Victoria's new psychosocial health regulations have commenced – Employers are you complying?

Victoria's new psychosocial health regulations have commenced - Employers are you complying?

Since 1 December 2025 a new positive duty applies to Victorian employers to proactively identify, manage and eliminate psychosocial hazards in their workplace. The Occupational Health and Safety (Psychological Health) Regulations 2025 (the Regulations) strengthen the occupational health and safety framework and recognise that psychosocial hazards are just as harmful as physical hazards.

Under the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (OHS Act), employers already have a duty to provide a working environment that is safe and without risks to health, so far as reasonably practicable. The definition of health includes psychological health.

What is reasonably practicable can be decided objectively and is based on the standard of behaviour expected from a reasonable person. A reasonable person is taken to be committed to providing the highest level of protection for people against risks to their health and safety and proactively taking action to protect people's health and safety. Employers must do what a reasonable person who is committed to the highest level of protection against risks to health and safety would do in the circumstance.

The Regulations focus on risk management and create specific obligations for Victorian employers to identify psychological hazards and control risks. All Victorian employers need to become familiar with the new obligation and ensure that they have the systems, processes, training and other interventions to discharge the duty.

WorkSafe Victoria has created a Compliance Code for psychological health (Code) which provides guidance to employers on managing risks associated with psychosocial hazards to protect employee health and safety.

A breach of the Compliance Code is not, of itself, a breach of theOHS Act. Nevertheless compliance with the Code will, to the extent it deals with their duties or obligations under the OHS Act or the Regulations, will be taken to be fulfilment of those duties or obligations. As such all employers should review the Code and familiarise themselves with their obligations.

What are psychosocial hazards?

The Regulations define psychosocial hazard as any factor(s) in work design, systems of work, management of work, carrying out of the work or personal or work-related interactions that may arise in the working environment and may cause an employee to experience one or more negative psychological responses that create a risk to the employee's health or safety.

The Regulations define "work design" as the equipment, content and organisation of an employee's work tasks, activities, relationships and responsibilities within a job or role.

A psychological response includes cognitive, emotional and behavioural responses and the physiological processes associated with them.The Code specifies examples of psychological responses to include stress, feeling stressed, distress and feeling burnt out, as well as warning signs of psychological harm.

The Code includes a non-exhaustive list of psychosocial hazards:

• aggression or violence;
• bullying;
• exposure to traumatic events and/or content;
• gendered violence;
• high or low job demands;
• low job control;
• low recognition and reward;
• low role clarity;
• poor environmental conditions;
• poor organisational change management;
• poor organisational justice;
• poor support;
• poor workplace relationships;
• remote or isolated work; and
• sexual harassment.

What do Employers need to do?

The Psychosocial Regulations require employers to, so far as is reasonably practicable:

• identify psychosocial hazards;
• assess, where necessary, any associated risks to health and safety;
• eliminate any risk associated with a psychosocial hazard or if elimination is not reasonably practicable, reduce the risk; and
• monitor, review and, if necessary, revise measures implemented to control risks associated with psychosocial hazards.

Identifying Psychosocial Hazards

The Regulations require employers to identify psychosocial hazards so far as is reasonably practicable. Psychosocial hazards will vary for every organisation and sometimes even between groups of employees. For example, employees who deal face to face with customers may be at greater risk of aggression or violence compared with employees from the same organisation who don't have a customer facing role.

In accordance with obligations in the OHS Act employers must so far as is reasonably practicable, consult with employees on health and safety matters that directly affect or are likely to directly affect them. Employers also need to collect and review relevant information to help identify psychosocial hazards such as incident reports, complaints and human resources information showing for example patterns of absenteeism.

The Regulations reinforce the importance of consultation in managing psychosocial risks, and include detail on how this should occur. If employees have a health and safety representative (HSR), consultation must involve the HSR (with or without the involvement of the employees).

The duty to consult also extends to independent contractors (including any employees of the independent contractor) engaged by the employer in relation to matters over which the employer has control.

Assessing Risk

A psychosocial risk assessment involves examining psychosocial hazards to assess how, and to what extent, they create a risk to the health or safety of employees.

This will help employers to determine the seriousness of the risk, by considering both the likelihood of harm occurring and consequences for affected employees and others.

Employers should also consider how multiple psychosocial hazards might interact, which employees are most at risk, how the hazards are likely to affect these employees and if risks are organisation-wide or apply for example to specific employees or groups of employees or specific work tasks.

Whilst current knowledge and understanding about the risk and how to control it may already exist employers should carry out a risk assessment when it is not clear if the psychosocial hazard may result in harm, it is not clear how hazards may interact to produce new, different or more significant harm, the existing risk controls are not effective or there are changes planned that may affect existing risk controls.

Risk assessments must involve consultation with employees and any HSRs, so far as is reasonably practicable. Risk assessments should include data collection, for example, using workplace data and information from focus groups, interviews and de-identified validated surveys and cite the evidence used.

Controlling Risks

The Regulations require employers to control psychosocial hazards by, so far as is reasonably practicable by eliminating the risk arising from the psychosocial hazard.

If it is not reasonably practicable to eliminate a risk associated with a psychosocial hazard, the employer must reduce the risk so far as reasonably practicable by:

• altering the:
• management of work; or
• the plant (namely a change to the design of or adding or taking away from the plant in a way that may affect health or safety, but not simply routine maintenance, repairs or replacement); or
• the systems of work; or
• the work design; or
• the workplace environment, or
• using information, instruction or training, or
• using a combination of any of the controls listed in (a) and (b).

The Regulations specify that information, instruction or training may only exclusively be used as a risk control measure where none of the risk control measures listed under (a) are reasonably practicable. They further specify that where a combination of risk control measures is used, information, instruction or training must not be the predominant control measure.

Whilst the use of prevention plans is not mandatory, WorkSafe Victoria does encourage employers to use the template that has been developed which can be used by employers to help guide the risk management process for psychosocial hazards.

Reviewing and Revising Control Measures

Reviewing risk controls involves examining whether the control measures are effectively controlling risks, so far as is reasonably practicable.

The Regulations impose a duty on employers to review and, if necessary, revise the control measures when certain circumstances occur:

1. before any alteration is made to any thing, process or system of work that is likely to result in changes to risks associated with psychosocial hazards
2. if there is new or additional information about a psychosocial hazard available to the employer
3. if an employee, or a person on their behalf, reports a psychological injury or psychosocial hazard to the employer
4. after a notifiable incident occurs that involves one or more psychosocial in the workplace
5. if, for any other reason, the risk control measures do not adequately control the risks associated with a psychosocial hazard
6. after receiving a request from an HSR.

If the review finds that the controls are not adequately controlling the risk so far as is reasonably practicable, risk controls must be revised.

Key Takeouts for Employers

Going forward, WorkSafe Victoria will expect all employers to be able to demonstrate that they have in place safety management systems which align with the new requirements and help promote compliance with those requirements.

Employers should review their organisation's approach and systems for managing psychosocial risks in the workplace, in light of the Code and Regulations. This would include ensuring consultation is occurring and updating as necessary consultation procedures to accommodate the additional steps required for consultation with HSRs.

Employers need to ensure workers and managers are given sufficient instruction, training and supervision on the management of psychosocial risk and systems are established for them to report and respond to risks identified in the workplace.

If you need advice on implementation of the Code and Regulations in your workplace or have any queries in relation to this article please contact Michael Bishop or Amelita Hensman of our Employment Law Team.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.