Customer-driven violence is no longer an occupational health risk that boards can delegate entirely to operations. The regulatory framework has changed rapidly over the last several years. Additionally, available data confirms a sharp escalation through to 2022, the most recent period for which Safe Work Australia has published claims data. Whether an organisation’s violence prevention programme meets the current legal standard is now, in material respects, a question of governance.
The organisations still treating customer aggression and violence as an operational inconvenience, managed through an annual de-escalation e-learning module and an incident form, are potentially operating in a regulatory environment that moved on without them.
What the Safe Work Australia Data Confirms
Safe Work Australia data records a 56 per cent increase in serious workers’ compensation claims for assault and workplace violence between 2017 and 2022. Customers and clients are identified as the primary source. Women are making these claims at materially higher rates than men.
These are not sector-specific findings. They describe a structural shift in the risk profile of consumer-facing work across retail, banking, healthcare, transport, and logistics. The direct financial consequences are compounding: higher insurance premiums, legal and investigation costs, service interruptions, and the longer claim durations that psychological injury cases consistently carry. Social media exposure can amplify reputational damage faster than internal response processes activate.
For boards, the risk is operational, financial, and legal simultaneously. Each dimension warrants attention.
An emerging complex landscape on customer aggression & WHS obligations
The regulatory framework governing violence at work is neither uniform across Australia nor static. The baseline obligations sit in the harmonised work health and safety framework, and three significant developments since late 2025 have changed what that means in practice for Australian business.
The harmonised WHS framework applies, and it covers psychological harm.
In Queensland, New South Wales, Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania, and the territories, the primary duty of care under section 19 of the relevant Work Health and Safety Act requires organisations to eliminate or minimise risks to both physical and psychological health, so far as is reasonably practicable. Customer-driven violence is a psychosocial hazard under this framework. Specific obligations to identify, assess, implement controls, and review those controls are prescribed in each jurisdiction’s Work Health and Safety Regulations.
Victoria differs
Victoria operates under the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (Vic). The Occupational Health and Safety (Psychological Health) Regulations 2025 commenced on 1 December 2025, establishing standalone psychosocial obligations that differ in structure from the harmonised approach. Victorian employers cannot assume that compliance with the national WHS framework satisfies their obligations under Victorian law. The terminology, regulatory hierarchy, and control requirements differ in ways that matter in practice.
New South Wales changes in 2026
From 1 July 2026, approved Codes of Practice in NSW become legally enforceable compliance benchmarks under the amended section 26A of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW). The Code of Practice: Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work is among them. An NSW organisation that does not follow the Code must demonstrate, if prosecuted or investigated, that it applied an equivalent or better standard. This is a shift from guidance to near-regulatory obligation. It applies to violence and aggression as a psychosocial hazard, directly.
Safe Work Australia published the Model Work Health and Safety Legislation Amendment (Incident Notification) 2025 in December 2025. Once adopted by each jurisdiction, this will expand notifiable incidents to include violent incidents exposing a person to a serious risk of psychological harm, work absences of 15 or more consecutive days, and work-related suicides and attempted suicides. The duty to preserve evidence will extend to digital records and witness details. Legal and risk functions should be tracking jurisdictional adoption actively.
Why Training-Only Responses Do Not Meet the Standard?
The most common organisational response to customer aggression remains training-centred. De-escalation workshops, customer service protocols, and incident reporting procedures are standard features of retail and healthcare violence management programmes. They are necessary. They are not sufficient.
The hierarchy of controls that regulators now may apply to psychosocial hazards place workplace design and engineering controls above administrative measures and individual training. The Model Code of Practice: Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work is explicit on this approach. An organisation that can demonstrate de-escalation training but cannot show it assessed the physical environment, staffing arrangements, and work systems against the hierarchy is unlikely to have met the regulatory standard required for management of the risk.
The practical translation is that a service counter designed to provide physical separation offers a control that no training programme replicates.
Adequate staffing (which is inherently complex in design in itself) during predictable peak periods reduces exposure in ways that personal resilience cannot absorb. Structured management plans for known or repeat aggressors, backed by trespass notices and documented escalation protocols, likely sit above individual capability in the hierarchy.
Boards satisfied by training completion rates are currently not asking the right questions.
Dimensions Organisations Routinely Miss in Managing Customer Aggression and Violence
Genuine compliance in this space requires organisations addressing dimensions that are frequently absent from conventional violence prevention programmes.
Concurrent Duty Obligations
Consumer-facing organisations rarely operate as single duty-holders at the point of service. Shopping centre tenants work frequently within a landlord’s security environment. Franchisees typically operate under a franchisor’s risk standards and protocols. Healthcare services are delivered in facilities often managed by other organisations. Where two or more organisations share a workplace, each holds concurrent duties under the WHS Act and must consult, cooperate, and coordinate with the others.
Contractual arrangements that allocate responsibility are typically necessary but often insufficient. The law requires practical coordination. Our experience has shown that regulators are increasingly assessing whether joint incident escalation protocols, shared evidence preservation procedures, and security coverage arrangements function in practice. A coordinated approach is a inherently a legal obligation, not a risk management preference.
Workers’ Compensation as an Integrated Function
Most organisations manage workers’ compensation claims arising from customer violence through their compensation insurer and HR function, separately from their WHS programme. This separation is common and costly. Safe Work Australia’s 2025 Key Statistics report confirms that mental health claims carry a median time lost from work almost five times longer than other injuries and diseases. This is the highest duration of any claim category. The financial exposure compounds when prevention and claims management operate as separate disciplines.
In New South Wales, the Workers Compensation Legislation Amendment Act 2025 (NSW) amended the Workers Compensation Act 1987 (NSW) to limit compensable primary psychological injuries to those arising from a defined relevant event, which expressly includes acts of violence or threats of violence directed at workers. Compensation is only payable where there is a real and direct connection between the relevant event and the worker’s employment, and where employment is the main contributing factor to the injury. An organisation with documented evidence of hazard identification, risk assessment, and control implementation is better placed in claims management because that evidence directly supports establishing the connection between the incident and the employment environment. WHS and workers’ compensation operate under separate legislative frameworks. Organisations that manage them as integrated functions are better positioned for stronger outcomes in both.
Artificial Intelligence and Digital Work Systems
Technology-enabled violence prevention tools are being adopted across retail, banking, and healthcare. AI-assisted CCTV analytics, facial recognition for known aggressors, automated duress alerts, and digital monitoring systems offer genuine preventive capability. They also create specific legal obligations that procurement and deployment processes frequently overlook.
In New South Wales, the Work Health and Safety Amendment (Digital Work Systems) Act 2026 was assented to in February 2026. It creates an explicit duty for organisations to ensure that workers’ health and safety is not put at risk from the use of a digital work system. The Act defines digital work systems to include algorithms, artificial intelligence, automation, and online platforms. This duty applies alongside privacy legislation, surveillance laws, and anti-discrimination requirements.
Organisations adopting these technologies require documented governance frameworks, risk assessments addressing both the protective function and unintended consequences of the tool, and worker consultation before and during deployment. Technology adoption without governance creates, rather than resolves, legal risk.
The Respect@Work Dimension
Where customer-driven violence includes gendered abuse, sexual harassment, or sex-based harassment directed at workers, the national positive duty under section 47C of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth) applies. It operates alongside WHS obligations. This positive duty requires organisations to take reasonable and proportionate measures to eliminate sexual harassment, sex-based harassment, and hostile work environments. The Australian Human Rights Commission’s Guidelines for Complying with the Positive Duty confirm that a complaints-handling procedure alone does not satisfy it. Proactive prevention at the systems level is required. In Queensland and Victoria, concurrent obligations under state anti-discrimination legislation add further dimensions to this duty. A violence prevention policy that does not address customer-directed harassment as a specific pathway is not complete.
The Officer Due Diligence Obligation
Section 27 of the relevant Work Health and Safety Act, and its equivalent under the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (Vic), imposes a due diligence duty on officers, including directors and senior executives, to acquire and maintain up-to-date knowledge of WHS matters and to verify that the resources and processes needed to eliminate or minimise risks are in place and working. Regulators across Australia have signalled consistently that they expect boards and senior leaders to verify that critical psychosocial controls are operating effectively, not merely that they exist in a policy document.
The governance questions that follow are specific. Does the organisation’s violence prevention programme address the full hierarchy of controls, starting with workplace design? Are concurrent duty obligations coordinated across the supply chain in practice? Does technology deployment comply with Digital Work Systems obligations in NSW? Are WHS and workers’ compensation functions sharing data and aligned at the prevention level? Are incident notification procedures current and tested against the December 2025 model amendments?
These are not operational questions. They belong at the board table.
How Safetysure Can Help
Safetysure’s psychosocial programme, led by specialist consultant Katie Lu, provides organisations with a structured, evidence-based approach to managing customer-driven violence (workplace violence psychosocial hazard Australia) and the broader psychosocial risk environment.
Our programme integrates WHS obligations across all relevant Australian jurisdictions, Respect@Work positive duty compliance, workers’ compensation risk management, supply chain coordination, and digital governance into a coherent prevention framework. We work with organisations across retail, banking, healthcare, transport, manufacturing, and high-risk industrial environments to identify gaps in existing controls, build appropriate management frameworks, and strengthen governance-level oversight.
To discuss how Safetysure’s psychosocial programme can support an organisation in meeting these obligations, contact us today.
This article provides general information only. It does not constitute legal, workers’ compensation, or professional WHS advice. Legislation and regulatory requirements vary by jurisdiction and are subject to change. Organisations should seek independent legal and WHS advice specific to their circumstances and jurisdiction before acting on the information contained here.
References
- Safe Work Australia, Workplace and Work-Related Violence and Aggression in Australia (Data Report, August 2024) <https://data.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/sites/default/files/2024-08/Work-related-violence-and-aggression_Report_August2024.pdf\> accessed 10 June 2026
- Safe Work Australia, Key Work Health and Safety Statistics Australia 2025 (Report, October 2025) <https://data.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/sites/default/files/2025-10/Key_Work_Health_and_Safety_Statistics_Australia_2025.pdf\> accessed 10 June 2026
- Safe Work Australia, Model Code of Practice: Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work (July 2022) <https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/sites/default/files/2022-08/model_code_of_practice_-_managing_psychosocial_hazards_at_work_25082022_0.pdf\> accessed 10 June 2026
- Safe Work Australia, Model Work Health and Safety Legislation Amendment (Incident Notification) 2025 <https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/doc/model-work-health-and-safety-legislation-amendment-incident-notification-2025\> accessed 10 June 2026
- Safe Work Australia, WHS Notifications: Incidents, Extended Absences and Suicides (Factsheet, December 2025, updated March 2026) <https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/doc/whs-notifications-incidents-extended-absences-and-suicides-fact-sheet\> accessed 10 June 2026
- Workers Compensation Act 1987 (NSW), as amended by Workers Compensation Legislation Amendment Act 2025 (NSW)
- Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Qld), s 19, s 27
- Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW), s 19, s 26A, s 27
- Work Health and Safety Amendment (Digital Work Systems) Act 2026 (NSW)
- Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (Vic)
- Occupational Health and Safety (Psychological Health) Regulations 2025 (Vic)
- Victorian Compliance Code: Psychosocial Hazards (December 2025)
- Australian Human Rights Commission, Guidelines for Complying with the Positive Duty under the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth) (August 2023) <https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/sex-discrimination/positive-duty-sex-discrimination-act/guidance-materials\> accessed 10 June 2026
- Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth), s 47C
Safetysure is an ISO 9001, 45001, and 14001 accredited work health and safety and occupational hygiene consulting firm operating across Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia, and the ACT.
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