Managing psychosocial hazards

As the PCBU, you can identify psychosocial hazards and manage their risks in the same way you manage physical hazards:

  • Identify the hazards
  • Assess the risks
  • Implement control measures, and
  • Monitor and review.

Consultation is a key element of providing a healthy and safe work environment. You have a duty to consult with affected workers about WHS. If they have a health and safety representative (HSR), the HSR must be included in the consultation. This duty is described in more detail in the Code of Practice: Work health and safety consultation, cooperation and co-ordination.

PCBUs must also train their workers about the psychosocial hazards and risks at their workplace and how the control measures that are used to eliminate or minimise them.

  1. Identifying psychosocial hazards:

    The first step in the risk management process is to identify all work-related psychosocial hazards. This involves finding things and situations that could potentially harm workers and others at the workplace.

    As the PCBU, there are a number of ways that you can identify psychosocial hazards. For example:

    • Talk with your workers about what psychosocial hazards are and whether they think they experience them. Be mindful that workers may use different terms to describe exposure to psychosocial hazards. They might say they feel:
      • stressed, burnt-out or emotionally exhausted about their workload
      • anxious or scared about talking to or dealing with an aggressive person, and
      • humiliated, degraded or undermined by the behaviour of others.
    • Use anonymous employee surveys like the People at Work Survey, and other hazard identification tools.
    • Observe work and behaviours, such as if workers are rushed, how workers interact with each other and the general layout and conditions of the workplace.
    • Review any data you might have, such as:
      • records of injuries and illnesses
      • workers’ compensation claims
      • sick leave patterns
      • safety inspections
      • WHS complaints
      • internal investigations and processes, and
      • exit interviews, and
    • Research what types of hazards can be present based on what work is done by the workplace and who it may interact with on a day to day basis.
  2. Assessing psychosocial risks:

    Assessing risks involves considering what could happen if someone is exposed to a psychosocial hazard, the degree of harm that may result, and the likelihood of that outcome.

    When assessing risks, you should consider:

    • Duration: how long are workers exposed?
    • Frequency: how often are they exposed?
    • Severity: how severe are the psychosocial risks and their outcomes?

    The psychosocial risks are increased when exposures are:

    • more severe, such as exposure to a traumatic incident
    • more frequent, such as regularly performing tasks without adequate support, and
    • longer in duration, such as high job demands over weeks or months.

    Psychosocial risks also increase when more than one is identified to be at the workplace at any one time.

    As the PCBU, you can use a risk assessment template to assess psychosocial risks, or there are surveys and psychosocial risk assessment tools available.

  3. Controlling psychosocial risks:

    Under the WHS laws, risks to health and safety must be managed following the hierarchy of controls:

    • Eliminate the hazard
    • Minimise the risk using substitution, isolation and engineering controls
    • Use administrative controls, and
    • Use personal protective equipment (PPE).

    The hierarchy of controls assists to find the best combination of measures for your work and your workplace.

    As the PCBU, you must always aim to eliminate psychosocial hazards first. For example you could:

    • remove the risk of assault during a robbery by exclusively using remote payment methods, or
    • eliminate excessive work demands through workforce planning.

    Where the hazard cannot be eliminated, you must then minimise so far as is reasonably practicable using control measures. For example, you could:

    • install sound dampening technology or enclose machinery to isolate the worker from unpleasant or hazardous noise
    • increase the lighting in darker areas, and
    • place barriers between workers and customers.

    Only after you have applied substitution, isolation and engineering control measures to minimise risks so far as is reasonably practicable, should you use administrative controls. You could:

    • allow workers adequate time to complete difficult tasks, especially if they are inexperienced
    • match your work and work tasks with your staff considering their skills, experience, qualifications and development preferences
    • redesign work systems to minimise confusion by clearly defining your workers’ roles, reporting structures, tasks and performance standards
    • increase the level of practical support during peak workloads
    • use job rotation for repetitive or highly demanding tasks to reduce exposure time, or
    • have a workplace values and rewards system that supports collaboration and teamwork in your organisation.

    Using personal protective equipment (PPE) is a last resort and must only be used to supplement higher level controls. These could include:

    • personal distress alarms, or
    • high quality hearing protection or headphones to reduce stress reported from excessive or annoying background noise.
  4. Monitor and review the control measures

    As the PCBU, you must maintain, monitor, review, and, if necessary, revise control measures to make sure they remain effective. Reviews must occur:

    • where a new hazard or risk is identified
    • if a control measure is not adequately minimising the risk
    • before a significant workplace change occurs, like a change to the work environment or the systems of work you use
    • where consultation indicates a review is necessary, and
    • if a HSR requests a review.

    Consultation with your workers and their representatives is required throughout the risk management cycle. This includes when you are reviewing control measures.

Common failures in the risk management process are:

  • focusing on poor workplace behaviours by an individual, and not identifying and sufficiently controlling the psychosocial hazards, and
  • not following the hierarchy of control principles and relying on administrative controls.

As a worker or other person at the workplace, if you are exposed to psychosocial hazards that you feel are not appropriately controlled, you should report these issues using the workplace’s hazard or incident reporting processes.

You can seek advice from someone within your workplace who manages health and safety such as a HSR, someone on the health and safety committee, or your health and safety or HR advisor.

If issues remain and your workplace does not make efforts to adequately address psychosocial hazards and risks, you can raise a psychosocial hazard complaint with WorkSafe ACT.

Further information

In 2021, WorkSafe ACT released a strategy to protect the psychological health and safety of ACT workers, along with plans to manage work-related violence and aggression, and work-related sexual harassment. To learn more, see the managing work-related psychosocial hazards page.

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