Resource · Australia
Psychosocial hazards in the workplace: the Australian guide.
Psychosocial hazards are aspects of work design, work systems, management practices and workplace relationships that can cause psychological or physical harm. Under model Work Health and Safety Regulation 55, Australian employers must identify psychosocial hazards, eliminate the resulting risk so far as is reasonably practicable, and otherwise minimise it. This guide sets out the 17 hazards named in the Safe Work Australia Code of Practice, the duties that apply in each jurisdiction, how to run a psychosocial risk assessment, and the controls regulators expect to see.
What is a psychosocial hazard?
A psychosocial hazard is anything at work that could cause psychological harm — that is, anything that could harm someone's mental health. Under the model WHS Regulations it arises from, or relates to, the design or management of work, the working environment, plant at a workplace, or workplace interactions and behaviours.
The distinction that matters legally is between the hazard and the risk it creates. High job demands is a hazard. Psychosocial risk is the likelihood and severity of harm from exposure to it — shaped by how long, how often and how intensely workers are exposed, and by which other hazards are present at the same time. Duties attach to the risk. Identifying a hazard and leaving the exposure unchanged does not discharge the duty.
Harm is not limited to diagnosed mental illness. It includes psychological injury such as anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress, and also physical harm — musculoskeletal injury, cardiovascular disease and fatigue-related incidents are all recognised consequences of sustained psychosocial exposure. This is why psychosocial risk sits inside the safety system rather than alongside it as a wellbeing initiative.
Hazards also compound. A team carrying high demands will usually cope where job control, support and role clarity are strong. The same demands become a serious risk where workers have no say over how work is done, no accessible supervisor, and unclear accountabilities. Assessing hazards one at a time systematically understates real exposure.
The 17 psychosocial hazards, and what controls them.
Safe Work Australia's Model Code of Practice: Managing psychosocial hazards at work identifies the hazards below. Most workplaces carry several at once, and their interaction — not any single hazard — usually drives psychological injury claims.
| Hazard | What it looks like | Typical control |
|---|---|---|
| High job demands | Sustained workloads, time pressure, emotionally demanding work or long hours beyond what workers can reasonably manage. | Review workload allocation, resourcing and deadlines; monitor overtime and after-hours activity. |
| Low job demands | Work that is under-stimulating, highly repetitive or requires prolonged vigilance with little variation. | Rotate tasks, broaden role scope, build in variation and development. |
| Low job control | Little say over how, when or in what order work is done, including rigid monitoring. | Increase autonomy over methods and sequencing; consult workers on scheduling. |
| Poor support | Inadequate practical assistance, supervision, tools, training or emotional support from managers or colleagues. | Set supervision expectations, equip leaders to notice and respond to distress. |
| Lack of role clarity | Unclear, inconsistent or conflicting expectations, accountabilities and reporting lines. | Document role scope and decision rights; recheck after restructures. |
| Poor organisational change management | Change that is poorly planned, poorly communicated or imposed without consultation. | Consult early, communicate the rationale and timeline, support leaders through transition. |
| Inadequate reward and recognition | Effort and skill that go unacknowledged, or recognition applied inconsistently. | Build fair, transparent and timely recognition practices. |
| Poor organisational justice | Unfair, inconsistent or non-transparent decisions and procedures, including in performance management. | Standardise decision processes; provide appeal and review pathways. |
| Traumatic events or material | Exposure to death, serious injury, abuse, violence or distressing content as part of the work. | Limit and rotate exposure, provide trauma-informed supervision and post-incident support. |
| Remote or isolated work | Work performed away from support and assistance, including help in an emergency. | Check-in protocols, communication technology, emergency response planning. |
| Poor physical environment | Hazardous, uncomfortable or poorly maintained conditions such as noise, heat or unsafe premises. | Address the physical hazard; consult workers on environmental conditions. |
| Violence and aggression | Abuse, threats or assault from customers, clients, patients or the public. | Design-out risk, define escalation pathways, train and debrief frontline teams. |
| Bullying | Repeated unreasonable behaviour directed at a worker or group that creates a risk to health and safety. | Behavioural standards, early intervention, capable leaders and safe reporting. |
| Harassment, including sexual harassment | Unwelcome sexual conduct or harassment based on a protected attribute. | Meet the Positive Duty: prevention systems, bystander capability, trauma-informed response. |
| Conflict or poor workplace relationships | Unresolved interpersonal conflict, exclusion or hostile team dynamics. | Equip leaders to address conflict early; restore team norms after incidents. |
| Poor workplace relationships between workers and management | Low trust, punitive supervision, or leaders who dismiss concerns raised by workers. | Consultation mechanisms, speak-up pathways, leader capability development. |
| Inadequate systems and job insecurity | Faulty equipment, inadequate systems of work, or uncertainty about ongoing employment. | Fix systems of work; communicate honestly about role and contract security. |
What the law requires, state by state.
New South Wales
WHS Amendment Regulation 2022 plus the SafeWork NSW Code of Practice: Managing psychosocial hazards at work.
Queensland
Managing the risk of psychosocial hazards at work Code of Practice 2022, compulsory since April 2023.
Victoria
OHS general duties, WorkSafe Victoria psychosocial guidance and proposed psychological health regulations.
Western Australia
WHS (General) Regulations 2022 and the WorkSafe WA psychosocial hazards code.
South Australia, Tasmania, ACT, NT
Model WHS Regulation 55 adopted with aligned regulator guidance.
Commonwealth
Comcare scheme duties for Commonwealth employers and licensees.
Officers — including directors and executives — hold a separate personal due diligence duty under section 27 of the WHS Act. Where the hazard is sexual harassment or sex-based harassment, the AHRC Positive Duty imposes a further proactive prevention obligation enforceable by the Commission.
How to run a psychosocial risk assessment.
Step 1
Identify
Consult workers and HSRs, and triangulate incident, complaint, absence, turnover, exit and survey data. Consultation is a legal requirement, not a research preference.
Step 2
Assess
Weigh duration, frequency and severity of exposure, how hazards combine, and which cohorts carry more exposure — frontline, shift, isolated or client-facing workers.
Step 3
Control
Start at work design: workload, rostering, role clarity, decision rights and management practice. Training and wellbeing supports sit lower in the hierarchy of controls.
Step 4
Review
Re-test controls after incidents, restructures and new work. A control that workers say is not working is not a control.
A workplace culture review (see our step-by-step guide to the psychosocial risk assessment method) or trauma-informed focus groups are often the most defensible way to gather identification-stage evidence where the hazards involve conduct, conflict or harassment.
Warning signs that a psychosocial hazard is present.
Psychosocial hazards rarely announce themselves as a safety report. They usually surface first in operational and people data that sits outside the safety system. Patterns concentrated in one team, shift or reporting line almost always indicate work design or management practice rather than individual difference.
Work design and demand
- Sustained overtime, unused leave balances or after-hours system activity
- Vacancies held open while the workload is absorbed by the remaining team
- Deadlines routinely set without consultation on feasibility
People and conduct
- Grievances, complaints or exit interviews clustered in one team or reporting line
- Turnover materially above the organisational average in a specific area
- Concerns raised informally but never entering a formal reporting system
System and governance
- A psychosocial risk register that has not changed since it was created
- Controls listed as 'training delivered' with no effectiveness measure
- No psychosocial item on the board or executive safety report
The hierarchy of controls, applied to psychosocial risk.
The same hierarchy that governs physical safety applies to psychosocial risk. Most organisations start at the bottom — an Employee Assistance Program and a resilience workshop — and stop there. That sequence is the single most common reason a psychosocial control framework fails regulator scrutiny: the duty is to eliminate risk so far as is reasonably practicable, and higher-order controls must be shown to have been considered first.
- 1
Eliminate the hazard
Remove the source of risk from the work entirely. This is the primary duty — everything below is only permitted so far as elimination is not reasonably practicable.
Examples: Automating exposure to distressing content; removing a role requirement to work alone at night; ending a practice of unresourced on-call coverage.
- 2
Substitute, isolate or engineer
Change the work, the system or the environment so exposure is reduced by design rather than by individual effort.
Examples: Redesigning rosters to cap consecutive shifts; physical barriers and queue design at high-aggression service points; workflow changes that remove duplicated approvals.
- 3
Administrative controls
Policies, procedures, supervision, training and capability building. Effective, but dependent on people applying them consistently, so they sit lower in the hierarchy.
Examples: Workload allocation procedures; escalation pathways for aggression; leader capability development; trauma-informed response protocols; exposure rotation schedules.
- 4
Supports and personal measures
Assistance provided to individuals after exposure. These are legitimate and important, but they are the weakest control and cannot substitute for the levels above.
Examples: Employee Assistance Programs, counselling, resilience and wellbeing programs, post-incident debriefing.
Levels 3 and 4 are not optional extras — leader capability and trauma-informed response are genuine controls, and regulators expect them. The point is sequence: they supplement work redesign rather than substitute for it.
Psychosocial hazard profiles by sector.
Every workplace carries psychosocial risk, but the dominant hazards differ by the nature of the work. Knowing the typical profile for your sector is a starting point for identification — not a substitute for consulting your own workers.
Healthcare and emergency services
Traumatic events and material, violence and aggression from patients and the public, high job demands, shift and fatigue exposure, and moral distress where clinical demand exceeds capacity.
Mining, resources and construction
Remote or isolated work, fly-in fly-out rosters, bullying and harassment in male-dominated crews, poor physical environment, and low job control at the frontline.
Maritime, transport and logistics
Extended isolation from support, multi-national crews with language and hierarchy barriers to speaking up, fatigue, and limited access to help in an emergency.
Financial and professional services
High job demands and long hours cultures, performance management and organisational justice concerns, job insecurity through restructures, and client-driven aggression or unreasonable conduct.
Public sector and government
Exposure to distressing case material, public and customer aggression, machinery-of-government change, role ambiguity after restructures, and scrutiny-driven pressure.
Education and research
High workload and boundaryless work, casualisation and job insecurity, supervisor power imbalance, and aggression from students, parents or the public.
What a regulator asks to see.
Following an incident, complaint or proactive inspection, the question is not whether harm occurred but whether the duty was discharged. That is assessed on documentation. Organisations that manage psychosocial risk well can produce the following without preparation.
A psychosocial risk register
Hazards named individually rather than as 'wellbeing', with assessed risk, controls, named owners and review dates.
Consultation records
Evidence of who was consulted, when, what they raised and what changed as a result — including where a suggestion was not adopted and why.
Control effectiveness measures
For each control, how you know it is working. 'Training completion rate' is a delivery measure, not an effectiveness measure.
Governance reporting
Psychosocial risk reported to the board or executive with the same discipline as physical safety, including trend data and open actions.
Incident and response records
Evidence that reports were received, assessed, acted on and closed out, and that the response was trauma-informed.
Officer due diligence evidence
How directors and executives acquired and kept up knowledge of psychosocial risk, and how they verified that resources and processes were in place and used.
Why leader capability is the control regulators look for.
Most psychosocial hazards are created, amplified or contained by day-to-day management behaviour: how workload is allocated, how change is communicated, how conflict is handled, and how a leader responds the first time someone discloses distress. That makes people leaders both a hazard source and a primary control. Our psychosocial hazards and safety training with trauma-informed leadership builds that capability for Australian managers, and pairs with psychosocial risk advisory for the system-level controls, and board and executive briefings for officer due diligence. Organisations formalising the system usually align it with ISO 45003.
Hazard management in practice
Trusted partners
Psychosocial hazard clients.
Thank you again for such a great session. People were still talking about it the next day. You definitely made an impact.
Your facilitator
CEO, Author and Principal Consultant
Felicity Menzies
Every Culture Plus engagement is delivered with behavioural rigour and practical relevance by Felicity Menzies — psychology graduate, author, and specialist consultant.
- Role
- Founder, Culture Plus Consulting
- Qualification
- Bachelor of Arts (Psychology) — University Medallist; Fellow, Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand; Bachelor of Commerce; Advanced Accreditation, Cultural Intelligence; Oxford Saïd AI Governance, Compliance & Ethics; Certified AI Ethicist
- Experience
- 15+ years advising leading global and Australian private and government organisations; former senior executive in financial services and consulting
- Discipline
- Psychology, behavioural science & trauma-informed practice
- Published
- A World of Difference (2016); contributor to leading business and HR publications globally
- Recognition
- LinkedIn Top Voice; commendation in NSW Parliament
Psychosocial hazards: common questions.
While you're here
Related services
Psychosocial Hazards & Safety Training for Leaders
Equip leaders to manage psychosocial hazards under WHS Regulations, ISO 45003 and Positive Duty.
Psychosocial Hazards & Safety Training for Leaders →Psychosocial Hazards Consulting & Risk Assessment
Identify, assess and control psychosocial hazards at work — aligned with WHS regulator expectations.
Psychosocial Hazards Consulting & Risk Assessment →Employee Listening & Focus Groups
Independently facilitated, trauma-informed listening on respect, safety and inclusion.
Employee Listening & Focus Groups →Further reading
From the journal
No, You Cannot Checklist Your Way to Psychosocial Safety
Psychosocial Hazards in Australian Workplaces for HR Leaders: The Law Has Changed. Here Is What HR Leaders Now Need to Understand.