Impossible deadlines, a manager nobody can talk to, or a colleague who keeps getting left off the invite can go unnoticed for months while everyone carries on with their busy day-to-day activities. But they can be a hazard to a person’s mental health and Australian employers are now expected to treat those risks with the same seriousness as a wet floor.
The place to start is a psychosocial risk assessment. If something goes wrong, the records it produces are what a regulator will ask to see. A good one does more than tick a compliance box; it shows where work is causing harm and what needs to change.
What Is a Psychosocial Hazard?
A psychosocial hazard is anything in the way work is designed or managed that can harm someone’s mental health, and through it, their physical health. It might come from the job itself, the environment, the way work is organised or the way people treat each other. If a risk can’t be eliminated, you reduce it as far as is reasonably practicable.
Safe Work Australia’s model Code of Practice (2022) is the main guide, though it’s a model only. Each state and territory has adopted its own version, so check yours. Enforcement sits with your state or territory regulator rather than Safe Work Australia, and it’s worth confirming which one covers your business.
The 14 Hazards in the Code of Practice
The Code names 14, and plenty will be familiar straight away. They fall into four broad groups:
- How the job is designed: high or poorly managed job demands (rosters with no real recovery between shifts), low job control, low support (a new starter left without training or tools) and unclear roles (two managers giving opposite instructions).
- How the organisation runs: poorly managed change, low reward and recognition, and poor organisational justice (rules that apply to some people and get waived for others).
- Where and what people are exposed to: traumatic events or material, remote or isolated work, and a poor physical environment such as noise, heat or cramped conditions.
- How people treat each other: violence and aggression, bullying, harassment (including sexual harassment), and conflict or poor workplace relationships.
It’s rarely one hazard on its own. Three or four usually stack up quietly, and together they do far more damage than any single one would suggest.
How to Manage Psychosocial Hazards
There are four steps, and you don’t need a consultant to begin.
Identify: Start with what you already hold: incident reports, complaints, sick leave patterns, what people said in exit interviews. Then watch how the work really happens, which isn’t always how the process document says it does. Anonymous employee surveys help, because most people won’t volunteer to be the one who spoke up.
Assess: Work out who’s affected, how often, how badly and for how long. Look at how multiple hazards can come together to compound the situation, e.g. someone who is approached by an aggressive colleague is in a worse position if they don’t have their Managers support than someone who does.
Control: Remove the cause if you can. If you can’t, redesign the work. A new policy by itself rarely changes much, and the Code says so plainly.
Review: Come back to your controls before major changes, when something new comes up and whenever a worker raises a concern. Talk to your people at every stage, and write down what you did and how it went.
Building the Skills to Follow Through
Many of these hazards come back to how people communicate and manage each other. The Code itself recommends supervisor development and training in conflict resolution, giving feedback and emotional intelligence.
Assessment tools can support that, with one limit: they build leadership capability and don’t change how the work is designed. Extended DISC® reports show how each person communicates, what motivates them and what puts them under pressure, which makes it easier for a team to raise difficult issues early. 360 feedback gives leaders anonymous input from the managers, peers and direct reports who work with them every day. It can provide valuable insights into psychological hazards, helping leaders recognise potential risks, reflect on their impact and take positive steps towards creating a safer, healthier and more supportive workplace. When you’re matching people to roles, cognitive ability tests provide objective insights into an individual’s reasoning, problem-solving and learning abilities. These insights can help organisations make informed decisions about role suitability and development needs, supporting a broader approach to matching job demands with employee capabilities.
None of this replaces a proper risk assessment. It just gives the changes you choose a better chance of lasting.
Why Risk Assessments Go Nowhere
Researchers use the term psychosocial safety climate for how seriously an organisation treats mental health and safety in practice, as opposed to in the handbook. If employees feel that raising concerns could have negative consequences, they stay quiet, and the hazard register ends up looking suspiciously clean.
Safe Work Australia has commissioned research on this, including the Australian Workplace Barometer, and the findings are consistent. A short anonymous survey, repeated every so often, usually tells you more about your climate than a policy review will.
Where to Start
Pick one team and run the assessments. Then set the results against what you already know; chances are it’s something you half suspected. If you’d like some guidance, get in touch with HR Profiling Solutions.
Frequently Asked Questions
Under WHS laws, employers must eliminate psychosocial risks as far as is reasonably practicable, and reduce them where elimination isn’t possible. You can’t do either until you know what the risks are, so the assessment is how you find out. Requirements vary a little between states and territories, so check with your regulator.
Not on its own. An anonymous survey is a good place to begin, since people are more honest when their name isn’t on it. Then put the results next to everything else you know: incident reports, absenteeism, turnover, exit interviews and how the work gets done day to day.
There’s no fixed schedule. Review your controls regularly, and again whenever something shifts, like a restructure, a new system, changed rosters or a worker raising a concern. Record each review. That record is what shows you’ve acted.
Yes. The duty is the same whatever your size; the process just gets smaller. In a small team, that might mean spotting the hazards, talking to every worker and keeping a short note of what you change.
The business’s, which means its leaders. HR can run the process and managers can deal with everyday issues, but it won’t get far without visible backing from the top. Senior leaders have their own obligations under WHS law too, so they can’t simply hand it down.
They don’t replace a risk assessment, but they can help with the people side of it. Extended DISC® shows how individuals communicate and respond to pressure, and 360 feedback gives leaders honest, anonymous input on how they’re coming across. Running either again after a change also shows whether your controls are working.
