Psychosocial risk management has become the defining workplace health and safety challenge for Australian employers. With mental health claims increasing by 161% over the past decade and every Australian jurisdiction now enforcing explicit psychosocial hazard obligations, the message from regulators is unambiguous: psychological health must be managed with the same rigour as physical safety.
This article examines the current regulatory landscape, the data driving enforcement priorities, and the practical steps that duty holders must take to meet their obligations. In the harmonised model WHS jurisdictions, the primary duty holder is the person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU). In Victoria, which operates outside the model WHS framework, the primary duty holder is the employer under the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004. This article uses “PCBU” and “employer” as the context requires, but duty holders in all jurisdictions should refer to the legislation applicable in their own state or territory.
What Are Psychosocial Hazards?
Psychosocial hazards are factors in the design, management or conduct of work, or in workplace interactions, that may cause psychological or physical harm to workers. Under the model WHS framework, psychosocial hazards are defined as hazards that arise from, or relate to, the design or management of work, a work environment, plant at a workplace, or workplace interactions or behaviours, and that may cause psychological harm (whether or not they also cause physical harm). Victoria’s definition is broader, extending to personal or work-related interactions arising in the working environment and framing the test in terms of factors that may cause an employee to experience negative psychological responses (including cognitive, emotional and behavioural responses and the physiological processes associated with them) that create a risk to health or safety. Although the practical effect is largely similar, Victoria’s formulation captures a wider range of interaction types and response pathways.
Common psychosocial hazards recognised across Australian WHS codes of practice include high job demands, low job control, poor organisational support, inadequate role clarity, remote or isolated work, poor organisational change management, harassment, bullying, aggression and violence, and exposure to traumatic events or materials.
The critical distinction that regulators are now enforcing is between treating psychosocial risks as a human resources or cultural matter and treating them as a technical safety discipline. The former is no longer sufficient. Duty holders must identify specific hazards, assess the associated risks, implement controls using the hierarchy of controls, and monitor their effectiveness, exactly as they would for any physical hazard.
The Regulatory Landscape in 2026
Australia’s psychosocial safety regulation has reached a significant milestone. With Victoria’s Occupational Health and Safety (Psychological Health) Regulations 2025 commencing on 1 December 2025, every Australian jurisdiction now has formal regulatory frameworks requiring the identification, assessment and control of psychosocial hazards.
The harmonised model WHS jurisdictions, being Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia, Tasmania, the Northern Territory, Western Australia, the Australian Capital Territory, and the Commonwealth, address psychosocial hazards through regulations 55A to 55D of their respective WHS Regulations, supported by approved codes of practice such as Safe Work Australia’s Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work Code of Practice. Victoria’s supporting instrument is the Compliance Code: Psychological Health (Edition 1, September 2025), which has a different legal status from an approved code of practice under the model WHS framework. A breach of the Compliance Code is not itself a breach of the OHS Act, but an employer who complies with it will generally be taken to have met the relevant duties under the Act and Regulations.
It is important to note that not all harmonised jurisdictions have adopted the regulations identically. The original model WHS Regulations explicitly excluded regulation 36 (the hierarchy of controls) from the psychosocial risk management duty under regulation 55C. However, Queensland, the Commonwealth, the Australian Capital Territory, South Australia, and now New South Wales (through the WHS Regulation 2025) have each amended their regulations to require the application of the hierarchy of controls to psychosocial risks. The Northern Territory’s original 2023 amendment excluded regulation 36, but more recent regulatory commentary groups the NT with those jurisdictions that now require the hierarchy. Practitioners should verify the current NT position directly with NT WorkSafe before relying on either interpretation. Western Australia and Tasmania have not made this amendment, maintaining the original model position where the hierarchy is not explicitly mandated for psychosocial hazards. This creates a material compliance variation for organisations operating across multiple states.
Victoria’s framework operates under the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 and its new Psychological Health Regulations, which impose a modified hierarchy of controls with a particularly significant constraint: information, instruction and training cannot be used as the exclusive or predominant control measure unless higher-order controls are not reasonably practicable. This is more prescriptive than the position in any other Australian jurisdiction.
Queensland imposes an additional obligation under regulation 55BA requiring PCBUs to maintain a written prevention plan specifically targeting sexual harassment and sex- and gender-based harassment. This requirement is not replicated in all other jurisdictions.
New South Wales has further strengthened its framework through the WHS Regulation 2025, which commenced in August 2025 and now explicitly mandates the application of the hierarchy of control measures to psychosocial risks. From 1 July 2026, NSW codes of practice will also carry greater legal weight, requiring PCBUs to follow them unless they can demonstrate an equivalent or higher standard of safety.
For organisations operating across multiple jurisdictions, the practical consequence is that compliance strategies must account for both the harmonised model provisions and the jurisdiction-specific variations. A single national policy may establish the baseline, but it must be supplemented by jurisdiction-specific risk assessments, control measures and documentation.
The Data Behind the Regulatory Focus
The regulatory intensification is grounded in compelling national claims data. Safe Work Australia’s Key Work Health and Safety Statistics Australia 2025 report, published in October 2025, provides the most current national picture.
Mental health conditions accounted for 17,600 serious workers’ compensation claims in 2023–24, constituting 12% of all serious workplace injury claims. This represents a 14.7% increase from the previous year. Over the longer term, mental health claims have grown by 161% since 2013–14, the largest increase across any major injury group.
The severity of these claims is particularly striking. The median time lost for mental health claims is 35.7 weeks, approximately 4.8 times the median across all other injuries and diseases. Median compensation for mental health claims reaches approximately $67,400, substantially exceeding the cost of physical injury claims.
The three primary causes identified in the data are workplace harassment and bullying (33.2% of mental health claims), work pressure (24.2%), and exposure to violence and harassment (15.7%). Gender disparities are significant: mental health claims represent 17.2% of female workers’ total claims, compared with 8.2% for male workers.
These figures are not merely statistical observations. They directly inform regulatory enforcement priorities and resource allocation. As claim volumes rise in a particular category, regulators concentrate inspection and compliance activity in that area. This pattern is already visible in the enforcement actions of 2025 and early 2026.
Enforcement Is Accelerating
Australian WHS regulators have moved decisively beyond education and awareness campaigns into active enforcement of psychosocial obligations. Several enforcement actions in 2025 illustrate the trajectory.
In September 2025, SafeWork NSW issued a prohibition notice to the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), requiring a pause on staff reductions because of the risk of serious and imminent psychological harm to employees. The regulator stated explicitly that employers must manage psychosocial risks in the same manner as any other health and safety issue. The notice was subsequently lifted after UTS engaged with SafeWork NSW and agreed to extend consultation timelines and modify its communications approach. SafeWork NSW also issued improvement notices to two faculties at Macquarie University, directing them to consult workplace safety committees during restructuring processes.
In December 2025, the NSW Local Court handed down a conviction against the Commonwealth Department of Defence for failing to manage psychosocial hazards, following the death of a Royal Australian Air Force technician at RAAF Base Williamtown in 2020. The Department was fined $188,000. This is understood to be the first conviction under federal WHS law with particulars specifically relating to psychosocial hazards, and it demonstrates that enforcement extends to the most serious end of the regulatory spectrum.
These actions signal a critical development: regulators now view poorly managed organisational change not as a human resources shortcoming, but as a potential WHS breach. Restructures, redundancy programs and transformation initiatives that fail to identify, assess and control foreseeable psychosocial hazards are attracting sustained regulatory scrutiny.
Enforcement attention is also intensifying in customer-facing industries, where risks relating to aggression, violence and trauma exposure are increasingly recognised as core psychosocial hazards. WorkSafe Victoria has reported that the top psychosocial hazards reported to its advisory line in 2023–24 were bullying, poor support, and aggression or violence.
Practical Requirements for Compliance
Meeting psychosocial risk management obligations requires a structured, documented approach. The following elements represent the minimum expectations across Australian jurisdictions.
Hazard identification must be systematic and ongoing, not limited to periodic surveys or reactive responses to complaints. Duty holders should examine work design, workload distribution, job control, organisational support structures, change management processes, interpersonal behaviours and environmental conditions. Worker consultation, including through health and safety representatives where they exist, is not optional. It is a regulatory requirement at each stage of the risk management process.
Risk assessment must consider the duration, frequency and severity of workers’ exposure to identified psychosocial hazards, as well as how multiple hazards may interact and compound risk. A single hazard in isolation may present a manageable risk; the same hazard combined with others may create a serious and foreseeable risk of harm.
Control measures must follow the hierarchy of controls in those jurisdictions that have explicitly mandated it for psychosocial risks (Queensland, NSW, SA, ACT and the Commonwealth, with the NT position requiring verification). The first consideration is elimination: can the hazard be removed entirely? Where elimination is not reasonably practicable, higher-order controls such as altering work design, systems of work, management practices or the work environment must be prioritised over lower-order controls such as training, information and instruction. Victoria’s regulations make this hierarchy particularly explicit. Even in jurisdictions where the hierarchy is not yet mandated for psychosocial risks (Western Australia and Tasmania), applying it represents current best practice and a defensible compliance position.
Review and monitoring must be continuous. Control measures should be reviewed when work conditions change, when new information becomes available, when incidents or complaints occur, following notifiable incidents, and when requested by health and safety representatives. A psychosocial risk assessment conducted once and filed is not compliant with any Australian jurisdiction’s requirements.
Documentation must demonstrate the duty holder’s active management of psychosocial risks. This includes risk registers, consultation records, control measure implementation and review records, and evidence of monitoring and continuous improvement. Regulators increasingly expect operational evidence, not merely policy statements, to demonstrate compliance.
Moving Beyond Compliance
Organisations that treat psychosocial risk management as a compliance exercise alone will find themselves perpetually reactive. The most effective approach integrates psychosocial risk management into the broader safety management system, consistent with the framework established by ISO 45003:2021, Occupational health and safety management: Psychological health and safety at work.
ISO 45003 provides a structured methodology for managing psychosocial risks within an ISO 45001 occupational health and safety management system. It emphasises leadership commitment, worker participation, data-driven decision-making and continual improvement. These principles align with and reinforce Australian regulatory requirements.
The organisations that will navigate this regulatory environment most effectively are those that treat psychosocial risk as a technical discipline, embed it within their safety governance structures, invest in building internal capability, and commit to measuring what matters and closing the loop through systematic review.
Psychosocial risk management is not a temporary compliance exercise. It represents a permanent expansion of workplace safety obligations in Australia, and the regulatory, reputational and human costs of inadequate management will only increase.
Safetysure is an ISO 9001/45001/14001-accredited workplace health, safety and occupational hygiene consultancy. For specialist advice on psychosocial risk management, contact our psychosocial programme lead Katie Lu on 1300 087 888 or visit safetysure.com.au.