Digging Deeper

Below sits the supporting detail. It covers the legal duty, the hazards it captures, what the duty looks like across industries, and the practical steps to meet it.

What the law actually says

The work health and safety duty is not new, but it is now sharply in focus. The WHS Act gives the person conducting a business or undertaking a primary duty of care for workers’ health, and health expressly includes both physical and psychological health.

Recent changes added a clear, positive obligation to manage psychosocial risk, along with codes of practice that explain how to do so. Queensland’s code became enforceable on 1 April 2023, New South Wales acted from late 2022, and most other states and the Commonwealth have followed, with Victoria using its own regulations.

The duty covers businesses of all sizes. It extends to your workers, contractors, and volunteers, and requires you to protect others, such as clients, patients, and visitors, including from harmful behaviour by third parties. You cannot transfer or delegate the duty away.

In Queensland, codes of practice are enforceable. A court may treat the code as evidence of what is reasonably practicable, and an inspector can issue a notice where the standard is not met. A policy on the shelf is not enough.

That sounds heavy, but the standard is reasonableness, not perfection. The law asks what is reasonably practicable for a business of your size and type, so a small firm is not expected to do what a large corporation does.

What counts as a psychosocial hazard

A psychosocial hazard is anything in the design or management of work, the work environment, or workplace behaviour that can harm psychological health. The category is broad, and most of it is ordinary working life done badly.

Common examples include high or low job demands, such as excessive workload or time pressure. Low job control. Poor support from managers or peers. Unclear or conflicting roles. Poorly managed change. Inadequate recognition. Poor workplace relationships and conflict.

They also include remote or isolated work, exposure to traumatic events or material, violence and aggression, bullying, and harassment, including sexual harassment. These hazards are not always obvious; they can accumulate at low levels over time and often combine to worsen the overall risk.

The common thread is control. A hazard is rarely a single dramatic event. More often, it is a normal feature of work, demand, pace, support, or behaviour that is left unmanaged until it causes harm.

What it looks like across industries

The same hazards take different forms across sectors. In trades and construction, the live risks are often remote or isolated work, aggressive clients or members of the public, heavy time and physical demands, and exposure to serious incidents on site.

In professional services, the usual hazards are excessive workload, constant time pressure, an always-on culture, role conflict, and difficult or aggressive clients.

In allied health, staff face exposure to distress and trauma, sometimes aggressive or highly distressed patients, heavy emotional demands, and lone work during home visits.

In not-for-profits, the work is emotionally demanding and often under-resourced, with exposure to clients in crisis and the added duty of looking after both volunteers and paid staff.

Whatever the sector, the task is the same. Look honestly at how your particular work is designed and delivered, and ask where it could be quietly harming the people who do it.