ISO 45003:2021 — Occupational health and safety management: Psychological health and safety at work — Guidelines for managing psychosocial risks — is the first global standard for managing psychosocial risk within an occupational health and safety management system. It gives guidance on identifying psychosocial hazards, assessing and controlling risk, and continually improving psychological health and safety at work.

Can you be certified to ISO 45003?

No. ISO 45003 is a guidance standard, not a requirements standard, so it cannot be certified against on its own. Organisations certify to ISO 45001 (occupational health and safety management systems) and use ISO 45003 to extend that system to psychosocial risk. Some providers offer non-accredited attestation or alignment statements; these are not ISO certification.

Is ISO 45003 mandatory in Australia?

No. Australian legal obligations come from the model WHS Act and Regulations, state WHS regulations and codes of practice, and the AHRC Positive Duty. ISO 45003 is voluntary guidance — but because it aligns closely with those duties, adopting it is a practical way to build a defensible psychosocial risk management system.

What is the difference between ISO 45001 and ISO 45003?

ISO 45001 is the certifiable requirements standard for occupational health and safety management systems overall. ISO 45003 is guidance that applies that framework specifically to psychological health and psychosocial risk. ISO 45003 does not replace ISO 45001; it extends it.

What psychosocial hazards does ISO 45003 cover?

ISO 45003 groups hazards into three domains: how work is organised (roles, job demands, job control, workload, work schedule, job security, remote work), social factors at work (relationships, leadership, culture, recognition, support, civility, bullying, harassment and violence) and the work environment, equipment and hazardous tasks (including exposure to traumatic material).

How do you implement ISO 45003?

Establish leadership commitment and a psychosocial risk policy, define scope and interested parties, identify hazards through worker consultation and data, assess and control risk using the hierarchy of controls, build leader and worker competence, monitor leading and lagging indicators, and run management review as part of a Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle.

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ISO 45003 explained: the psychosocial risk standard.

ISO 45003:2021 is the international guidance standard for managing psychosocial risk inside an occupational health and safety management system. It is not certifiable on its own and it is not law in Australia — but it maps closely to the duties in the model WHS Regulations, and it gives boards and executives an internationally recognised framework for demonstrating that psychosocial risk is being managed systematically rather than reactively.

Build an ISO 45003-aligned system →How to run a risk assessment

The three hazard domains.

ISO 45003 organises psychosocial hazards into three domains. They overlap substantially with the 17 hazards in the Safe Work Australia Code of Practice, which is why an ISO 45003-aligned system also satisfies most Australian identification expectations.

How work is organised

Roles and expectations, job demands and pace, job control and autonomy, organisational and job design, resourcing, work scheduling, remote and isolated work, and job security.

Social factors at work

Interpersonal relationships, leadership quality, organisational and workgroup culture, recognition and reward, career development, support, supervision, civility and respect, and bullying, harassment and violence.

Work environment, equipment and hazardous tasks

Inadequate equipment and facilities, unsafe or unpleasant physical conditions, and exposure to hazardous or emotionally demanding tasks including traumatic material.

The Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle.

Plan

Determine the context, interested parties and scope; establish psychosocial risk policy, objectives and leadership commitment; identify hazards and assess risk.

Do

Implement controls, competence and awareness building, consultation and participation, communication, and documented information.

Check

Monitor, measure and evaluate — including leading indicators, incident and injury data, and worker feedback — and internally audit.

Act

Address nonconformity, respond to incidents, and drive continual improvement through management review.

How ISO 45003 maps to Australian obligations.

ISO 45003 elements mapped to Australian WHS and Positive Duty obligations
ISO 45003 element	Australian obligation it supports
Hazard identification	ISO 45003 clause 6.1.2 aligns closely with the identification duty in model WHS Regulation 55 and the Safe Work Australia Code of Practice.
Consultation and participation	ISO 45003 clause 5.4 maps to the consultation duties in sections 47–49 of the WHS Act.
Leadership and commitment	ISO 45003 clause 5.1 supports the officer due diligence duty in section 27 of the WHS Act.
Controls and hierarchy	ISO 45003 clause 8.1.2 mirrors the hierarchy of controls applied to psychosocial risk in Australian regulator guidance.
Performance evaluation	ISO 45003 clause 9 provides the monitoring and review evidence Australian regulators request after an incident.
Positive Duty overlap	Harassment and sexual harassment sit inside ISO 45003's social factors, and also trigger the separate proactive AHRC Positive Duty.

Alignment is not compliance. ISO 45003 tells you how to build the system; Australian law tells you what the system must achieve. Where the two diverge, the WHS Regulations, the applicable state code of practice and the Positive Duty govern.

Where implementations fail.

The documentation is rarely the problem. Implementations fail at the point of execution: policies exist, but people leaders have never been taught to recognise a psychosocial hazard in their own management practice, or to respond to disclosure without amplifying harm. ISO 45003 makes competence an explicit clause for exactly that reason. Our psychosocial hazards and safety training with trauma-informed leadership builds that competence, and board and executive briefings cover the leadership and management review clauses at officer level.

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Management systems in practice