What employers must do
Employers have a legal responsibility to protect their workers by managing hazards and risks in the workplace. This responsibility has now been specifically expanded to include psychosocial risks, as a result of new national and state/territory legislation and regulation in 2022/2023.
Employers are now required to identify and manage psychosocial hazards and risks, just as they would identify and manage physical hazards and risks.
That means you need to:
- 1Identify any psychosocial hazards and risks.
- 2Assess all identified hazards and risks to consider their impact on workers.
- 3Control risks by eliminating and minimising them as much as possible.
- 4Review any control measures implemented, to ensure they are effective.
The 14 psychosocial hazards in practice
Below are common examples of psychosocial hazards to consider in your organisation. The list and the examples are not exhaustive. Employees are likely to be exposed to a combination of hazards; some may be constantly present, while others arise sporadically.
Some hazards by themselves may cause serious harm, such as workplace violence. In most circumstances it will be a combination of hazards which together may cause harm, from a single instance or over time with repeated or prolonged exposure.
How hazards are categorised is less important than making sure you and your employees have the same understanding of what is happening and how it may be causing harm. That's why it's important to consult with or survey employees and managers to understand where the greatest risks are in your business. Only then can you develop a prioritised action plan that demonstrates improved control of these hazards.
Job demands
- Intense or sustained high mental, physical or emotional effort required to do the job.
- Unreasonable or excessive time pressures or role overload.
- High individual reputational, legal, career, safety or financial risk if mistakes occur.
- High vigilance required, limited margin of error and inadequate systems to prevent individual error.
- Shifts or work hours that do not allow adequate time for sleep and recovery.
- Sustained low levels of physical, mental or emotional effort required to do the job.
- Long idle periods while high workloads are present, e.g. waiting for equipment or other workers.
Low job control
- Workers have little control over aspects of the work, including how or when the job is done.
- Workers have limited ability to adapt the way they work to changing or new situations.
- Workers have limited ability to adopt efficiencies in their work.
- Tightly scripted or machine/computer paced work.
- Prescriptive processes which do not allow workers to apply their skills and judgement.
- Levels of autonomy not matched to workers' abilities.
Poor support
- Tasks or jobs where workers have inadequate support, including practical assistance and emotional support from managers and colleagues, or inadequate training, tools and resources for a task.
Lack of role clarity
- Uncertainty, frequent changes, conflicting roles or ambiguous responsibilities and expectations.
Poor organisational change management
- Insufficient consultation, consideration of new hazards or performance impacts when planning for, and implementing, change.
- Insufficient support, information or training during change.
- Not communicating key information to workers during periods of change.
Inadequate reward and recognition
- Jobs with low positive feedback or imbalances between effort and recognition.
- High level of unconstructive negative feedback from managers or customers.
- Low skills development opportunity or underused skills.
Poor organisational justice
- Inconsistent, unfair, discriminatory or inequitable management decisions and application of policies, including poor procedural justice.
Traumatic events or material
- Experiencing fear or extreme risks to the health or safety of themselves or others.
- Exposure to natural disasters, or seriously injured or deceased persons.
- Reading, hearing or seeing accounts of traumatic events, abuse or neglect.
- Supporting victims or investigating traumatic events, abuse or neglect.
Remote or isolated work
- Working in locations with long travel times, or where access to help, resources or communications is difficult or limited.
Poor physical environment
- Exposure to unpleasant or hazardous working environments.
Violence and aggression
- Violence, or threats of violence, from other workers (including workers of other businesses), customers, patients or clients (including assault).
- Aggressive behaviour such as yelling or physical intimidation.
Bullying
- Repeated unreasonable behaviour directed towards a worker or group of workers that creates a risk to health and safety, including bullying by workers, clients, patients, visitors or others.
Harassment, including sexual harassment
- Harassment due to personal characteristics such as age, disability, race, nationality, religion, political affiliation, sex, relationship status, family or carer responsibilities, sexual orientation, gender identity or intersex status.
- Sexual harassment: any unwelcome sexual advance, unwelcome request for sexual favours or other unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature, where a reasonable person would anticipate the possibility that the person harassed would be offended, humiliated or intimidated.
- Harmful behaviour that does not amount to bullying (such as single instances) but creates a risk to health or safety.
Conflict or poor workplace relationships and interactions
- Poor workplace relationships or interpersonal conflict between colleagues or from other businesses, clients or customers.
- Frequent disagreements, disparaging or rude comments, from one person or multiple people such as clients or customers. A worker can be both the subject and the source of this behaviour.
- Inappropriately excluding a worker from work-related activities.
Source: Safe Work Australia, Managing psychosocial hazards at work Code of Practice, July 2022, pp 16–18. For a summary of how STAR measures each hazard, see Psychosocial Risk in What We Measure.
Strategies to start now
At first glance this list can seem overwhelming. But there are simple, immediate strategies every business can implement to start demonstrating a proactive approach to the legislation:
- Educate managers, supervisors and employees on the range of psychosocial hazards that could exist in their workplace.
- Implement an appropriate OHS policy specifically addressing psychosocial risk management.
- Consult with managers, supervisors and employees on the psychosocial hazards they have identified; complete risk assessments; and record, prioritise and implement risk minimisation actions.
- Use anonymous surveys at least annually to assess improvements, alignment and employee satisfaction, and to identify any new hazards or risks.
- Observe work and behaviours, and identify psychosocial hazards as they arise.
- Review data and records, including workers compensation claims, employee complaints and investigations, excessive work hours, excessive accrued annual leave, absenteeism, resignation rates and exit interviews.
- Implement an appropriate Employee Assistance Programme, and support and monitor EAP utilisation.
- Make sure all employees are trained and supported in their role and duties, as confirmed by an authorised Position Description.
- Make sure all managers are trained and complete appropriate, timely performance coaching of all team members.
How to meet or exceed the requirements
| Key requirement | Solutions that work |
|---|---|
| Implement a psychosocial risk management policy, and educate all managers and employees on hazard identification and control. | Adapt a psychosocial risk policy to suit your business (ask your STAR provider). Include psychosocial hazards and risk control in your OHS system, or ask your provider to recommend a system appropriate to your business. |
| Run an annual anonymous survey to identify performance on psychosocial hazards, and develop and implement strategies in consultation with all employees. | Run an annual STAR Workplace assessment, then develop and implement annual action plans to improve alignment and performance and reduce psychosocial hazards. |
| Observe work and behaviours, and identify psychosocial hazards as they arise. | Build a psychosocial hazard checklist (or ask your STAR provider) and make sure assessments are completed and submitted from regular observations. |
| Review business data and records to help identify potential psychosocial hazards. | Review workers comp claims, timesheets, annual leave, pay summaries, exit interviews and resignation rates. |
| Implement and promote an Employee Assistance Programme. | Implement an appropriate, independent EAP, and support and monitor utilisation. |
| Make sure every employee and manager has a current, agreed Position Description for their role. | Implement a standardised PD for every role, including authority levels, skills and experience, reporting structure and support. |
| Make sure all employees and managers are trained and supported for their role. | Implement annual training and development for all employees, for their current and potential roles. |
| Make sure there is performance coaching for all managers and employees. | Implement standardised performance coaching for all managers and employees, including assessing organisational capability. |
Why alignment reduces risk
HR Coach network members have been working with Australasian businesses for nearly 20 years to improve the management of these hazards (and another 125 measures) through pragmatic, anonymous assessments and reporting, so business owners and their employees can build and implement plans to resolve them.
Ensuring employees are aligned with business strategy just makes good business sense. This alignment leads to extremely high business performance, improved leadership and management performance, and ultimately improved employee satisfaction, personal performance and ownership. In other words, good alignment of people activity with business strategy actually reduces psychosocial risk, particularly when partnered with consultation and plan development.
Anecdotal evidence also gives employers confidence that dissatisfaction items which are identified and resolved in a consultative, constructive way lead to a significant reduction in mental health claims.