Psychosocial Risk Assessment in Australia: 5 Stages, One Worked Office Example

Mental health conditions accounted for 12% of all serious workers' compensation claims in Australia in 2023/24, a 161% increase on ten years earlier. The median time lost on those claims was almost five times longer than for other injuries and diseases (Safe Work Australia, Key Work Health and Safety Statistics Australia 2025). For office-based businesses, psychological injury is no longer a side issue. It is the main event.

Every Australian jurisdiction now regulates psychosocial hazards explicitly. Most states and territories adopted amendments to the model WHS Regulations, supported by a Code of Practice on managing psychosocial hazards at work. Victoria went its own way, with the standalone Occupational Health and Safety (Psychological Health) Regulations 2025, in force since 1 December 2025.

Most guidance stops at explaining the law. Very little shows what a psychosocial risk assessment actually looks like when you do one for a real team. So this guide works through the five stages using one example: a software company with a UK head office and teams in Sydney and Melbourne. The company is illustrative, but the hazards, decisions and controls are typical of what Arinite sees in AI, software, legal, insurance and education businesses.

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The Worked Example: Meet the Team

The business: a UK-headquartered AI analytics software company. The Australian footprint: 60 people in a Sydney office (New South Wales, model WHS laws) and 25 in Melbourne (Victoria, the 2025 Psychological Health Regulations). The team assessed first: a 30-person customer success function that handles enterprise clients, supports a new AI product launch, and works across Australian and UK time zones. Why this team: two resignations citing burnout, a rise in sick leave, and a manager's report of a client abusing staff on calls.

The same five stages apply to a law firm's litigation team, an insurer's claims unit or a university's student services department.

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Stage 1: Consult Before You Assess

What the law expects: consultation with workers is a core duty under the model WHS Act, and both frameworks expect workers and health and safety representatives (HSRs) to help identify hazards and decide on controls. Victoria's 2025 Regulations go further, setting out specifically how employers must involve HSRs.

Why it comes first: the people doing the work know where the pressure comes from. An assessment written by HR or a consultant without them misses the real hazards and loses trust before it starts.

In the worked example: the company briefs both offices on why the assessment is happening, confirms that results will be reported at team level only, and invites the Melbourne HSR and two Sydney volunteers onto a small working group. It commits to sharing findings within six weeks.

Common mistake: announcing a "wellbeing survey" with no explanation of what will happen to the answers. Response rates collapse when people suspect the survey is a performance tool.

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Stage 2: Identify the Hazards

What the law expects: a psychosocial hazard is anything in the design or management of work, the working environment, or workplace interactions and behaviours that may cause psychological harm. The NSW Code of Practice on managing psychosocial hazards at work lists common hazards including high and low job demands, low job control, poor support, lack of role clarity, poor change management, inadequate reward and recognition, poor organisational justice, traumatic events or material, remote or isolated work, poor physical environment, violence and aggression, bullying, harassment including sexual harassment, and conflict or poor workplace relationships.

How to find them: use more than one source. Good options include a validated survey such as People at Work (developed by Australian regulators and free to use), sick leave and turnover data, exit interviews, grievances, incident and near miss reports, and short facilitated team discussions.

In the worked example: the working group combines People at Work results with absence data and two focus groups. Five hazards stand out:

1. High job demands at quarter-end and around the AI product launch. 2. Low role clarity after a restructure merged two teams. 3. Aggression from clients, mostly by phone and video call. 4. Remote and isolated work for the small Melbourne cohort working UK hours. 5. Poor change management around the new AI tooling, introduced with little warning or training.

Common mistake: assessing "stress" as a single hazard. Stress is a response. The hazards are the specific conditions causing it, and each needs its own control.

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Stage 3: Assess the Risk

What the law expects: under the model WHS Regulations, employers must consider the duration, frequency and severity of exposure, how hazards interact or combine, the design of work, systems of work, the workplace, and the information, training, instruction and supervision provided. Victoria's Regulations take a similar approach, centred on whether a hazard may cause negative psychological responses that create a risk to health or safety.

Why interaction matters: one hazard on its own may be manageable. High demands combined with low control and poor support are far more likely to cause harm than any one of them alone.

In the worked example:

Hazard	Who is exposed	Duration and frequency	Severity	Interacts with	Risk
High job demands	Whole team	Every quarter-end, plus launch	Medium to high	Low role clarity, remote work	High
Low role clarity	Whole team	Constant since restructure	Medium	High demands	High
Client aggression	12 client-facing staff	Weekly	High for individuals	Remote work (handled alone)	High
Remote and isolated work	8 Melbourne staff	Daily, late evenings	Medium	High demands, aggression	Medium
Poor change management	Whole team	Ongoing during rollout	Medium	High demands	Medium

Common mistake: scoring each hazard in isolation and missing the combination that is actually driving the resignations.

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Stage 4: Control the Risk, Starting With the Work Itself

What the law expects: both frameworks expect risks to be eliminated where reasonably practicable, and otherwise minimised, with a strong preference for changing how work is designed and managed over relying on individual coping. Victoria's Regulations set out a hierarchy that puts changes to work design, systems and the working environment ahead of information, instruction and training. Wellbeing apps, resilience training and employee assistance programmes have a place, but they do not control a hazard on their own.

In the worked example:

Hazard	Primary control (work design)	Supporting control
High job demands	Quarter-end capacity planning, a launch freeze on non-essential projects, temporary contractor cover	Workload check-ins in one-to-ones
Low role clarity	Rewritten role profiles and a RACI for the merged team, agreed with staff	Briefings for managers on the new structure
Client aggression	Clear client conduct terms, an "end the call" right for staff, escalation to account directors, aggressive accounts moved to senior handlers	De-escalation training and post-incident debriefs
Remote and isolated work	A rota so no one covers UK hours alone more than two evenings a week, overlap hours with the Sydney team	Buddy system and manager check-ins
Poor change management	A phased AI tool rollout with consultation, testing and protected learning time	Clear FAQs and a feedback channel

Common mistake: treating the employee assistance programme as the control. It supports people who are already struggling. It does not change the conditions that put them there.

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Stage 5: Review, and Know What Triggers a Review

What the law expects: controls must be reviewed and, where necessary, revised. Under both the model WHS Regulations and Victoria's 2025 Regulations, review is required when controls are not working, before a change that might create new risks, when new hazards or risks are identified, and when an HSR requests it on reasonable grounds.

In the worked example: the company sets three measures for the customer success team (People at Work scores, sick leave, and logged client aggression incidents) and schedules a formal review after the next quarter-end. It also lists the triggers that would bring the review forward: another restructure, a second AI launch, or any serious aggression incident.

Common mistake: treating the assessment as a one-off project. Psychosocial risk changes every time the business does, and in fast-growing tech and professional services businesses, that is often.

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How Australia Compares With a UK Head Office

For UK and international groups, the same team may sit under very different legal frameworks depending on which office they work from.

Jurisdiction	Framework	What it means in practice
United Kingdom	General risk assessment duty plus HSE Management Standards for work-related stress	Six areas: demands, control, support, relationships, role and change
NSW and other model WHS jurisdictions	Model WHS Regulations on psychosocial risks, plus a Code of Practice	Specific duty to manage psychosocial risks, with listed factors to consider
Victoria	Occupational Health and Safety (Psychological Health) Regulations 2025, plus a Compliance Code	Standalone regulations with a control hierarchy and detailed HSR consultation
New Zealand	General duties under its own health and safety law, which is being reformed	See New Zealand's 2026 reform
International standard	ISO 45003 guidance on psychological health and safety at work	Voluntary framework that sits alongside ISO 45001

The good news is that a well-designed assessment can satisfy all of them. The UK Management Standards and the Australian hazard lists overlap heavily, so one group method, applied locally, works. Our UK guide to stress risk assessment and managing psychosocial hazards and ISO 45003: 7 questions before you start explain the wider picture.

Australian employers also have a positive duty under the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 to take reasonable and proportionate measures to eliminate workplace sexual harassment, which overlaps directly with the harassment hazard in Stage 2.

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Sector Notes

AI and data: teams that review harmful content, label training data or test model outputs can be exposed to traumatic material. That is a listed psychosocial hazard, and it needs its own assessment. See our AI and data page.

Legal: billable hour targets, adversarial work and distressing case material combine in exactly the way Stage 3 warns about. See our legal page.

Insurance: claims handlers face aggressive customers and, in some lines, traumatic claim content. See our insurance page.

Education: aggression from students and parents, workload and change are recurring hazards for teachers and support staff. See our education page.

Software and offices: high demands during launches and restructures, and isolation for small remote teams. See our software and offices pages.

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Why This Matters at Board Level

Officers of Australian businesses, including directors of overseas parent companies in some circumstances, have a due diligence duty to understand the hazards of the business and ensure resources are in place to manage them. Psychosocial risk is now squarely within that duty. Our article on industrial manslaughter in Australia: 9 things foreign parents miss explains why UK and international boards should pay attention.

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How Arinite Helps

Arinite has supported 1,500+ businesses across 50+ countries for 15+ years, protecting 100,000+ employees, with 95%+ client retention. Our qualified consultants help UK and international groups manage Australian requirements as part of one consistent WHS management system. See our Australia WHS and Australia location pages.

• Done For You: our health and safety consultants run the full five-stage psychosocial risk assessment, then test that controls are working through independent health and safety audits.
• Done With You: we facilitate consultation and focus groups, interpret survey results, and help your managers design controls that change the work, not just the messaging.
• DIY: you run assessments, actions and reviews across every office on our health and safety consultants and software platform, with expert support when you need it.

As international health and safety consultants, we align your Australian assessments with UK and European requirements. Our global health and safety consultants make sure your Sydney, Melbourne and London teams are assessed to one standard, with local rules built in.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is a psychosocial risk assessment mandatory in Australia?

Every Australian jurisdiction now requires employers to manage psychosocial risks. That means identifying hazards, assessing risks where necessary, controlling them and reviewing controls. A structured psychosocial risk assessment is the most practical way to show you have done this.

What is different about Victoria's psychosocial regulations?

Victoria introduced standalone Occupational Health and Safety (Psychological Health) Regulations 2025, in force from 1 December 2025, rather than amending its general regulations. They include a control hierarchy that prioritises changes to work design and systems, and detailed requirements for consulting health and safety representatives.

How often should a psychosocial risk assessment be reviewed?

Review it when controls are not working, before significant changes, when new hazards are identified, and when a health and safety representative reasonably requests it. Most organisations also set a regular review cycle, at least annually.

Can a UK company use the HSE Management Standards for its Australian staff?

The approach overlaps heavily and is a useful starting point, but it is not enough on its own. Australian requirements list additional hazards, such as traumatic material and harassment, and set specific factors to consider. Use one group method, adapted to meet local requirements.

Is an employee assistance programme a psychosocial control?

It is a supporting measure, not a primary control. Regulators expect employers to change the design and management of work first, and to use support services alongside those changes.

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Start With One Team

You do not need to assess the whole business at once. Start with the team showing the clearest warning signs, as the worked example did. Book a free gap analysis with Arinite and we will review your psychosocial risk management across Australia, the UK and your other locations, and show you where to start.

Request your free gap analysis