Psychosocial hazards under Australian WHS law
How work is designed is now a safety duty.
Employers must now identify, assess and control psychosocial hazards: the way work is designed, managed and experienced. This guide explains the duty, and what it takes to be ready for an inspection.
Ten minutes. No sign-up required.
The problem
The fastest-growing risk in Australian workplaces is not machinery. It is the work itself.
Serious psychological claims are up 161% in a decade. No other claim category is growing faster.
Median payout for a psychological claim: $67,400. Other serious claims: $16,300.
Median time off work for a psychological claim. Other serious claims: about seven.
The share of serious claims that are now psychological. The highest on record, and still rising.
Source: Safe Work Australia, Key WHS Statistics Australia 2025 (2023-24 workers' compensation data).
The reframe
Surveys measure sentiment.
Inspections examine evidence.
Surveys and wellbeing programs matter. They tell you how work feels, and they count towards consultation. But an inspector asks a different question: what can you show? Most organisations find the gap between those two questions the hard way.
What surveys tell you
- How people experience work, at a point in time
- A valuable signal about where to look closer
- One useful input to consultation
- Not, by itself, the record an inspector asks to see
What inspectors ask for
- Documented hazards, controls, consultation and review
- Evidence mapped to your jurisdiction's specific requirements
- Proof that gaps are known, prioritised and being addressed
- A dated, retrievable record of diligence
The test that matters
If an inspector arrived tomorrow, what could you put on the table?
An inspection is not a conversation about intentions. It is a request for documents, usually on the day. Most organisations can produce some of this list. Very few can produce all of it.
- A hazard register naming your psychosocial risks
- Risk assessments for each of them
- Controls mapped to each hazard, in place and dated
- Records of genuine worker consultation
- Evidence your leaders are trained and competent
- Review records showing controls are checked and improved
All dated. All retrievable. That is what inspection ready means.
The framework
Seven interventions. One operating system.
Options, not steps. Pick what your organisation needs, in any order. The four stages just group them by the question they answer.
The operating system. Every intervention below can be monitored, tracked and evidenced in RiskProof.
How it works ↓Understand
What does the law require - and where do we stand?
Audit readiness checklist
Free · ten minutes · onlineTen minutes online, against the questions an inspection asks. Your highest-risk areas, flagged first.
You get: a clear starting point, before spending a dollar.
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Built around the questions inspectors ask, benchmarked against the Code of Practice. Answer online, no sign-up, and see your readiness picture straight away.
Build organisation-wide understanding
Healthy Minds · 90-min leaders · 60-min all staffA 90-minute briefing for boards and leaders on the duty they now carry, and a 60-minute session for all staff.
You get: a workforce that understands the duty, from the board down.
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Leaders get the law, their personal due diligence duty, and what regulators ask of them - in 90 minutes. Staff get a 60-minute session that puts everyone on the same page. Delivered live by Healthy Minds psychologists, in person or online.
Measure
Where are our risks, and what are our people experiencing?
AI psychosocial risk assessment
HumanListening® · The Evolved GroupA conversational AI assessment of what your people are experiencing, hazard by hazard. Quantified and benchmarked.
You get: a risk profile grounded in your own workforce's experience.
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Built on HumanListening®, The Evolved Group's industry-awarded AI platform. Your people answer in their own words; the analysis maps their responses to the hazards and benchmarks the results. Findings are delivered with organisational health expert Dr Paula Conroy.
Manage
Reduce the risk - and evidence every control.
Leader capability microlearning
Forget Me Not® · five minutes a dayFive minutes a day on the Forget Me Not® platform until every leader reaches knowledge mastery. Progress you can see and report.
You get: leader competency you can prove, not attendance records.
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Spaced five-minute modules, curated by Healthy Minds psychologists, that repeat and adapt until each leader hits mastery. Live analytics show who is there, who needs a nudge, and where the gaps are.
Policies, consultation and work design
Perks People Solutions · Maeve ConsultingWorkplace-relations lawyers on your policies. Job design specialists on the work itself. The higher-order controls regulators look for first.
You get: controls above the training line, documented.
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Perks People Solutions' workplace-relations lawyers review or develop your policies against the Code of Practice. Maeve Consulting redesigns the work itself - job design is one of the strongest controls there is, and one of the least used.
Improve
Make it routine, and prove it improves.
Embed everyday practice
One Conversation · Healthy MindsA monthly 15-minute conversation for every leader with every person. Issues surface early, and every conversation becomes consultation evidence.
You get: prevention as routine - the doing, the maintaining, the improving.
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One Conversation runs inside a catch-up leaders already have. Five topic cards - workload, support, role clarity, relationships, change - one agreed next step, one line written down. Each line is evidence of genuine, ongoing consultation.
Reassess and benchmark
Annual cycleRe-measure and benchmark year on year, so improvement is shown rather than claimed.
You get: proof the system works over time.
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Re-run the assessment, re-score your readiness, compare against your baseline and your industry. A trend line beats an assertion - with boards and with regulators.
The operating system
The operating system underneath.
RiskProof is not one of the seven interventions. It is where the evidence lives: every hazard, control, action and record in one place, scored against each jurisdiction you operate in, with board reports and the Evidence Pack generated live.
The interventions work without RiskProof, and RiskProof works without them. Run together, the whole system is inspection ready.
You can have one without the other.
Your policies and documents mapped to every hazard - your inspection readiness, hazard by hazard.
Missing controls and evidence identified and prioritised, with model templates to work from.
Actions assigned, dated and tracked - board reports and the Evidence Pack, generated live.
The hazards
Every hazard has two views.
One switch, every card: how each hazard shows up at work, or what an inspector asks you to produce for it.
Job demands - too high or too low
Low job control
Poor support
Lack of role clarity
Poor organisational change management
Inadequate reward and recognition
Poor organisational justice
Traumatic events or material
Who is behind this
Built by psychologists. Grounded in the regulations.
This guide is published by Healthy Minds, an Australian provider of preventive psychology services founded by clinical psychologist Dr Tom Nehmy and corporate health expert Nick Lee OAM, with award-winning research published in peer-reviewed journals. The software behind it is RiskProof, built to score an organisation's existing documents against every Australian jurisdiction's psychosocial requirements.
Why this exists: prevention beats repair. Tom has spent more than 20 years in prevention science; Nick has built corporate health programs since 2010. The law now asks employers to prevent psychological harm rather than respond to it - the work this team has been doing all along.
Around them is a specialist partner network covering assessment, training, policy and job design. Meet the team →
Find out where you stand.
Ten minutes, free, no sign-up. A clear baseline, with your highest-risk areas flagged first.