’s model code lists 14 common ones and Comcare’s Commonwealth code lists 17, but neither list is exhaustive. Anything in the way work is designed or managed that could cause psychological harm can be a hazard.
How do you prevent psychosocial hazards in the workplace?
Identify them with your workers, then control them at the source by changing how work is designed and managed, rather than relying on training or wellbeing programs alone. Review the controls regularly and whenever something changes.
What is psychosocial safety?
Psychosocial safety is about protecting people from psychological harm at work, by managing the risks in how work is designed and managed, alongside physical safety.
Talk to us about psychosocial capability
We recruit across health, safety, and wellbeing, including psychosocial risk management and wellbeing roles, and injury management. If you’re working out whether to develop your existing team, bring in a specialist, or both, we can share what we’re seeing employers do and what the market looks like for these roles. Submit a vacancy, or get in touch for an honest conversation about what your organisation needs.
Thinking about a hire? We’d be happy to talk it through.
