Psychosocial risk assessment: how to actually do one.

The four steps.

1. Step 1

   Identify the hazards present in the work

   Identification must be evidence-based and consultative. Consultation with workers and health and safety representatives is a legal requirement under the WHS Act, not a methodology preference.

   • —Consult workers, HSRs and supervisors — including shift, remote, frontline and labour-hire workers
   • —Triangulate incident reports, hazard reports, grievances, EAP utilisation trends, absence, turnover and exit data
   • —Review workload, rostering, change activity and customer-facing exposure
   • —Use validated survey instruments where available, but never rely on a survey alone

2. Step 2

   Assess the risk each hazard creates

   Assessment weighs how likely harm is and how serious it could be, taking account of how hazards combine. Hazards rarely act alone: high demands plus low control plus poor support is a materially different risk profile to any one of them.

   • —Duration, frequency and severity of exposure
   • —How hazards interact and compound across a role or team
   • —Which cohorts carry higher exposure or lower recourse
   • —Existing controls and whether workers say they actually work

3. Step 3

   Control the risk

   Eliminate the risk so far as is reasonably practicable. Where elimination is not possible, minimise it by working down the hierarchy of controls — starting at work design, not individual resilience.

   • —Eliminate or substitute: redesign the work, remove the exposure, resource the role properly
   • —Engineering and isolation: physical safety measures, technology, rostered rotation out of traumatic content
   • —Administrative: policy, escalation pathways, supervision protocols, leader capability development
   • —Support: EAP and wellbeing services — a last line, never the primary control

4. Step 4

   Review and maintain controls

   Controls must be reviewed and, if necessary, revised so they remain effective. Review is triggered by events, not only by the calendar.

   • —After an incident, complaint, notifiable event or psychological injury claim
   • —Before and after restructures, new systems, or changes to work
   • —When a worker or HSR reports a control is not working
   • —At a defined interval, with results reported to officers as due diligence evidence

Psychosocial risk assessment: common questions.