Psychosocial safety in Victoria and mental health at work has always been part of the state’s occupational safety laws. What changed in 2025 are the details. Victorian businesses now operate under dedicated psychosocial regulations that set out specific, enforceable obligations for how psychological risks must be managed. If you run a Victorian business, lead a team, or hold a health and safety role, these obligations are yours to meet.
What Is A Psychosocial Hazard?
A psychosocial hazard is any aspect of how work is designed, managed, or carried out that could cause psychological harm. They tend to be visible, immediate, and come from the conditions of work. They can be structural (part of how a role or team is set up), interpersonal (arising from how people interact), or situational (triggered by particular events or working conditions).
A hazard exists as soon as there is potential for harm. If a reasonable person in the same situation could be at risk of psychological injury, the hazard is real and your obligation to address it begins.
Unmanaged psychosocial hazards can lead to anxiety, depression, burnout, and post-traumatic stress. Physical health can also be affected, including sleep, energy levels, and heart health. The harm can reach beyond the person affected to team performance, attendance, turnover, and your organisation’s reputation.
Common Psychosocial Hazards
Each of the following hazards is recognised under these regulations.
High job demands
Work that consistently exceeds what a person can reasonably handle, whether in volume, complexity, pace, or emotional weight. Eg.:
- A customer service team expected to handle 60 or more calls per day with no buffer time between interactions
- A project manager responsible for five concurrent projects, each with competing deadlines and inadequate resourcing
- A nurse regularly completing double shifts because of ongoing understaffing, with no ability to decline
Low job control
Limited ability to influence how, when, or in what order work gets done, even when the worker has relevant skills and experience. Eg.:
- A warehouse worker whose break times are set by a monitoring algorithm with no flexibility
- A teacher required to deliver scripted lessons with no ability to adapt to their students’ needs
- A senior analyst whose recommendations are regularly overridden with no explanation given
Poor role clarity
Unclear or shifting expectations about what a person’s job involves, who they report to, or what success looks like. Eg.:
- A newly promoted team leader who has a title but no defined responsibilities or clear authority
- An employee whose day-to-day tasks bear little resemblance to their job description
- A worker who regularly receives conflicting instructions from two different managers
A lack of support
Not enough practical, emotional, or professional support from supervisors, colleagues, or the organisation. Eg.:
- A remote worker who started during a team restructure and had no clear point of contact or regular check-ins
- A frontline social worker managing complex cases with no access to supervision or peer debrief
- A new employee given minimal induction and left to figure out systems and expectations on their own
Low recognition
A lasting gap between the effort a person puts in and the recognition, pay, or opportunities they receive. Eg.:
- A long-serving employee who performs well but is repeatedly passed over for promotion with no explanation
- A team that completes a high-stakes project successfully but receives no acknowledgement from leadership
- A worker whose salary has not changed in three years despite a significant expansion in their role’s scope
Poor workplace relationships and interpersonal conflict
Persistent negative interactions, unresolved conflict, exclusion, or disrespectful behaviour, including bullying, harassment, and discrimination. Eg.:
- A team member excluded from meetings, social events, and group chats without explanation
- A worker subjected to repeated undermining comments from a manager in front of colleagues
- Ongoing conflict between two team members that leadership is aware of but has not acted on
Traumatic or distressing content
Regular exposure to events, materials, or situations that cause trauma or serious distress as part of the job. Eg.:
- Emergency service workers attending critical incidents, including fatalities involving children
- Fraud investigators who regularly review child exploitation material as part of their work
- Aged care workers who witness repeated deaths of residents they have built close relationships with
- Content moderators who review large volumes of graphic or violent material online
Poorly managed change
Restructures, redundancies, system changes, or strategic shifts handled in ways that leave workers uncertain or feeling they have been treated unfairly. Eg.:
- Employees who learn about significant changes through rumour before formal communication
- A team restructure announced without explanation of the rationale, consultation, or a clear timeline
- Workers in roles that may become redundant, left in uncertainty for months with no updates
Psychosocial Controls
A psychosocial control is any measure taken to eliminate or reduce the risk from a psychosocial hazard. The goal is to change the conditions that create risk. Controls that focus only on helping workers cope with unchanged conditions do not meet the standard set out in these regulations.
Controls vary by hazard, work setting, and workforce. What is appropriate depends on the specific hazard, the context, and what is reasonably practicable. “Reasonably practicable” means what you can do when the benefit is weighed against the cost and effort involved.
Controls are required to follow a hierarchy under these regulations. Higher-order controls, those that address the source of the risk, must be prioritised.
The hierarchy of controls for psychosocial risk
Elimination
Remove the hazard entirely. Where this is reasonably practicable, it is always the preferred option.
- Removing a KPI that drives excessive unpaid overtime
- Removing a task that requires exposure to traumatic content where it is not central to the role
- Ending the practice of requiring workers to be contactable outside contracted hours
Substitution and redesign
Where elimination is not practicable, change how work is designed, structured, or managed to reduce risk at its source.
- Redesigning shift rosters to ensure adequate recovery time between shifts
- Restructuring a role so it has clearer boundaries and a single reporting line
- Adjusting project resourcing so workloads reflect realistic capacity
- Introducing a peer debrief process after exposure to traumatic incidents
Engineering and environmental controls
Modify the physical or digital work environment to reduce psychosocial risk.
- Designing open-plan offices to include quiet zones and private spaces for focused work or sensitive conversations
- Adjusting customer-facing environments to reduce exposure to verbal aggression, such as barriers, signage, or access controls
- Configuring communication tools so notifications are turned off outside core hours
Administrative controls
Change to the policies, procedures, and systems to reduce exposure or manage risk. These work best when they support the structural changes made at higher levels of the hierarchy.
- A clear policy on after-hours communication expectations
- A process for workers to raise workload concerns without fear of reprisal
- A structured change management process that includes regular worker updates
Training, information, and instruction
Provide workers and managers with training and information to help them recognise, report, and respond to psychosocial hazards.
- Mental health first aid training for managers
- Training on your organisation’s psychosocial hazard reporting process
- Information for workers about available support, including employee assistance programmes
A note on training as a control: Victoria’s regulations are explicit on this point. If higher-order controls are reasonably practicable, training must support those controls. A business that responds to a workload hazard with a resilience workshop, while leaving the underlying resourcing problem unchanged, is not meeting its legal obligations.
Changes to Psychosocial Safety in Victoria
Psychological health has always been part of Victoria’s occupational health and safety framework. The Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (Vic) covers both physical and psychological health, and requires employers to maintain a working environment that is safe and free from health risks, so far as reasonably practicable.
What has changed is that Victoria now has dedicated psychosocial regulations.
From 1 December 2025, the Occupational Health and Safety (Psychological Health) Regulations 2025 came into force. These regulations clarify and strengthen existing duties, setting out exactly how employers must manage psychosocial risks.
Psychological health now sits alongside physical safety as an explicit regulatory obligation.
What Are the Psychosocial Obligations in Victoria?
Prevention is the focus of the regulations. Employers are required to act before harm occurs. They must:
Identify psychosocial hazards
Employers must proactively identify hazards that could harm workers psychologically. These hazards can arise from:
- work design and workloads
- systems of work and management practices
- organisational change
- the work environment
- interactions with colleagues, clients, patients, or the public
Eliminate or reduce psychosocial risks
Once hazards are identified, employers must eliminate the associated risks so far as reasonably practicable. If elimination is not practicable, risks must be reduced.
Your obligation exists before workers raise complaints or before claims are lodged. A psychosocial risk that has not yet caused harm still requires action.
Consult with workers and HSRs
Employers must consult with workers and Health and Safety Representatives (HSRs) when identifying hazards, assessing risks, and deciding on controls.
Consultation is a legal requirement, and it must be genuine. The regulations treat workers as a key source of insight into psychosocial risk.
Review controls when trigger events occur
Controls must be reviewed and, where necessary, revised when:
- there is a significant change to work
- new information about risks becomes available
- a psychological injury or hazard is reported
- a notifiable incident occurs
- controls are not working as intended
- an HSR requests a review
These duties extend to contractors and labour hire workers where you direct or control their work. The obligations apply across industries, from offices and construction sites to healthcare, education, retail, and community services.
How Are Psychosocial Obligations Enforced?
Obligations are set out in the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (Vic) and supported by the regulations. Failing to comply with the regulations can amount to a breach of the Act.
WorkSafe Victoria enforces these duties through inspections, improvement notices, and prohibition notices. A Compliance Code on Psychological Health is also published, providing guidance on how to meet those duties.
The Compliance Code is one pathway to compliance. If you follow it, you are considered to have met the duties it covers. Other approaches that meet the obligations are also acceptable.
HSRs can rely on the Compliance Code when issuing Provisional Improvement Notices.
How Must Businesses Manage Psychosocial Obligations?
Treat psychosocial risk like any other safety risk, with structure, evidence, and accountability.
Build a psychosocial hazard register. Identify hazards across work design, systems, management practices, the work environment, and workplace interactions. A hazard register gives you a clear written record of the decisions you make and the controls you put in place.
Assess risk with a focus on causes. Workloads, resourcing, KPIs, role clarity, supervision practices, rostering, and change management can all contribute to psychosocial risk. Dig into the conditions driving the risk rather than its visible signs.
Implement higher-order controls. Change how work is planned, resourced, managed, and designed. Use training to support those changes.
Embed consultation and governance. Make consultation routine, documented, and genuine. Assign responsibility for each control and set clear review points so accountability is clear.
Create clear reporting and response pathways. Make it safe and straightforward for workers to report psychosocial hazards. Treat each report as a trigger for review.
Keep evidence. If WorkSafe inspects, you should be able to show:
- how hazards were identified
- how workers were consulted
- why particular controls were chosen
- how the controls’ effectiveness has been reviewed
The Bottom Line
Victoria’s psychosocial legislation marks a clear shift. Psychological health is now treated as a core business risk, carrying the same weight as physical safety.
Businesses that take a proactive, systems-focused approach will be better placed to comply and may see improvements in staff retention, team performance, and trust across the organisation.
Businesses that rely on policies and training as their primary controls may be exposed to enforcement action.
If you want help putting these requirements into practice for your industry, that is the next step.
References
Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (Vic)
Occupational Health and Safety (Psychological Health) Regulations 2025 (Vic)
WorkSafe Victoria, Compliance Code: Psychological Health (Edition 1, September 2025)
