This is the seventh article in a weekly series on psychosocial hazard management in Australia. The series builds week on week, from the commercial stakes through recent prosecutions to The Psychosocial Safety Blueprint™, a proprietary executive operating model developed by Culture Plus for governing the systems that determine psychosocial safety. Subscribe on cultureplusconsulting.com.
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Australia has developed one of the world’s most comprehensive regulatory frameworks for psychosocial safety. Statutory duties, regulations, approved codes of practice, regulator guidance and an enforceable positive duty now establish clear expectations of organisations and their leaders.
What these instruments do not provide is an integrated model for governing the organisation so that those expectations are consistently translated into practice.
That is the focus of this article, and of the three articles that follow.
Australia’s statutory foundations
The Australian framework rests on three principal statutory foundations.
The primary duty
Under section 19 of the model Work Health and Safety Act, as enacted across the Commonwealth and harmonised states and territories, persons conducting a business or undertaking must eliminate risks to health and safety so far as is reasonably practicable or, where elimination is not reasonably practicable, minimise those risks.
This duty encompasses risks to psychological health. It is preventative by design and does not depend upon harm occurring, a complaint being made or an investigation commencing.
Officer due diligence
Under section 27, officers must exercise due diligence to ensure that the organisation complies with its duties. This requires officers to acquire and maintain current knowledge, understand the organisation’s operations and associated risks, ensure appropriate resources and processes are available, maintain effective information flows, establish processes for compliance and verify that those processes are operating as intended.
As examined in last week’s article, due diligence is not satisfied through passive oversight. It requires active, informed and verifiable governance.
Victoria’s parallel framework
Victoria operates outside the harmonised model WHS framework. However, the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 imposes comparable obligations. Employers must, so far as is reasonably practicable, provide and maintain a working environment that is safe and without risks to health, including psychological health.
The Occupational Health and Safety (Psychological Health) Regulations 2025, which commenced on 1 December 2025, have further clarified the regulatory expectations relating to psychological health.
The positive duty
Alongside work health and safety legislation sits a separate but complementary preventative obligation: the positive duty.
The Sex Discrimination Act 1984, as amended through the Respect@Work reforms, requires employers and PCBUs to take reasonable and proportionate measures to eliminate, as far as possible, unlawful sex discrimination, sexual harassment, sex-based harassment, hostile workplace environments on the ground of sex and related victimisation.
The Australian Human Rights Commission has held powers to investigate and enforce compliance with the positive duty since December 2023.
Although these regimes arise from different areas of law, they share the same essential logic: organisations must identify and address the conditions that create a risk of harm rather than relying principally on responses after harm has occurred.
Regulatory guidance defines expectations but not an operating model
A substantial body of guidance supports the statutory framework.
Approved codes of practice explain what reasonably practicable management of psychosocial hazards may require. They are admissible in court proceedings as evidence of what is known about a hazard, risk or control and may assist in determining whether a statutory duty has been met.
Regulator guidance further translates legislative requirements into operational expectations and informs regulatory inspection and enforcement.
The Australian Human Rights Commission’s Seven Standards—Leadership, Culture, Knowledge, Risk Management, Support, Reporting and Response, and Monitoring, Evaluation and Transparency—describe the factors the Commission considers relevant to compliance with the positive duty. Of the available guidance, they provide the most comprehensive organisational framework.
Each instrument nevertheless serves a defined purpose. Codes of practice support the interpretation and application of WHS duties. Regulator guidance assists duty holders and informs regulatory activity. The Seven Standards articulate the Commission’s expectations under the positive duty.
None was designed to function as an integrated executive governance model. They establish the outcomes required and provide guidance on relevant practices, but they do not determine how accountability, decision-making, information and assurance should operate across the enterprise.
International expectations are converging
For listed and multinational organisations, comparable expectations are emerging across jurisdictions.
In the European Union, psychosocial risk is increasingly addressed through occupational health and safety requirements in conjunction with workforce-related sustainability reporting. Under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and ESRS S1, in-scope organisations—including certain large non-EU groups with substantial EU operations—may be required to disclose material workforce-related impacts, risks and opportunities. Psychological health is therefore becoming relevant not only to internal workforce management, but also to external disclosure and corporate accountability.
In the United Kingdom, employers are expected to manage work-related stress through established health and safety risk-management processes. The Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023 also introduced a proactive duty requiring employers to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment.
In Canada, the National Standard for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace, CSA Z1003, is voluntary but internationally influential. It has informed organisational practice within Canada and in other jurisdictions.
ISO 45003 provides an international standard for managing psychological health and safety at work within an ISO 45001 occupational health and safety management system. It is also becoming increasingly relevant to ESG assessment, procurement, assurance and investor due diligence.
The legal mechanisms differ, but the direction is consistent. Organisations are increasingly expected to identify psychosocial risks proactively, implement effective controls and demonstrate that their governance arrangements are operating in practice.
The governance decisions the frameworks leave to organisations
The regulatory framework establishes the outcomes organisations must achieve: psychosocial hazards must be identified, risks eliminated or minimised, preventative measures implemented, compliance monitored and evidence maintained. It does not, however, prescribe the governance architecture required to deliver those outcomes consistently.
The allocation of executive accountability for psychosocial risk remains an organisational decision. So too does the division of responsibility across People and Culture, Risk, Safety, Legal and Operations; the information provided to the board; the leading indicators used to identify emerging risk; and the mechanisms through which concerns are escalated, investigated and resolved.
The same applies to consequential business decisions. Legislation does not design the process through which psychosocial risks are considered before approving a restructure, introducing a new performance system, changing workloads or implementing new forms of digital monitoring. Nor does it determine how leadership behaviour should influence selection, development, remuneration, promotion or succession. These decisions sit within the organisation’s systems of governance and management.
This helps explain why organisations subject to the same legal duties can achieve materially different outcomes. An organisation may have comprehensive policies, mandatory training and established complaint procedures, yet continue to manage psychosocial safety primarily as an HR or compliance matter. Its systems may respond competently once harm is reported while remaining poorly equipped to detect and address the organisational conditions creating the risk.
A stronger approach treats psychosocial safety as an enterprise governance capability. Accountability is clearly allocated. Decision rights are defined. Reliable information enables executive and board oversight. Material risks are considered before significant decisions are approved. Escalation mechanisms connect individual concerns with patterns of organisational risk, and assurance processes test whether controls are operating effectively in practice.
The difference is not simply the quality of an organisation’s policies or training. It is whether psychosocial safety has been integrated into the systems through which the organisation is directed, managed and held accountable.
Law establishes the duty. Governance determines performance.
The two-page executive summary of The Psychosocial Safety Blueprint™ maps the relationship between legal duties, regulatory guidance and the governance capability required to connect them.
Download the full Psychosocial Safety Blueprint™ →
Next week: Why an organisation cannot govern physical safety well and psychosocial safety poorly — and what this reveals about the maturity of its broader safety governance.
This article provides executive advisory commentary, not legal advice. Organisations should obtain advice on their specific legal obligations from appropriately qualified legal practitioners.
Felicity Menzies is the CEO and Principal Consultant of Culture Plus Consulting, a specialist practice focused on building respectful, safe, and inclusive workplace cultures across corporate and government organisations in Australia. Culture Plus Consulting provides workplace culture diagnostics and tailored interventions, including trauma-informed leadership development programmes, to help organisations build the capability to lead safely and effectively.
Sources
- Model Work Health and Safety Act 2011 and harmonised Commonwealth, state and territory WHS legislation, sections 19 and 27.
- Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (Vic); Occupational Health and Safety (Psychological Health) Regulations 2025 (Vic), SR 103/2025, commencing 1 December 2025.
- Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth), as amended by the Anti-Discrimination and Human Rights Legislation Amendment (Respect at Work) Act 2022 (Cth); Australian Human Rights Commission, Guidelines for Complying with the Positive Duty (2023), including the Seven Standards.
- Directive (EU) 2022/2464—the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive—and ESRS S1, Own Workforce; Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023 (UK); National Standard for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace, CSA Z1003; ISO 45003:2021.
- The Psychosocial Safety Blueprint™, Culture Plus Executive Papers No. 01, Chapters 6, 8 and 9.